一拳必殺 ikken hissatsu Kill with One Blow
Abstract
一拳必殺, ikken hissatsu, one fist, certain kill, is a karate phrase. It is in print from 1934, when a karate book, 『空手研究』, names it the goal a fist is trained for, and by 1936 it is what people say of karate, in a university club's manual that also carries its twin 一撃必殺, one strike, certain kill. After the war it stays karate's own, in manuals, novels, the Japanese books of Ōyama Masutatsu 大山倍達 and Nakayama Masatoshi 中山正敏, and the history of Okinawa, while 一撃必殺 is the war years' word in the index. The earliest English book known to carry it as ikken hissatsu is Nakayama's Best Karate of 1977 (its words read in a later printing and in the third volume's first edition of 1978), which grants that one blow of the fist was the old art's objective, calls the phrase an expression of long ago, as his Japanese calls it a dangerous one of the old days, and warns that to take killing as its objective is dangerous and incorrect.
Overview
The sense. That one blow of the fist should decide the fight; in karate, the ideal of the single finishing technique. The earliest book the index shows calling it a saying states it beside its limit: karate is a defensive art with the power of 一拳必殺 hidden in it, and there is no first attack in karate.
The words. Ikken hissatsu; ichigeki hissatsu. 一撃 is one strike: one blow, one attack, the word the dictionaries illustrate with to fell with a single blow. The big dictionary's oldest example of it is a hawk's, 蒼鷹一撃, in a twelfth-century poem, where it gives the sense taking flight; and in the Chinese texts of Wikisource neither form occurs; the one near phrase read there, 一擊必中, is also about a bird of prey: a commentator on the Book of Changes explains the character for falcon by saying the bird does not perch in pairs and its one strike surely hits [1]. 必殺 is certain kill: 必, surely, and 殺, kill; the dictionaries define it as killing the opponent without fail, or the resolve to, and the 大辞泉's example is our phrase turned round, 必殺の一撃, the killing blow [1]. 拳 is fist, and 一拳 is a real word, one fist in a poem of about 900 and a blow of the fist in a novel of 1904–06 [1]. So the two forms say one fist, certain kill and one strike, certain kill, and the first names the weapon karate trains. Neither is a headword at kotobank, which carries both dictionaries [1].
The text in English. No English book known carries the romaji before Nakayama's Best Karate of 1977; Ōyama's own English, his book of 1959 searched whole and three later books searched in the Archive, carries the idea and not the romaji.
The historical record
1934. A karate book. The earliest known use is in 『空手研究』, edited by the 空手研究社, which asks how a fighter who backs away can win, and where then lies the meaning of 一拳必殺を目標として鍛へた拳, a fist trained with one fist, certain kill as its goal [2].
1936. A byword, with its limit and its twin. Keiō's karate club, in its 『空手道集成』, writes it as a saying: 空手は一拳必殺とよく云ふが, people often say karate is one fist, certain kill, and sets it inside the art's restraint: 空手は護身的防禦術であり、一面消極的武術である。併し空手には一拳必殺の偉力が藏されて居る。「空手に先手なし」, karate is a defensive art of self-protection, in one aspect a passive art; but in karate the power of one fist, certain kill lies hidden. "There is no first attack in karate". The same book speaks of 所謂一撃必殺說, the so-called doctrine of one strike, certain kill: the two forms stand side by side in the first book the index finds with both [3].
1938 and 1940. Beyond the dōjō. By 1938 the phrase describes a fighter's rampage in a book of Ryūkyū tales [4] and an uppercut in a children's magazine story, 一拳必殺と自稱して, self-styled one fist, certain kill [5]; in 1940 a baseball magazine explains there is no first attack in karate by it: 空手に先手なしといふのは、一拳必殺であるから, there is no first attack in karate because it is one fist, certain kill [6].
1940 to 1945. The strike, not the fist. In the war years, in the index's items to 1942, the phrase is 一撃必殺, one strike: in swordsmanship and jūdō from 1940, in strategy from 1941, in the new wartime elementary schools from 1941 (a teacher's book the catalogue dates 1941; the earliest school report dated by its colophon is of January 1942) and in the army's sword course from 1942 [7]. 一拳必殺, after the baseball magazine of November 1940, stands once in the index from 1941 to 1945: a collection of 1942 for civil-service candidates in Manchukuo reprints the training essentials of the Manchuria Pioneer Youth Volunteer Corps, and they keep the fist, listing under military training 一刀必殺、一拳必殺より進んで神武不殺の精神と武術の鍛鍊, advancing beyond one sword, certain kill, and one fist, certain kill, to the spirit of a divine martial power that does not kill, and the training of the martial arts [8].
