少林流空手道 shōrinryū karatedō Shorin-Ryu Karate-Do

少林 shōrin is the Japanese name of the Shaolin temple, and karate writes it three ways, 少林, 小林 and 松林, all read shōrin; this design uses 少 (read shō) meaning little and 林 (read rin) meaning grove, the temple's own characters, with 流 (read ryū), a school.

It is one of the two divisions Funakoshi Gichin wrote down in 1922, when he said the many lineages were in fact two, Shōrei for the heavily built and Shōrin for the slight and quick, and this is the spelling he gave it in 1924, two years after he had written it 昭林流. 空手道 karatedō is the way of the empty hand.

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