日本 nihon is Japan, 空手 karate, 協会 kyōkai an association: the Japan Karate Association, the body Funakoshi Gichin's students formed in Tokyo after the war. Its own Japanese chronology dates its forming to November 1948; other sources give 1947, 1949 (its English page among them) and 1955. The same chronology gives Funakoshi the title 最高師範, supreme master; other sources call him its chief instructor or its chief advisor. The Ministry of Education recognized it as an incorporated body in 1957 by its English history, in 1958 by its Japanese chronology. Its karate is the line called 松濤館流, Shōtōkan, though a note in the editor's afterword of the association's own monthly of 1956, as the Japanese Wikipedia quotes it, said that Funakoshi went by no school name and not to use the word 松濤館流.
The six characters are the association's name, which it also writes with the older form 協會.
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