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Home › Library › Philology › Goju-ryu Karate-do

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

剛柔流空手道 (gōjūryū karatedō), Gōjū-ryū karate-dō, is the name of the karate of Miyagi Chōjun 宮城長順's line, and in 1934 Mabuni Kenwa 摩文仁賢和, later the founder of 糸東流, advertised himself as its master.

剛柔流空手道 · gōjūryū karatedō · karate-dō of the hard-and-soft school

Abstract

剛柔流空手道 names the karate of Miyagi Chōjun 宮城長順's line: 剛柔, hard and soft, and 流, a school. The Japanese encyclopedia dates the name to 1931 and a manuscript of that year, and tells, marking it as needing a source, that he took the words from a line of an Okinawan boxing manual, 法剛柔呑吐, the method is hard and soft, swallowing and spitting. In print, 剛柔流 stands in 1934 in the advertisements of Mabuni Kenwa 摩文仁賢和's books, where he calls himself its master, and in 1941 in an Okinawan history that names Miyagi its authority.

Overview

The sense. A proper name, the name of a style of karate. The 世界大百科事典's article on karate mentions it and names Miyagi as its founder [1].

The words. 剛 gō, hard, unbending, and 柔 jū, soft, yielding, a pair of opposites; 流 ryū is a current, and in the arts a school, a line of teaching handed down. 空手道, karatedō, is 空手, karate, and 道, a way. The Okinawan art was written 唐手, Tang hand, and already read karate; the preface to Funakoshi Gichin 船越義珍's first book, of 1922, writes 空手術, the art of the empty hand [2]; the spelling spread in Tokyo from about 1929, when the karate club at Keiō University, with Funakoshi as its teacher, took 空 in the sense of the Heart Sutra's emptiness [3]; and a roundtable held by an Okinawan newspaper in 1936 proposed that the name be unified as 空手 [4]. As an ordinary word, 空手 is empty-handed, cited from sermons of 1586–99 [5].

The text in English. The name is in English print as a sound, Goju-ryu, by 1963 [6], and in the books of Miyagi's pupils, among them Toguchi Seikichi's of 1976 [7]. The modified Hepburn is gōjūryū karatedō.

The historical record

1922, Funakoshi, 『唐手 琉球拳法』. The first book on the art, published in Tokyo by the Okinawan teacher who then wrote his name 富名腰義珍, closes its chapter What is karate with a section headed 二 流儀, the schools [8]:

後世師範者の名に依つて種々の流儀に別れてはゐるが、其實昭靈流と昭林流の二派に過ぎないのである。昭靈流は體質肥滿骨格偉大なる者に適し、昭林流は之に反し、骨格倭小體力貧弱にして楊柳の如く瘠… Later generations divided it into various schools under the names of their masters, but in fact it is no more than two: the Shōrei school and the Shōrin school. Shōrei suits the heavy-set and large-boned; Shōrin the opposite, the small-boned and slight, willow-thin…

The Japanese Wikipedia gives the two-school account as Itosu Ankō 糸洲安恒's, reads 昭霊流 as the Naha line and 昭林流 as the Shuri line, and adds that neither school is known in China [3]. Its list of the oldest school names begins not with a style of the 1930s but with Motobu Chōki 本部朝基's 日本傳流兵法本部拳法, named in the Taishō era [3].

1930, the demonstration. The Japanese Wikipedia tells that Miyagi's senior pupil Shinzato Jin'an 新里仁安, asked at a demonstration at the Meiji Shrine in November 1930 what his school was called, could not answer, and that Miyagi, hearing of it, named his school from the line 法剛柔呑吐, the method is hard and soft, swallowing and spitting, in the 拳之大要八句, the eight maxims of the fist; it marks the story as needing a source, and notes that in the demonstration's program the column for Shinzato's school is blank [9][10]. The 日本大百科全書 tells the same story, with the maxims as 拳法八句, and calls the result 日本空手界初の流派「剛柔流(ごうじゅうりゅう)」, Gōjū-ryū, the first school of Japanese karate [5].

1931, the manuscript. The Japanese Wikipedia dates the name to 1931, when Miyagi wrote a work titled 『剛柔流拳法』, of which a draft copy survives at the Okinawa Prefectural Karate Museum; its life of him calls it the first document to carry the name [9][10].

1934, the name in a rival's advertisements. Mabuni, later the founder of 糸東流, published three books in 1934, and their advertisements style him 日本拳法 空手術教授 剛柔流 拳法師範, professor of karate-jutsu, master of the Gōjū-ryū fist method [11][12]. Both men had learned the Naha line from Higaonna Kanryō 東恩納寛量 [13].

1941, the Okinawan history. Shimabukuro Gen'ichirō 島袋源一郎's 『琉球百話』, in a chapter on the origin of karate, names Miyagi as the authority of the Gōjū-ryū in the prefecture [14]:

空手も首里流と那覇流とは、多少趣きが違つてゐたといはれてゐるが、此の東恩納先生の高弟が今本縣に於ける權威者たる剛柔流の宮城長順氏であり糸洲先生の流を承けた人々も首里に多い。 Karate too, it is said, differed somewhat between the Shuri and Naha schools; the senior pupil of this Master Higaonna is Mr. Miyagi Chōjun of the Gōjū-ryū, the authority in this prefecture today, and those who received Master Itosu's school are many in Shuri.

Of the 16 books in which the National Diet Library's full-text search finds 剛柔流, dated 1526 to 1941, this is the one that uses it of karate; the others are a Ming commentary on the Book of Changes and a cosmology of three elements, 剛, 柔 and 流, hard, soft and fluid, found in two Meiji treatises on beriberi, the collected works of Soejima Taneomi 副島種臣, a Shintō text of 1920 and the writings of the Ōmoto religion [15].

