Okinawa Budo Kaisai

There exist numerous karate styles today such as Kyokushinkai karate, Shotokan karate, Shorei-Kan karate and so on. For the general public karate conjures up visions of hostile men breaking bricks and boards, or even necks, with bare hands. Others think of it as a sport.

Shorei-Kan karate is different. It is a budo, which literally means the way to stop fighting in Japanese. Budo is an art to train the minds and bring a man to self-understanding and eventually enlightenment through practicing fighting techniques.

Daruma Taiso

Chojun Miyagi, the founder of Gojuryu karate, created a karate warm-up exercise. Although it was made for karate people, Tamano found it a superb calisthenics and thought it would be beneficial for the public. He rearranged it to make it better suit to non-karate people and named the new version Daruma taiso, which is a trade mark of Tamano.

Daruma signifies Bodhi Dharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, in Japanese. Taiso means exercise. Tamano used the name Daruma because Gojuryu karate has its roots in health exercises that Bodhi Dharma taught.

Kobudo

Kobudo means an ancient budo. Okinawa kobudo is a very unique weapon fighting art because its weapons are not conventional ones. Most of its arms are derived from farming or fishing instruments of the islanders. The origin of bo (stick) of Okinawa kobudo was a carrying pole of the peasants. They also used sickles and flailing tool to fight. Those instruments are practiced in Okinawa kobudo as kama jutsu (sickle fighting techniques) and nunchaku jutsu (nunchaku fighting techniques). Kai jutsu (oar fighting techniques) was invented by Okinawan fisher men.