一心流空手道 isshinryū karatedō Isshinryu Karate-Do
一心流空手道 (isshinryū karatedō), Isshin-ryū karate-dō, is the name of an Okinawan style of karate named on 15 January 1956, and its founder's dōjō on Okinawa drew American servicemen.
Abstract
一心流空手道 names the karate of Shimabukuro Tatsuo 島袋龍夫 (1908–1975), an Okinawan teacher who drew on the Shōrin and Gōjū traditions and on Okinawan weapons, created the style about 1947 or 1948 and gave it its present name on 15 January 1956. 一心 is one heart, wholehearted. His dōjō on Okinawa drew high-school students and American servicemen, and by 1989 most of the style's branches were in the United States.
Overview
The sense. A proper name, the name of a postwar Okinawan style of karate.
The words. 一心 isshin, one heart; the English Wikipedia glosses the name "one heart method" (as in "wholehearted" or "complete") [1]. 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 came into English as a sound, Isshin-ryu [1]. The modified Hepburn is isshinryū 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 [6]:
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].
1947 to 1956, the style and its name. Shimabukuro, born in 1908 in 具志川, created the style about 1947 or 1948 and named it on 15 January 1956, as a synthesis of Shōrin-ryū karate, Gōjū-ryū karate and Okinawan weapons; he had learned the form Seisan from his principal teacher, Kyan Chōtoku, and Seiunchin from his studies with the founder of Gōjū-ryū [1]. The Japanese Wikipedia's life of him says that in 1956 he founded 一心流 and its association, 一心流空手道協会, combining the techniques of Miyagi Chōjun 宮城長順 and Kyan, and that at his dōjō beside a prefectural agricultural high school 高校生や米国軍人が次々に入門し, high-school students and American servicemen joined one after another [7]. The English Wikipedia gives 336 branches of the style worldwide in 1989, most of them in the United States, on the count of its international association [1].
Today. The name is written in English Isshin-ryu. A rendering should keep 流 as -ryū, the school's own spelling of its name, and keep the name a name. One-heart school is what it says, and wholehearted is what the words mean.
A reading
一心流 is a plain name: not a pair of opposites, not a teacher's initials, but one heart. I read the name as a claim of wholeness made by a man who had learned from two traditions and would teach one.
References
- "Isshin-ryū", the English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isshin-ryū
- 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
- 「空手道」, the Japanese Wikipedia, § 歴史 and § 空手の表記. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/空手道
- 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
- 「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
- 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
- 「島袋龍夫」, the Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/島袋龍夫