The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques [Hardcover]

A full exposition of the original form of karate, as developed by the Okinawan masters, is contained in this text. The fundamental and advanced moves are explained and illustrated and a guide to the undiluted and uncompromised character of this unique form is presented.

Kiyoshi Arakaki was born in 1954 in Okinawa, Japan, the "birthplace of karate." Surrounded by highly skilled martial artists, including his father and uncle, he began his training very early. By the age of 13, he was a serious pupil of karate. He studied under a number of great masters, including Shoshin Nagamine, a 10th-degree black belt and founder of Matsubayashi Shorin-ryu. While learning his art, Arakaki visited a number of old masters in Okinawa to learn their karate secrets. He is now a 7th-degree black belt and a member of the World Karate Hall of Fame.

He came to the United States in 1977 and opened his own dojo in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1982. He combined bare-knuckle full-contact fighting methods with Koshiki fighting techniques to create his own style, Muso-Kai Karate. He has also trained and competed in Muay-Thai kickboxing in Thailand.

He is currently Founder and President of Okinawa Karate-Do Muso-Kai and American Koshiki Karate Organization. He has written a history of karate for a Japanese monthly karate magazine and has also authored numerous best-selling books on the subject. This is his first book on karate in English.

Preface

In traditional Okinawan karate, kata (form) and kumite (fighting) were not divided. They were taught together as one art. Today karate is practiced differently. When one sees a karate tournament or visits a karate dojo (school), one invariably observes kata and kumite being taught separately, as if they were unrelated to each other and had little or no connection. Kata is seen as something to learn only in order to advance to a higher rank or to show off one's style in the dojo and expertise in tournaments. Practitioners and audience alike appreciate only its outside beauty and forget that it is part of a greater whole. Kata study today places the main emphasis on how to make the kata more appealing to outside observers, often discarding or forgetting its inner nature. Karateka (students of karate) are often more interested in the sport and exercise aspects of karate than in the mastery of karate as a science. For karate schools to survive as businesses, it has gradually become necessary to establish karate in the world of sports or for enbu (performance). Over time less and less emphasis has been placed on the scientific aspects of this martial art.

Karate was developed as a weaponless method of self-defense. In the eighteenth century, the invention of machinery created new jobs as well as newer and more efficient methods of accomplishing the old jobs. This new physical climate treated the human body as a tool, and the perfected body movements of karate began to be replaced. The martial arts as practiced today have been greatly influenced by Western ideas and are considered by many to be more of a sport. This emphasis has led away from an understanding of the physical culture from which it developed. Centuries ago, the ancient martial arts masters attained the perfect fusion of physical dexterity and insight into the laws of the universe. Kata nowadays is viewed as something unnecessary for kumite, and vice versa; thus the split between their integration has widened. The modernized kata and basic movements do not work in sparring competition or in fighting. Karate practitioners, who want to be strong and do well in fighting, see no connection between kata and kumite. We have forgotten that during that ancient culture of ideal physical development, kata and basics were the main emphasis in martial arts.

In this book I will explain the essence of Okinawan karate and the purpose and necessity of kata study. I will also explore tsuki (punching) through Naifanchi, the ultimate kata of Shuri-te and Tomari-te. I will examine the Okinawan martial art's culture of physical perfection, of which all karateka are proud.

Readers and students of karate will find in this book a perspective on karate completely different from any they have ever seen or practiced before. These observations have evolved over more than thirty years of my personal experience: being taught Okinawan karate by masters in Okinawa, fighting in full-contact karate matches, fighting Muay-Thai in Thailand, and teaching at Muso-Kai dojo. I hope that the reader will find this book rewarding and enlightening.

Kiyoshi Arakaki