Prior to Ankho Itosu and his introduction of Karate into the Okinawan school system, Tiy, or with acknowledged Chinese influence, Tudiy, was a fairly private affair. The forms taught seem to have some kind of standard roots, but which were then varied by individual practitioners and their families / friends / students over time.
At the time that the newly named Karate went public, there were three regional "groupings" identified, around which various styles were said to be based "Shuri-Te", "Naha-Te" and "Tomari-Te". The latter seems to have been more an acknowledgement of the influence on trade of Karate, rather than a specific group of styles, as Tomari was the main port of Okinawa. Okinawa has a rich history of trade (legal and otherwise) in the Asia-Pacific bowl, and many of the influences of what ended up as Karate, would have centred around that port.
Okinawa served as a gateway for trade to China for many hundreds of years, so influences on Karate would have been possible from any of the trading partners; China, Siam, Japan, India, Indonesia, etc. Which probably explains why similar moves can be found in Karate to the native styles of the other Countries. However, the blend that became Karate, was mostly an Okinawan distillation of internal and external influences.
So when Karate emerged into the daylight, the key styles of Shuri-Te and Naha-Te were Shorin-Ryu and Goju-Ryu. The purer forms of Shuri-Te consisted of blended Okinawan Kata, whilst Naha-Te were heavily Chinese influenced, as the base Kata of Goju-Ryu is Sanchin. This is directly descended from the Fujian White Crane style of Martial Arts (Quan Fa / Kung Fu). KishimotoDe is a style of Shuri-Te Karate that pre-dates Ankosu Itosu, and includes Naihanchi, Passai and Kuskansu as base kata, so it is safe to say that these are original Okinawan blends.
Anko Itosu seems to have introduced the Pinan family of Kata, plus Naihanchi Nidan and Sandan into the base Shorin-Ryu kata list, which was the main family of styles of Shuri-Te Karate. This was a part of the introduction of Karate into the Okinawan education system in the early 1900s. Motobu Choki identifies other truly Okinawan blended Kata as Chintoh, Chintei, Wanshuh and Roh-hai.
The potential benefits of Karate for school education and possible military indoctrination were recognised by the Japanese, and in the 1930s, Karate was introduced to the Japanese mainland. Gishin Funakoshi, a student of Anko Azato, was successful in introducing a watered down version of Shorin Ryu, including a large part of Itoh Ankosu's syllabus, into Japan as Shotokan. A lot of the individual Kumite strikes were removed for safety, and so Karate essentially lost a lot of it's teeth at this translation. Goju Ryu managed to be exported "as was", but wasn't as popular as Shotokan in Japan. Motobu Choki was invited to demonstrate his version of Okinawan Kenpo (his preferred term rather than Shuri-Te or Tomari-Te), but his emphasis on Kumite wasn't what they wanted (broken bones and individuality wasn't what they were after).
Shotokan also made it to the US prior to WW2, Hawaii anyway That, coupled to the respect that the Americans developed for the fighting skills of the Japanese, I believe led to the massive popularity of Shotokan Karate in the Western world after WW2. From this developed the world of Sports Karate, which will feature in the next Olympic games in Japan. There is room in the Karate world for all forms of our shared love, but all the branches need to acknowledge the differences of their roots.
From a personal point of view if time travel were possible, it would be interesting to see what a modern sports Karateka and Motobu Choki would make of one another ☺
I am beholden to Noah Legel for the inspiration for this blog. 🙏🙏🙏
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