1955 to 1968. The karate books. After the war 一拳必殺 is karate's again: a kind of martial art that came from Okinawa, what they call one fist, certain kill, a character explains in a story of 1955 [9]; a karate manual of 1956 repeats the 1936 sentence, by knowing the opponent's vital points one fist, certain kill becomes easy [10]; 宮城敬's 『正統空手道』 of 1968 describes the karate before it as developed, as they say, "one fist, certain kill", purely as a technique of killing and wounding in real combat [11].
1969 to 1975. Ōyama and Okinawa. Ōyama's 『100万人の空手』 says 一拳必殺という言葉は嘘ではない, the words one fist, certain kill are no lie; a fist trained right is stronger than a hammer [12]. The prefecture's own history of Okinawa, in 1975, says of a fist: その握り拳から発する豪拳は「一拳必殺」とうたわれていた, the mighty blow from that fist was sung of as "one fist, certain kill" [13].
Nakayama's Japanese. Nakayama's 『ベスト空手』, in the printings the Diet Library holds (1989–1990), uses it at least three times, as the index's excerpts show: recalling, in the honorific, the warning against bouts won by piling up points and the insistence that 一拳必殺こそ空手の真髄, one fist, certain kill is the heart of karate; 昔は、物騒な表現だが、一拳必殺という言葉が使われた, in the old days, a dangerous expression though it is, the words one fist, certain kill were used; and 今は昔、一拳必殺は武術空手のモットーであっ（た）, long ago, one fist, certain kill was the motto of karate as a martial art [14]. So his own Japanese writes the phrase his English gives in romaji.
Today. In the Diet Library's full text the phrase stands in more than a hundred items from 1934 to 2000, most of them karate books [15].
The word in English
1959 to 1978. Ōyama's English, then Nakayama's. Ōyama's English carries the idea and not the romaji: If a person can attain this degree of mastery, he can easily knock down a bull with a blow, in his book of 1959 (p. 92), whose text, searched whole, has no ikken, hissatsu or hisatsu; the Internet Archive's full-text search finds none of the three in his English books of 1966, 1967 and 1980 either, lending copies whose pages were not seen [16]. The phrase itself arrives with Nakayama's Best Karate (1977, read in its tenth printing of 1986), the earliest romaji known, and it arrives with the limit his Japanese also sets. His Introduction grants the old aim: To be capable of inflicting devastating damage on an opponent with one blow of the fist or a single kick has indeed been the objective of this ancient Okinawan martial art. But even the practitioners of old placed stronger emphasis on the spiritual side of the art than on the techniques (p. 9). Two pages on, under the heading What Karate-dō Is (p. 11; the volume's contents list the Introduction at p. 9 and Basics at p. 13, with no entry for p. 11), comes the phrase itself, as a note on kime, the focus of a technique: The meaning of kime is an explosive attack to the target using the appropriate technique and maximum power in the shortest time possible. (Long ago, there was the expression ikken hissatsu, meaning "to kill with one blow," but to assume from this that killing is the objective is dangerous and incorrect. It should be remembered that the karateka of old were able to practice kime daily and in dead seriousness by using the makiwara.) [17]. The third volume, of 1978, prints the same Introduction sentence on p. 9 and the same words on p. 11 under What Karate-dō Is, which its contents list as a section of its own [18].
1981 to 2002. A rock singer, then the karate books. The romaji leaves the dōjō early. In 1981 Oui asks David Lee Roth, Van Halen's singer, whether he lives by The Book of Five Rings, and he answers: Yeah, I live by that. Summed up in one phrase, it is: "Ikken Hisatsu!" Which means: Victory with one punch [19]. Karate's magazines and books keep it: Black Belt in 1985, where Randall G. Hassell writes that karate in Japan retained its foundation of ikken-hisatsu (killing an opponent with one blow) until the mid-1950s [20]; Rielly's Karate Training of 1985 (One-punch death-blow) [21]; the Kumite Kyōhan of Kanazawa Hirokazu 金沢弘和 in 1987, We have often heard the KARATE expression "To kill with one blow" (IKKEN HISSATSU), with 一拳必殺 in the book's own Japanese on the facing page [22]; Morris 1994 (one deadly blow) [23]; Stevens 1995, of Funakoshi's classes, the premise that a single blow must decide all (ikken hisatsu) [24]; Umezawa Rui's wordbook 1998, whose search window gives a karate saying, One strike, certain kill, without the romaji [25]; Durbin 2001 (one strike, certain death; one fist, certain death) [26]; Lowry 2002 (one strike decides all) [27].
Today. Ikken hissatsu is the romaji of English-language karate books since 1977, the earliest known, and it renders a Japanese karate phrase of the 1930s. Nakayama's warning against taking the words literally is the phrase's best commentary, and the earliest book the index shows calling it a saying already set a limit beside it.
