Why did Funakoshi cross the sea in his fifties?

In May 1922 Gichin Funakoshi, born in Shuri in 1868 and now in his fifties, brought karate to a physical education exhibition in Tokyo, as pictures on two hanging scrolls. ^1,3 The next month he was invited to the Kodokan, the judo school of Jigoro Kano, and showed it there in person, in front of Kano and other judo experts. ^1,3 That same year he published the first book ever written on karate. ^1,3

The man watching

Kano was not a stranger to the art. In 1908 pupils from an Okinawan school had demonstrated karate at the Butokuden in Kyoto, and Kano had been in the hall. ¹ By 1922 he had built what karate lacked: a grading system of kyu and dan, first awarded in 1883, with black belts for Dan grades from 1886 and a white training uniform from 1907. ¹⁴

Funakoshi's was not the only karate Japan saw that year. In 1922 another Okinawan, Choki Motobu, beat a foreign boxer in Kyoto, and a big national magazine wrote it up; that fight, more than any demonstration, made karate widely known. ¹ Two very different men had put the art in front of the public in one year, one with a book and a demonstration, the other with a fight. ^1,3

Funakoshi stayed in Tokyo and taught at university clubs. ³ Through the 1920s and 1930s other Okinawan teachers followed him to the mainland: Kenwa Mabuni, Chojun Miyagi, Kanken Toyama and Kanbun Uechi. ¹ One of his first mainland students was Hironori Otsuka, a jujutsu teacher who trained under him from 1922 and was assisting him by 1927. ⁵

1924: the belts

In 1924 Funakoshi adopted Kano's kyu and Dan grades and the training uniform for karate. ^1,4 His belts were plain: white from 8th Kyu to 4th Kyu, brown from 3rd to 1st, black for the Dan grades. ⁴ Among the first black belts he awarded, that year, was Otsuka. ⁵

Many Shotokan schools kept that pattern and added colours, and every association since has chosen its own. ⁴ Okinawa itself took the system up much later, by one account in 1960. ¹¹

The name

Karate had a problem in its own name. The first character, kara, was the character for Tang, meaning China, so karate read as "Chinese hand". ¹ Writers had begun using a different character, pronounced the same but meaning "empty": Chomo Hanashiro in 1905, the Keio University club in 1929. ¹ Funakoshi himself renamed many Okinawan kata to make them easier to say and more acceptable in Japan at the time: Pinan became Heian, Naihanchi became Tekki, Kusanku became Kanku. ^5,13,43

On 25 October 1936 a meeting of Okinawan masters in Naha formally agreed on "empty hand". ¹ In the same period teachers added do, "way", to make karate-do, a word that says karate is meant as personal development as well as fighting. ¹ In 2005 the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly made 25 October "Karate Day". ¹ Three years before the Naha meeting, in 1933, the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai had recognised karate as a Japanese martial art, at first under its jujutsu section. ¹

Why the masters chose it, in their own words, nobody recorded. ¹

1939: the sign over the door

In 1939 Funakoshi's first official dojo, or training hall, was built in Tokyo, at Zoshigaya. ⁹⁷ His pen name was Shoto, "pine waves". His students hung a sign over the door reading Shotokan, the hall of Shoto, and the style came to be known by that name. ^1,4

Funakoshi himself never named a style. He just called it karate. ⁴

His son Yoshitaka, who lived from 1906 to 1945, is credited with much of the modern style and with the Taikyoku kata, built on the Heian Shodan floor pattern. ^4,43 Funakoshi's association, founded in 1930, took the name Dai Nippon Karate-do Shotokai in 1936. ^3,12

He wrote more books, among them Karate-do Kyohan, and 20 guiding principles, the niju kun. ³ The second is usually translated "there is no first attack in karate". ³ The Shotokan dojo kun, five lines about perfecting character, sincerity, effort, courtesy and self control, is recited at the end of class in many dojos today. ^4,34

The disagreement

Early mainland karate was almost all kata. ¹ Under pressure from judo and kendo practitioners, younger men including Otsuka and Yasuhiro Konishi developed set and free sparring in the 1930s, which became today's kumite. ¹ Funakoshi did not follow them there. He wrote that there are no contests in karate. ^1,12

After the war the occupation authorities banned many martial arts, but the notice did not name karate, so it restarted earlier than the others. ¹ Among those who came to train directly under Funakoshi after the war was Mitsusuke Harada, from 1945; in 1956 Funakoshi gave him 5th Dan, and Harada would carry Funakoshi's own line to Britain. ²⁴

In 1949 Funakoshi's senior students formed the Japan Karate Association, with Masatoshi Nakayama as chief instructor, and Nakayama formalised kumite training and set a syllabus of 26 kata. ^3,4,17 That list ran from the five Heian through Bassai, Kanku, Jion and Enpi to Unsu and Gojushiho; with Taikyoku Shodan it is 27. ⁴ Funakoshi died in 1957. ³ That year the JKA held the first All Japan Championships, and the JKA and his own Shotokai split, partly over whether karate should have contests at all. ^3,12,17

Both sides kept his karate, and both would reach Britain within a few years of each other. ^1,24 But first, the men who had followed him across the sea each built something of their own. ¹