Goju Ryu

From Karate, Kungfu, Wrestling, Mixed Fighting Information Source

The article is incomplete or needs improvement

This article covers an essential topic and is in need of expansion by contributing to Wikimartialarts.
Please follow the guidelines in the Manual of Style and complete this article to the highest level of quality before continuing on smaller articles.

Goju-ryu Emblem

Goju Ryu ( 剛柔流 gōjū ryū) (Japanese for "hard-soft style") is a style of Karate, so called as it allows a combination of hard and soft techniques. It is commonly believed that the concept of combining the two extremes originated in a Chinese martial arts doctrine known as wu pei chih. Goju Ryu combines hard striking attacks like kicks and punches with softer circular techniques for blocking and controlling the opponent. Goju Ryu's specialty is in-fighting or close-quarters combat. Major emphasis is given to breathing correctly.

[edit]

History

The development of Goju Ryu goes back to Kanryo Higashionna, (1850-1915), a native of Naha, Okinawa. As a teenager he trained with an Okinawan master named Aragaki Seisho, before moving to Fujian Province, China, to study Kung Fu.

Higashionna returned to Okinawa during the middle of the Meiji Era (1868-1911) and continued in the family business of selling firewood, while teaching a new school of martial arts, distinguished by its integration of go-no (hard) and ju-no (soft) kempo into one system. The word Karate was not in common use at that time, and Higashionna's style was known as Naha-te. It is accepted that Chinese Nanpa Shorin-ken was the strain of Kung Fu that influenced this style. As such, this style and that of Uechi Ryu were built upon a similar foundation.

Higashionna's most prominent student was Miyagi Chojun (1888-1953) who began training under Higashionna at the age of 12. After Higashionna's death Miyagi sailed to China and studied there for several years, returning to Naha in 1918. Many of Higashionna's students continued to train with him, including Higa Seiko (1898-1966.)

The naming of Goju Ryu came about more by accident than design. In 1930, numerous martial arts masters asked Chojun Miyagi’s top student, Jin’an Shinzato, what school of martial arts he practiced. As Naha-Te had no formal name he came up with the impromptu name Hanko Ryu (Half-Hard Style). On his return to Okinawa he reported this incident to Chojun Miyagi. After much consideration Chojun Miyagi decided on the name Goju Ryu (hard and soft school) as a name for his style. This name he took from a line in the Bubishi (a classical Chinese text on martial arts and other subjects). This line, which appears in a poem, the Hakku Kenpo (roughly, "The eight laws of the fist"), describing the eight precepts of the martial arts, reads Ho wa Goju wa Donto su, which can mean either 'the way of inhaling and exhaling is hardness and softness,' or 'everything in the universe inhales soft and exhales hard.'

[edit]