A reading
一拳必殺 is karate's phrase, older in print than the war and outliving it. The earliest book the index shows calling it a saying hedges it in the same book, a defensive art with a hidden power and no first attack, and the latest Japanese witness quoted here, Nakayama's, calls it a dangerous expression from the old days. Between them the war made the strike, 一撃必殺, the public word, and karate kept the fist. The 1942 training essentials reach past the sword and the fist to a divine martial power that does not kill, which is where Nakayama's warning also points.
Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase
References
- 「一撃」・「必殺」・「一拳」, 大辞泉・日本国語大辞典, at kotobank; 黃宗炎, 周易象辭, 卷12 (the falcon), at zh.wikisource, and its full-text search. https://kotobank.jp/word/一撃 · https://kotobank.jp/word/必殺 · https://kotobank.jp/word/一拳
- 空手研究社 (ed.), 空手研究, 1934 (snippet view, the index's text; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1027727
- 慶応義塾体育会空手部 (ed.), 空手道集成, 1936 (snippet view, the index's text; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1144879
- 石川文一, 琉球の伝奇小説集, 1938 (snippet view, the index's text; the page images are withheld). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1457108
- 小学六年生, November 1938 (snippet view, the index's text; open at the Diet Library only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1788260
- 野球界, November 1940 (snippet view, the index's text; open at the Diet Library only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1584641
- NDL Digital Collections, full text, 一撃必殺, oldest first. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=一撃必殺&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
- 満洲司法協会, 満洲帝国常識模範論説全集, 1942, 満洲開拓青年義勇隊訓練要項, p. 177, scan 92. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1266899/1/92
- 牧野吉晴, 空手, 1955 (snippet view, the index's text; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1644312
- 空手道普及の会 (ed.), 図解空手道教本, 1956 (snippet view, the index's text; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2478640
- 宮城敬, 正統空手道, 1968 (snippet view, the index's text; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2517128
- 大山倍達, 100万人の空手, 1969 (snippet view, the index's text; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12142149
- 沖縄県教育委員会 (ed.), 沖縄県史, 1975 (snippet view, the index's text; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3026361
- 中山正敏, ベスト空手, the printings of 1989–1990 (snippet view, the index's text; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13217083
- NDL Digital Collections, full text, 一拳必殺, oldest first. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=一拳必殺&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
- Mas Oyama, What Is Karate?, 1959 (the Archive's date), p. 92, at Internet Archive, its text searched whole (https://archive.org/details/what-is-karate); What Is Karate? (1966), Vital Karate (1967) and This Is Karate (1980), lending copies searched in the Archive's full text for ikken, hissatsu and hisatsu, pages not seen (whatiskarate0000oyam, vitalkarate0000masu, thisiskarate0000oyam).
- M. Nakayama, Best Karate, vol. 1, Comprehensive, Kodansha International, 1977 (LCC 77-74829), Introduction, p. 9, and What Karate-dō Is, p. 11, read in the tenth printing, 1986; a lending copy at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bestkarate00naka
- M. Nakayama, Best Karate, vol. 3, Kumite 1, Kodansha International, 1978, Introduction, p. 9, and What Karate-dō Is, p. 11, at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/karatebestkarate03kumite011978
- Oui, November 1981, p. 21, interview with David Lee Roth by Diana Clapton, at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/oui-1981-11
- Randall G. Hassell, "Is Karate an Art or a Sport?", Black Belt, May 1985, p. 96, at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_ktwDAAAAMBAJ
- Robin L. Rielly, Karate Training: The Samurai Legacy and Modern Practice, 1985, and later titles; lending copies, seen in the Archive's search window only, pages not seen (karatetrainingsa0000riel).
- Kanazawa Hirokazu, Shotokan Karate International Kumite Kyōhan, 1987 (the Archive's date), pp. 130–131 (the Japanese and the English of 送自由一本組手), at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/shotokan-shotokan-karate-international-kumite-kyohan
- Vince Morris, The Advanced Karate Manual, 1994; a lending copy, seen in the Archive's search window only, page not seen (advancedkaratema0000morr).
- John Stevens, Three Budo Masters, Kodansha International, 1995, p. 77.
- Umezawa Rui, The Empty Hand: A Karate Wordbook, Weatherhill, 1998; a lending copy, seen in the Archive's search window only, page not seen (emptyhandkaratew0000umez).
- William Durbin, Mastering Kempo, 2001; a lending copy, seen in the Archive's search window only, page not seen (masteringkempo00will).
- Dave Lowry, Traditions, 2002; a lending copy, seen in the Archive's search window only, page not seen (traditionsessays0000lowr).