1964, one of four. When the All Japan Karatedo Federation was formed in 1964, 剛柔流 was one of the four great styles of the mainland whose bodies made it up, with 松濤館流, 糸東流 and 和道流 [3]. The Japanese Wikipedia counts it also among the three great styles of Okinawa, with 上地流 and 小林流 [16].

What is not a source. The 拳之大要八句 are a passage of the Okinawan manual 武備志, a copy of which Mabuni reproduced in his book of 1934 [11][17]; it is not the Ming military encyclopedia of the same name. That Miyagi took his school's name from it is the tradition's account, which the Japanese Wikipedia marks as needing a source [9].

The name in English

1976, Toguchi Seikichi. Toguchi, a pupil of Miyagi, tells the naming in English, with the pupil's improvised answer: Mr. Shinsato groped for an impromptu name and dubbed his style, hanko-ryu (half-hard style). When Mr. Shinsato returned to Master Miyagi, he told him of the hastily chosen name. The master, finding it quite reasonable, quoted from the Chinese Eight Poems of the Fists … and so Naha-te formally took the name of Goju-Ryu [7]. The Japanese telling gives no half-hard name, and the program it cites leaves the school blank [10].

Today. The name is written in English Goju-ryu. A rendering should keep 流 as -ryū, the school's own spelling of its name, and keep the name a name. Hard-soft school is what it says.

A reading

The name is a pair of opposites and a school, and every witness agrees on the words. The date is where they part. The encyclopedia's 1931 rests on a manuscript known from a draft copy, which I have not seen; the 1930 story rests on a program whose column is blank, which tells against an answer on that day rather than for one; and the first 剛柔流 I can put a date and a page to is in the advertisements of Mabuni's books of 1934, where a man who would later found his own school calls himself its master. That is the name in use, three years after the encyclopedia's date, by a teacher who shared Miyagi's teacher. The 武備志 line explains the words well and is the tradition's; I read it as the likeliest source of a name made from a manual both men knew, and I mark it as a reading, not a finding.

Sources not seen

『明治神宮鎮座十年祭 奉納武道形大會要覧』, 1930, the program the Japanese Wikipedia cites for Shinzato's blank school. It would settle what the program recorded.

宮城長順『剛柔流拳法』, 1931, a draft copy of which the Japanese Wikipedia places at the Okinawa Prefectural Karate Museum (沖縄県空手博物館). It would settle whether the name stands in the manuscript and in what words.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 「剛柔流」, 世界大百科事典, in the article 空手, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/剛柔流-1313948
  2. 富名腰義珍『唐手 琉球拳法』, 武侠社, 1922, the preface by 漢那憲和, scan 13. National Diet Library pid 971654. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/971654/1/13
  3. 「空手道」, the Japanese Wikipedia, § 歴史 and § 空手の表記. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/空手道
  4. 嘉手苅徹「空手の名称の変遷 ―②「唐手(からて)」から「空手道」への変容―」, 武道学研究 44 Supplement, 2011, p. S22. https://doi.org/10.11214/budo.44.s_22
  5. 「空手」, 日本大百科全書 and 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/空手-47195
  6. Edmund K. Parker, Secrets of Chinese Karate, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1963, p. 55, read in the Internet Archive's full-text index. https://archive.org/details/secretsofchinese00park
  7. Seikichi Toguchi, Okinawan Goju-Ryu: Fundamentals of Shorei-Kan Karate, Ohara Publications, Burbank, 1976, "The Origin of Goju-Ryu". https://archive.org/details/okinawan-goju-ryu-fundamentals-of-shorei-kan-karate
  8. 富名腰義珍『唐手 琉球拳法』, 武侠社, 1922, 唐手とは何ぞや, § 二 流儀, pp. 4–5, scan 30. National Diet Library pid 971654. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/971654/1/30
  9. 「剛柔流」, the Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/剛柔流
  10. 「宮城長順」, the Japanese Wikipedia, with its reference to 『明治神宮鎮座十年祭 奉納武道形大會要覧』 (1930). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/宮城長順
  11. 摩文仁賢和『攻防自在 空手拳法 十八の研究』 (空手研究叢書 第二篇), 空手研究社 興武館, Tokyo, 1934, a facsimile: the preface, p. 11; the contents, pp. 16–17; chapter 1, p. 19; the colophon and the advertisements at the end. Internet Archive MabuniSeipaiStudy1934. https://archive.org/details/MabuniSeipaiStudy1934
  12. 「摩文仁賢和」, the Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/摩文仁賢和
  13. Andreas Quast, essay on the manuscripts, § Mabuni Kenwa (A), in Patrick McCarthy, Bubishi: The Classic Manual of Combat, revised and expanded edition, Tuttle, Rutland, Vermont, 2016.
  14. 島袋源一郎『琉球百話』, 沖縄書籍, 1941, 五三 空手道の起原と其の沿革, pp. 147–148, scans 91–92. National Diet Library pid 1052000. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1052000/1/92
  15. National Diet Library next-generation full-text search on 剛柔流, searched again 26 September 2026: 16 books, dated 1526 to 1941. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly&keyword=剛柔流
  16. 「小林流 (空手道)」, the Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/小林流_(空手道)
  17. Patrick McCarthy, The Bible of Karate: Bubishi, Tuttle, Rutland, Vermont, 1995, "The Impact of the Bubishi on Modern Karate-do".

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5, Takase Studios LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · Grok 4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-06, citations — the grouped file's bracketed paragraphs checked at their addresses with web search on; none contradicted; the 1926 novel's scan corrected; the by-eye leaves, the Lab counts, two blocked sites and the design images beyond the checker