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GUICHIN FUNAKOSHI

Founder of Karate-Do (modern Karate)

Guichin Funakoshi was born in 1868. He began in Karate with 12 year-old, under the orientation of two old Masters: AZATO YASUTSUNE and ANKO ITOSU.
He wrote about the trainings on that time: I practice alone a single kata during months and years, hoping the Master ordered to stop… but it never happened. It is difficult to explain the hardness of those trainings.
He would specialize in two methods: Shorin Karate from Azato and Shorei Ryu from Itosu.

 

The two masters they were close friends but defended different conceptions of Karate, which occurred by the morphologic differences that characterized them.
Azato was tall wide shoulders man, conceived his Karate in the presupposition that the arms and legs of the opponents were swords; therefore, they could not touch. This vision of the real combat was certainly reminiscences from his warrior time.
Itosu, on the contrary, was a short and fat man, defending the opposite concept, he said: if an attack is weak we can ignore it so we have to develop a strong body.

 

It is important to understand that on that time the teaching was marked by different fight conceptions that seated on the sensei’s morphology and personality.
Funakoshi didn’t worry about masters' different tendencies, recognizing the validity of both methods. Therefore, continued dedicated to the two masters and, at the same time, maintained his job in a school as calligraphy teacher. When he returned from trainings, late in the evening, the neighbors thought that he had spent the night in some enjoyment places. He never denied such judgments. It was very convenient that they thought so, assisting to the secret that involved the practice of Karate.

 

Funakoshi was the first master to introduce Karate in the main island of the Japan archipelago. In 1916 he made a demonstration in Butokuden in Kyoto. In 1921, the Prince of the Crown, later Emperor of Japan, in a visit to Okinawa visited Funakoshi to ask him a Karate demonstration in Japan. Then he moved to Tokyo to accomplish his promise to the Emperor. In 1922 organized by Ministry of Education, and called “The First National Athletic Exhibition”, Funakoshi performed a demonstration that was considered, and still today is, the largest demonstration of Karate of all the times.

 

The success deserved him the invitation of several individualities and important social groups and universities, to stay in Japan. In fact, he never returned again to Okinawa.

 

Master Funakoshi always fought for a unique karate, rejecting the idea that the natural morphologic differences or concepts gave place to different styles.
For him, the creation of Shotokan was a very important moment. The karate would be recognized by the Japanese Government and soon he decided: the katas would maintain the bases but the form should be adapted to the new style… and the old names of Chinese origin, gave place to very Japanese names.

 

The Pacific war already elapsed. Japan that had conquered Manchuria in 1931, maintained the war since 1936 with China, situation that legitimated the statement of Karate as a Japanese Art. Funakoshi, a traditionalist, defended that the meaning of the old names doesn’t make sense anymore. He, as calligraphy teacher, altered the characters of the word Karate. The pronunciation would stay but their characters would stop meaning “Chinese Hand” and began to mean “empty Hand”; a reference to Zen “emptiness” but certainly also a nationalist position.

 

Funakoshi developed his Karate-Do with a rigid discipline, synthesizing the philosophical concept of Okinawa and the nature human's knowledge.