Wadoryu means literally ‘style of the way of peace’. This name implies that karate is not meant to teach people how to fight, but how to be peaceful. Like Zen, one learns to control the mind through a physical act. Karate’s origin is the act of being brought ‘back’ to the Zen principle of ‘natural state’ or the ‘pure mind’. As soon as this state is attained by meditation and self-control, one is free from any obstruction caused by fear to – for example – suffer from pain or to become exhausted. Wadoryu karate is a unique form of karate which was developed by professor Hironori Ohtsuka.
This extremely gifted budoka was born in 1892 in Ibaragi near Tokyo. He studied Yoshinryu jujutsu in which he reached the level of Menkyo Kaiden in 1929. In 1922 he was present in the dojo of Kano sensei of judo at a demonstration of karate by Funakoshi sensei. Ohtsuka sensei immediately realized the kind of enrichment this method could be to the jujutsu that he had learned. Ohtsuka sensei started studying with funakoshi sensei.
Due to Ohtsuka sensei’s koryu jujutsu background, he found that several techniques were not realistic and he wanted to visit Okinawa to study this more extensively. However, it was that time that an opportunity raised to see an Okinawa karate demonstration during a budo gala in the imperial palace. Both Ohtsuka sensei and funakoshi sensei wanted to show applications of karate techniques so they created several kumite gata according to the training model of jujutsu. The demonstration, were they demonstrated kata involving sword attacks, became a huge success.
Interests in karate where raised and Ohtsuka sensei teached next to funakoshi sensei for a while. Due to his jujutsu experience and being used to that kind of model in training, Ohtsuka sensei wanted to introduce free fighting next to basics and kata. In jujutsu, kata was always the step to randori and other free works. Ohtsuka sensei’s prism differed too much from the traditional karate that funakoshi sensei wanted to preserve, inevitably they split.
Ohtsuka sensei continued to develop his karate and jujutsu and opened his own dojo the ‘dai nihon karate do shinko club’ in Tokyo in 1934. It took till 1938 before quitting his job and focusing completely on teaching and developing his karate. At this point, his school was named ‘shinshu Wadoryu karate jutsu’ and the school was presented under this name at a festival for the purpose of the promotion of Japanese martial arts in 1938. After the festival Ohtsuka sensei was advised by Kubo Gisaburo sensei (the successor of yagyu shinkageryu in tosa clan) that either ‘shinshu’ or ‘wa’ stood for ‘japan’ so Ohtsuka sensei dropped ‘shinshu’. The name was therefore changed to simply ‘Wadoryu’ and is has not been changed since then. In 1939, Ohtsuka’s style was presented at the same festival, this time under the name of ‘Wadoryu’.
It would take till after the war until karate spread worldwide. At that time, most instruction was at the universities in japan. In the early fifties the first tournaments where organized. There was not really any means of control resulting in hard fighting with the notable injuries. This ultimately lead to rules that have changed into the present day competition karate that is practiced worldwide.
The first panel of Wadoryu instructors teaching overseas were Suzuki, Takashima and Arakawa. Later on, Kono, Shiomitsu, Ishikawa, Iwasaki, Sugasawa, Sakagami, Ajari and others travelled worldwide to spread Wadoryu karate.
HISTORY 歴史
