The kanji above reads in Japanese as “en-bu-sen,” or as it’s normally pronounced as a complete word, “embusen.” (It’s just easier to pronounce “em” in the word than “en.”) Japanese karate players recognize this word as referring to the path or pattern that your steps take when you’re performing a kata. If someone was watching you do your kata from…
Both Delguidice Sensei and I came up through the karate ranks and earned our black belts learning Shotokan Karate the “traditional Japanese” way. And I actually trained for three years in Japan and earned a 2nd degree black belt through the “Kenshinkai” organization, which was definitely traditional Japanese. (For those who want to know, “kai” in this context indicates an…
This is the first in an occasional series of short posts on Gichin Funakoshi’s “twenty principles of karate,” a set of concise axioms describing the Master’s philosophy of applying one’s study of karate to one’s everyday life, and vice versa. The 20 principles were first published in 1938, when Funakoshi (“Shoto”) was 70 years old. The English translation I am…
(Guest post by Alan Gochin) Generally credited to Gichin Funakoshi (but rumored to have been created by Kanga Sakukawa, an 18th-century Okinawan karate proponent), the Shotokan Karate “dojo kun” serves as a set of five guiding principles, recited at the start/end of each training session in most Shotokan organizations. The dojo kun is intended to frame the practice within an ethical…