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According to certain recent research, the tao of Chinese kempō are said to be the archetype of karate kata. But although certain similarities may be found in the tao, karate is – technically and spiritually – totally different from Chinese kempō. This will be explained on the following pages.

As mentioned above, all Okinawan hand-fighting techniques are based on the two main styles Shuri-te and Naha-te. The Shuri-te was taught as secret knowledge among the Shuri nobility. It was perfected by Matsumura Sōkon (1800-1896), the incomparable master of the fist. His teacher was Sakugawa Shungo (1733-1815), who was known in Shuri as an outstanding martial arts expert. He had studied the Chinese kempō (tō-de) in China and passed his knowledge on to the Shuri nobility. That is how he earned the name Tōde Sakugawa. He had learned the northern Peking style which some people think to be the archetype of the Shuri-te. At the age of 20 Matsumura was sent by the Ryūkyū court to the Satsuma province in southern Kyūshū. There he learned the Jigen sword technique and reached the highest level of perfection called unyō (flame cloud). At the age of 27 he returned to the Ryūkyū islands and soon had the opportunity to travel on board of a tribute ship to China. So he could study Chinese kempō in Peking.

In the Jigen ryū there are no upper, middle and lower positions of the sword but only one position called hassō. The sword is raised as if to thrust into the sky. Then, with a bloodcurdling kiai36, one makes a step forward or lowers the stance, crashing the tachi sword down.

The philosophy of the Jigen sword technique demands full control of the oncoming situation and the readiness to win with the first strike. Kondō Isamu, member of the Shinsen gumi37, remembered that there was nothing they were more afraid of than this first strike by the Satsuma men using the Jigen sword technique and that they were repeatedly instructed to evade it. During the war to overthrow the Tokugawa government in 1868 as well as during the samurai rebellion against the new Meiji government in 1877, the Satsuma samurai were feared because of their first strike technique that intimidated their enemies whose corpses were often found cut open by a “sash strike” from the shoulder to the navel. Some even had the guard of their own sword stuck between the eyebrows. They had tried to stop the Satsuma sword by raising their own sword above their heads. But they had underestimated the speed of attack by far so that the defending sword was smashed into the defender’s skull.

The Jigen sword technique was aiming at the highest speed of impact. The highest level of perfection was called flame cloud. This is described in the Manual of Jigen Style Military Techniques as follows: “One eighth of a minute is a byō. A tenth of a byō is called shi. A tenth of a shi is a kotsu. A tenth of a kotsu is a kō. A tenth of a kō is called rin. When one has reached rin this level is called ‘Cloud of Flames’ (unyō).”

The masters of the Jigen style were said to be able to cut raindrops falling from the roof three times before they hit the ground. To train the mental concentration necessary to carry out such ultra high-speed strikes, a special training method was used called “hitting a standing tree” (tachi ki uchi). Partner exercises were not part of the training. Instead, a branch of a Yusu tree was cut and used as a wooden sword to hit a wooden block diagonally from left to right with a loud kiai. “Hitting a standing tree” became the incentive for master Matsumura to invent the training method “hitting the punching board” (makiwara zuki), which is still widely used in traditional karate. As mentioned above, master Itosu, who had been taught by master Matsumura, practiced this on a regular basis38

Master Nakayama Hiromichi (1869-1958), who was called the “Musashi of the Shōwa period” or the “Last of the Sword Saints”, wrote the following words: “Karate turns the empty hand into a sword. This is not a mere metaphor. The karate fist is definitely a sword.”

In historical plays or movies one can often see the opponents hitting each other fiercely and endlessly. Japanese call this chanbara.39In reality this is only possible if the opponents are wearing head and body protectors like in kendō, hitting each other several times while always keeping the right distance. In case of a real fight, the moment when the sword is drawn is decisive for victory or defeat. The first strike will decide whether one will die or live on. There is no second chance. Even if the first strike does not contain the energy of a Jigen strike, it will be deadly.

The fact that master Matsumura perfectly mastered the Jigen sword technique, the favorite style of the Satsuma samurai, has decisively marked the development of the Shuri-te. These samurai who occupied Okinawa since 1609 were the enemies each native Okinawan had in mind while practicing the hand fighting techniques. There is no doubt that it was master Matsumura who shaped karate according to the basic principle to kill the enemy with the first punch or kick.

The masters of Shuri-te took up the idea of a “deadly first strike”. But there is no such idea in Chinese kempō where the ruling principle is called “searching for the hands and legs” (tanshu tantai), that is first testing the technical abilities of the opponent and studying each other. The opponents begin from higher positions (kamae), reduce the distance step by step and finally adopt lower kamae. After each clash the opponents retreat. Then they approach and fight again so that in this way a rather spectacular and dramatic action develops. But this is only possible because in Chinese kempō the empty hand is not a sword.

On the opposite, karate is a martial art developed to defend oneself against an enemy who could be assumed of being educated in the Jigen style and able to carry out the first strike on the “cloud-of-flames” level. It was a question of survival to correctly evaluate the first strike of the swordsman and at the same time to instantly perform the deadly strike. So it can be said that master Matsumura and master Itosu perfected the Shuri-te under the influence of the Japanese sword techniques, in particular that of the Jigen style.