Background. The four major karate styles developed in Japan, especially in Okinawa are Shotokan, Wado-ryu, Shito-ryu, and Goju-ryu; many other styles of Karate are derived from these four. The first three of these styles find their origins in the Shorin-Ryu style from Shuri, Okinawa, while Goju-ryu finds its origins in Naha.Shuri karate is rather different from Naha …

Karate (空手) (/ k ə ˈ r ɑː t i /; Japanese pronunciation: (); Okinawan pronunciation:) is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Kingdom.It developed from the indigenous Ryukyuan martial arts (called te (手), "hand"; tii in Okinawan) under the influence of Chinese martial arts, particularly Fujian White Crane. Karate is now predominantly a striking art using punching, kicking, knee ...

Internal styles (Chinese: 内家; pinyin: Nèi jiā; lit. 'internal family') focus on the practice of such elements as awareness of the spirit, mind, qi (breath, or energy flow) and the use of relaxed leverage rather than muscular tension, which soft stylists call "brute force".While the principles that distinguish internal styles from the external were described at least as early as the 18th ...

Etymology and definition. Okinawan Kobudō is a Japanese term that can be translated as "old martial way of Okinawa".It is a generic term coined in the twentieth century. Okinawan kobudō refers to the weapon systems of Okinawan martial arts.These systems can have from one to as many as a dozen weapons in their curriculum, among the kon (six foot staff), sai (three …

Isshin-Ryū (一心流, Isshin-ryū) is a style of Okinawan karate founded by Tatsuo Shimabuku (島袋 龍夫) in 1956. Isshin-Ryū karate is largely a synthesis of Shorin-ryū karate, Gojū-ryū karate, and kobudō.The name means, literally, "one heart method" (as in "wholehearted" or "complete"). In 1989 there were 336 branches of Isshin-ryū throughout the world (as recorded by the IWKA ...

Uechi-Ryū (上地流, Uechi-Ryū) is a traditional style of Okinawan karate.Uechi-Ryū means "Style of Uechi" or "School of Uechi". Originally called Pangai-noon, which translates to English as "half-hard, half-soft", the style was renamed Uechi-Ryū after the founder of the style, Kanbun Uechi, an Okinawan who went to Fuzhou in Fujian Province, China to study martial arts and Chinese ...

Shōrin-ryū (少林流) is one of the major modern Okinawan martial arts and is one of the oldest styles of karate.It was named by Choshin Chibana in 1933, but the system itself is much older. The characters 少林, meaning "sparse" or "scanty" and "forest" respectively and pronounced "shōrin" in Japanese, are also used in the Chinese and Japanese words for Shaolin.

Etymology. The origin of the word nunchaku (ヌンチャク) is not known.Another name for this weapon is "nūchiku"(ヌウチク).In the English language, nunchaku are often referred to as "nunchuks". It is a variant of a word from the Okinawan dialect, which itself may come from a Taiwanese word for a farming tool, neng-cak.. Origins

The Pinan (平安) kata are a series of five empty hand forms taught in many karate styles. The Pinan kata originated in Okinawa and were adapted by Anko Itosu from older kata such as Kusanku and Channan into forms suitable for teaching karate to young students. Pinan is the Chinese Pinyin notation of 平安; when Gichin Funakoshi brought karate to Japan, he spelt the …

Gōjū-ryū (剛柔流), Japanese for "hard-soft style", is one of the main traditional Okinawan styles of karate, featuring a combination of hard and soft techniques. Both principles, hard and soft, come from the famous martial arts book used by Okinawan masters during the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bubishi (Chinese: 武備志; pinyin: Wǔbèi Zhì). ...