Anything dealing with history of budo, karate, Shotokan karate, Shuto Karate, or our members’ experiences.
Martial artists often debate the question, “Which is the best martial art?” Of course, the question needs to be fleshed out a bit: best for what? Usually this means, which is the best for self-defense? I don’t really know the answer to this, or even whether there IS an answer, because so much depends on who the teacher is, their…
Shotokan Karate has lost two of its 10th-dan masters in the last 5 months. Both were 88 years old. Kanazawa Hirokazu died in Japan on December 8. And this past Tuesday (April 21), Okazaki Teruyuki also passed away. I had the pleasure of taking a class from Kanazawa Sensei at a Martial Arts weekend seminar at the International Budo University…
Jesse Enkamp, the so-called “Karate Nerd” over in Sweden, has posted a video about “the three kinds of karate.” Enkamp gives a concise and accurate description of the evolution of karate’s purposes from its Okinawan roots to its first appearance as an Olympic sport next summer in Tokyo. The three types, corresponding roughly to late-18th and 19th centuries, early-mid 20th…
I only met the founder of Shuto Karate Club, Louis Rabouin (pictured above at center), once, about a year before he passed away in 2011. We had a class in our club’s headquarters dojo in Skippack (at the time there was only Skippack and Hatfield) and Rabouin Shihan sat in a chair and watched. I remember him sternly correcting my…
