In the middle of the year, Senpai Vivian from Auckland Seido Karate Morningside, one of this country’s most committed and capable Rainbow allies and a good friend, organised a beginner’s class for rainbow identifying and rainbow allied people who wanted to give this karate thing a go.
We started our karate journey at Morningside and still have many great friends who train at that dojo, so my family and I was keen to support Senpai Viv’s fabulous initiative. We asked our teacher if it was OK and his support, never at all in doubt, was immediate.
So, we signed up.
I was a bit anxious because I’m a bit of an anxious person, but everything went stunningly well. The class of about 35 was largely taken by Senpai Jack who is a real beast of a man (in karate terms) and his session was a great mix of fun and hard work with plenty of Seido history and excellent Seido technique thrown in. He demonstrated a Seido black belt kata that was seriously impressive. I loved it and even managed to do a bit myself.
Seido Juku (the place if the sincere way) is a very different style from Gōjū-ryū (go = hard, ju = soft), the style we now train in.
At its simplest, Seido is a long stance style, Gōjū-ryū is short stance.
Seido has its lineage on mainland Japan whereas Gōjū-ryū was created in the Okinawa prefecture.
Seido Karate was founded by Kaicho Tadashi Nakamura in 1976 in New York after he ‘respectfully withdrew’ from Kyokushinkai which had in turn been founded by Nakamura’s teacher, Korean master Masutatsu Oyama Soke.
Back in 1953, Oyama Soke taught traditional Gōjū-ryū in a dojo at Rikkyu University in Tokyo before further developing his own style that he called Kyokushin. Kyokushin differed from other styles at the time in that is encouraged full contact.
Our wonderful teacher, Hanshi Dennis May, began his own journey training in Kyokushin.
In December 1959, Oyama Soke added the first black belt to the official promotion register of the newly formed Kyokushin Kaikan and in April 1964 he established the ‘International Karate Organisation Kyokushin Kaikan’ at his new, purpose-built headquarters dojo in Toshima, Tokyo.
I’m always fascinated when things come full circle.
Gōjū-ryū is a much older style whose lineage goes back to Higaonna Kanryō who first trained in the martial arts in 1867 under Kojo Taitei in Beijing and later in Fuzhou where he studied Chinese martial arts under various teachers.
In 1877 he began to study under White Crane Kung Fu master Ryū Ryū Ko (1793 – 1882) where he founded Whooping Crane Gōngfu.
Higaonna returned to Okinawa in 1882 and began teaching a new school of martial arts where he melded gō-no (hard) and jū-no (soft) kenpō into one system. Higaonna’s style was known as Naha-te but politics intervened and anything with a link to China was banned until 1905 when karate was again openly taught in Okinawan schools. Until then, Kanryō Higaonna kept Naha-te alive by giving students private lessons at his home.
Now we get to the guts of the lineage.
Higaonna Kanryo’s most prominent student was Chōjun Miyagi who began training under Higaonna at the age of 14. Miyagi trained under Higaonna for 15 years until Higaonna’s death in 1916.
In 1915 Miyagi went to Fuzhou in search of Higaonna’s teacher who had sadly died, He studied, while there, under several masters, but the old school was gone due to the Boxer Rebellion.
Higaonna died shortly after Miyagi’s return.
In 1917, Miyagi once again went to Fuzhou for a short visit and, after he returned, many of Higaonna’s students continued to train with him. It was around 1918 that he introduced a kata called Tensho, which he had adapted from Rokkishu of Fujian White Crane Gōngfu.
The links between Gōjū-ryū Karate and Fujian White Crane Gōngfu are significant.
Miyagi took the name Gōjū-ryū from a line of the poem ‘Hakku Kenpo’, which roughly
means: ‘the eight laws of the fist’ and describes the eight precepts of the martial arts. This poem was part of the ‘Bubishi’, a book of Chinese military history compiled in 1621, and reads, ‘Ho wa Gōjū wa Donto su’ (‘everything in the universe inhales soft and exhales hard.)
After Miyagi’s death, the family made clear that the founder of the style wanted Ei’ichi Miyazato to succeed him. The Gōjū-ryū committee, formed by major students of Miyagi at a meeting in February 1954, voted almost unanimously for Ei’ichi Miyazato to be the official successor to Chojun Miyagi.
Miyagi believed that ‘the ultimate aim of karate-do was to build character, conquer human misery, and find spiritual freedom’. He stated that it was important to balance training for self-defence with ‘training the mind or cultivating the precept ‘karate-do ni sente nashi’ (‘there is no first strike in karate’). He also emphasized the importance of ‘cultivating intellect before strength’.
So, if you’re still with me and even vaguely interested, this lineage is important to us as it is our whakapapa. Everything tracks back to Higaonna Kanryō and forward to us through our revered teacher Hanshi Dennis May MNZM, 9th dan, whose teacher was none other than Ei’ichi Miyazato Shihan which, selfishly, links us all right back to the earliest days of our style.
It was also great to train for the first time at the Seido rainbow class with my friend Mandy who I’ve known for some years. She’s an absolute darling and a damn good martial artist too.
Big thanks to Senpai Viv for coming up with this great idea and the absolutely magical welcome. It was really nice to go back and to revisit good memories. I relived great kata classes with Sensei Fiona, sweating with Jun Shihan Patrick, being seriously tested by Jun Shihan Scott, loving the exacting and delicious work of Jun Shihan Nhi, and the fun Sunday classes with Senpai Kirk and Saturdays with Sensei Mark. Most of all I cherished the teaching and friendship of Jun Sei Ryu Sei Shihan Clive, our first teacher.
And a great big thanks to Senpai Jack and his team for all their sterling work with the rainbow class.
More please.
dykiegirl 