剛柔流空手道 gōjūryū karatedō Goju-ryu Karate-do

Hard and soft: 剛 (read gō) is hard and unyielding, 柔 (read jū) soft and supple, and 流 (read ryū) is a school or lineage of an art. The name is Miyagi Chōjun's. The story is that in 1930 a senior pupil at a Tokyo demonstration was asked what his school was called and had no answer, and the Japanese encyclopedia dates the name to 1931; tradition says Miyagi took the pair from a line of the Bubishi, the boxing manual Okinawan karate hands down, the method is hard and soft.

An Okinawan history of 1941 already names Miyagi of the Gōjū-ryū as the authority in the prefecture. 空手道 karatedō is the way of the empty hand.

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