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THE
TIGER AND THE NAME
A poet's
pen name
The names given to
the various styles of martial arts found around the world
are as varied as the people who created them.
Each culture places
it's own particular imprint on what is created within
it's borders, and the art of Shotokan Karate is no
different.
Founded by an
Okinawan school teacher named Gichin Funakoshi, Shotokan
Karate-Do, as his style is known today, officially took
it's first breath in Tokyo Japan. For it was here that
Sensei Funakoshi opened his first dojo in Zoshigaya,
Toshima Ward, in the Spring of 1936.
The name Shotokan,
however, came about as a result of events that took place
in Sensei Funakoshi's youth.
As a young man he
would often walk into the hills and the pine forests
surrounding his Okinawan home town of Shuri, where as he
says, "he would often listen to the sound of the
rustle of the pines when the wind blew". In his book
'Karate-do, My Way of Life" he says, "to me the
murmur was a kind of celestial music.
As a result of his
love for these forests he decided to adopt a "pen
name" with which to sign all of his calligraphy and
poems. Master Funakoshi therefore got into the habit of
signing all his works with the name "Shoto". In
Japanese "Sho" literally translates into "pine"
and the word ""to" translates into "waving"
hence, "Shoto" means "waving pines".
The word "kan"
on the other hand means "hall or building", and
so when his students were asked where they went to study
karate they would say, " to "Shoto's kan"
or the "hall of the waving pines" and so over
time the name "Shotokan" became associated with
Sensei Gichin Funakoshi and his particular style of
karate.
Today the name
Shotokan is recognized world wide and is the only style
of karate in Japan that is sponsored by the Ministry of
Education.
Along with the name
Shotokan, Sensei Funakoshi's style of karate is also
identified by it's symbol, that of a Tiger surrounded by
a circle. This design came about as the result of Sensei
Funakoshi's meeting with the painter Hoan Kosugi in Tokyo
shortly after his arrival. In fact it was Hoan Kosugi who
encouraged him to write a reference book on the subject
of karate-do. This ultimately led to his first book
"Ryukyu Kempo" being published by Bukyosha, in
1922.
The tiger symbol
was then drawn for Sensei Funakoshi's book by Hoan Kosugi.
The irregular appearance of the circle it's self suggests
that it was drawn free hand and with one continuous
stroke of his brush. The kanji found in the upper right
hand corner is Hoan Kosugi's own name.
Why the Tiger was
selected is not entirely clear and while there are
several theories, all are speculation as far as I can
tell, and as such I will not elaborate on them here.
Suffice to say that
without either the name Shoto-Kan, or the symbol of the
Tiger, our art would in many ways be greatly diminished.
- Remember
- What
master Gichin Funakoshi said,
- "The
great virtues of karate are prudence and humility"
-
- Part
the clouds - see the way.
-
- "The
objective of karate-do is to contribute to the evolution
- of
the human spirit through physical and mental training."
- Sensei
Peter Lindsay
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