“He Found The Balance Between Shuri and Naha Te.” Please share"

Kenwa Mabuni 1889 – 1952 DW

“He Found The Balance Between Shuri and Naha Te.”

Kenwa Mabuni was one of the first karate ka to teach karate on mainland Japan and is credited as developing the style known as Shitō-ryū.

Born in ShuriOkinawa in 1889, Mabuni was a 17th generation descendant of the famous warrior Uni Ufugusuku Kenyu.He began his instruction in his home town in the art of Shuri-Te at the age of 13, under the tutelage of the legendary Ankō Yasutsune Itosu. He trained diligently for several years, learning many kata from this great master.

One of his close friends, Chōjun Miyagi (founder of Gōjū-Ryū) introduced Mabuni to another great of that period, Higaonna Kanryō and began to learn Naha-Te under him as well. While both Itosu and Higashionna taught a 'hard-soft' style of Okinawan 'Te', their methods and emphases were quite distinct. The Itosu syllabus included straight and powerful techniques as exemplified in the Naifanchi and Bassai kata while the Higashionna syllabus, on the other hand, stressed circular motion and shorter fighting methods as seen in the popular Seipai and Kururunfa forms. Shitō-ryū focuses on both hard and soft.

By 1918, Kenwa Mabun had become an important figure in the martial arts community. Around this time he established a research and study group at his home, with participating members including Chosin Chibana, Gichin Funakoshi, Anbun Tokuda, Shinpan Shiroma, Choju Oshiro, Seicho Tokumura and Hoko Ishikawa.

By 1929, Mabuni had moved to Osaka on the mainland, to become a full-time karate instructor of a style he originally called Hanko-ryū, or 'half-hard style'. In an effort to gain acceptance in the Japanese Butokukai, the governing body for all officially recognized martial arts in that country, he and his contemporaries decided to call their art 'Karate' or 'Empty Hand', rather than 'Chinese Hand'. Around the same time, when first introducing his style to the Butokukai, the name of the style changed to Shitō-ryū, in honour of its main influences.

Mabuni derived the name for his new style of Shitō-ryū from the first Kanji character in their names, "Shi" for Higashionna and "To" for Itosu. With the support of Sakagami (1915-1993), he opened a number of Shitō-ryū dojo in the Osaka area, including Kansai University and the Japan Karate-dō Kai dojo. Today, the largest contingent of Shitō-ryū practitioners in Japan is centered in the Osaka area.

Among his many students were his two sons, Kenei Mabuni and Kenzo Mabuni, Chojiro Tani, Ryusho Sakagami, Yoshiaki Tsujikawa, Ken Sakio, Jun-ichi Inoue, Manzo Iwata, Toshiyuki Imanishi, Kazuo Kokuba, Tokio Hisatomi and Ryusei Tomoyori. Kenwa Mabuni died in 1952.

Forget mundane things when striving

for the martial isle—paddling is joy!

Grand Master Kenwa Mabuni