Shotokan Karate

Shotokan is the style most people picture when they hear the word karate: long, low stances, straight-line attacks driven from the hips, and a strong focus on kihon, kata and controlled kumite. It is also the style that did most to take karate from Okinawa to mainland Japan and then to the rest of the world.

Where Shotokan comes from

Shotokan’s founder, Gichin Funakoshi, was born in Shuri, Okinawa, in 1868. As a young man he trained under two of the most important teachers of the Shuri tradition, Ankō Asato and Ankō Itosu. Itosu in particular shaped the karate that Funakoshi would later teach, including the Pinan kata that became Shotokan’s Heian series.

In 1922 Funakoshi was invited by Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, to demonstrate karate at the Kodokan in Tokyo. The same year he published his first book on karate. He stayed in Japan, teaching at universities and private clubs, and spent the rest of his life establishing karate on the mainland.

During this period Funakoshi championed writing karate with the characters for “empty hand” (空手) rather than “China hand” (唐手), part of a wider effort to present karate as a Japanese martial art. His 1935 book Karate-dō Kyōhan became one of the reference texts of the style.

Where the name comes from

Funakoshi never set out to name a style. “Shōtō”, meaning “pine waves”, was the pen name he used for his poetry. His students hung a sign reading Shōtō-kan, “Shōtō’s hall”, over the entrance of the dojo they built for him in Tokyo, and the name stuck to the style as well as the building. That dojo was destroyed in the air raids on Tokyo in 1945.

Funakoshi’s son Yoshitaka (1906–1945), also known as Gigō, shaped much of how Shotokan looks today. He introduced fudō-dachi and higher kicks including mawashi-geri, yoko-geri kekomi and yoko-geri keage, performed with a much higher knee lift and a stronger use of the hips. He replaced shiko-dachi with kiba-dachi and neko-ashi-dachi with kōkutsu-dachi in the kata, taught the half-facing hanmi position when blocking, and promoted free sparring.

The JKA and the spread of Shotokan

In 1949 a group of Funakoshi’s senior students, including Masatoshi Nakayama, Isao Obata and Hidetaka Nishiyama, formed the Japan Karate Association (JKA), with Funakoshi as its chief instructor emeritus. Under Nakayama the JKA standardised the syllabus, introduced competition, and from 1956 ran an intensive instructor training programme.

Graduates of that programme were sent abroad, and they are the reason Shotokan is so widespread. In 1965 the JKA sent Taiji Kase, Hirokazu Kanazawa, Keinosuke Enoeda and Hiroshi Shirai on a tour of Europe. The Karate Union of Great Britain (KUGB) was founded in 1966, and Enoeda became its chief instructor in 1968, teaching in the UK for the rest of his life.

Splits and organisations

Shotokan has fragmented more than most styles, largely over leadership and philosophy rather than technique:

• Shotokai: senior students including Shigeru Egami followed a softer, non-competitive interpretation that they saw as closer to Funakoshi’s own teaching.
• ITKF (1974): Hidetaka Nishiyama left the JKA to form the International Traditional Karate Federation.
• SKIF (1977): Hirokazu Kanazawa became chief instructor of what became the Shotokan Karate-Do International Federation.
• 1990s: after Nakayama’s death in 1987, a long dispute split the JKA itself. A Japanese Supreme Court ruling on 10 June 1999 settled which group kept the JKA name.

Most Shotokan clubs in the UK belong to one of these lineages, and the differences you will notice between them are mainly in grading syllabuses, competition rules and emphasis rather than in the core techniques.

How Shotokan trains

A typical Shotokan class is built on three pillars:

• Kihon: basics drilled up and down the dojo, usually in deep front stance (zenkutsu-dachi) and back stance (kōkutsu-dachi).
• Kata: when the JKA was formed, Nakayama laid down 27 kata, 26 of which are practised in most organisations today. Students start with the five Heian kata and the three Tekki kata, then move on to longer forms such as Bassai Dai, Kanku Dai, Jion and Empi.
• Kumite: a structured progression from pre-arranged five-step and one-step sparring to free sparring.

The style’s signature is linear power: techniques driven straight to the target with full hip rotation and a sharp focus of force (kime) at the moment of impact. That makes Shotokan demanding on the legs and hips, and it rewards patience with basics more than almost any other style.

Is Shotokan right for you?

Shotokan suits people who like structure: a clear syllabus, a clear grading path and a lot of repetition. If you want close-range grappling, circular techniques or heavy contact, other styles cover that ground more directly. But because Shotokan is so widely taught, it is often the easiest style to find a good club for, and its emphasis on strong basics transfers well to any other karate you might train later.