Monthly Archives: July 2021

It has been five years since I discovered and presented the 1888 photo of people in front of the Sōgen-ji Temple in Tomari. In the meantime we located more items of the 1888 journey and managed to get access. Therefore, … Continue reading →

I would like to turn attention towards the terms pronounced in Japanese as Shōrin and Shōrei. In short: The whole story of Shōrin and Shōrei as the original schools of karate were possibly just a communication error. To get started, … Continue reading →

Yesterday, Motobu Naoki Sensei presented new research about Kanō Jigorō’s visit to Okinawa in 1927, and the karate demonstrations presented to him. In it appears a part of an article originally written by Ishikawa Seitoku of Shōrin-ryū in 1999: “Director … Continue reading →

There is some confusion as to when Nagamine Shōshin began training in karate under his various sensei. Let’s check the timeline. It is believed that Nagamine Shōshin entered Tomari Elementary School in April 1914. This is for the following reasons. … Continue reading →

Old-style Shūshi no Kon The earliest known footage of Shūshi no Kon is from 1929 and shown below. The earliest description of a bōjutsu kata in text and illustration is of the same Shūshi no Kon. It was learned on … Continue reading →

In this video, Yonamine Kosuke performs 10 basic techniques of the bo. As can be seen, these 10 bo basics were already a part of the syllabus at that time within that kobudo association (Ryukyu Kobudo Hozon Shinkokai) in 1982. … Continue reading →

In my last post I mentioned how the execution and entire appearance of kata are influenced and in fact defined by the characteristics of the kihon (basics). I did so on example of the bo kihon set of Ryukyu Kobudo … Continue reading →

These are the 10 basic techniques of the bo (bo kihon) of Shimbukan and other schools coming from Akamine Eisuke. There are three more techniques, but these are very simple and not shown here. I do these rather casual here … Continue reading →