一心isshin is one heart: Japanese dictionaries give it both as a mind set wholly on one thing and as many hearts joined as one. 流ryū is a school. Shimabukuro Tatsuo 島袋龍夫, who had trained under Kyan Chōtoku and Miyagi Chōjun, taught karate on Okinawa in the first years after the war, and in 1956 combined what he held best in his two teachers' styles and gave it this name. A pupil's account puts the naming on 15 January of that year and has him explain it as all things begin with one. American servicemen trained at his dōjō, and from the late 1950s he taught the American forces on Okinawa under contract; an English survey, in its 1999 edition, gives about 336 branches, most of them in the United States. 空手道karatedō, the way of the empty hand, follows it as in the name of his association, 一心流空手道協会.
We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 一心流空手道.
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