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Home › Library › Philology › Shito-Ryu Karate-Do

糸東流空手道 shitōryū karatedō Shito-Ryu Karate-Do

糸東流空手道 (shitōryū karatedō), Shitō-ryū karate-dō, joins the initials of Mabuni Kenwa 摩文仁賢和's two teachers, and in his own book of October 1934 he still called himself a master of 剛柔流.

糸東流空手道 · shitōryū karatedō · karate-dō of the Shitō school, of Itosu and Higaonna

Abstract

糸東流空手道 names the karate of Mabuni Kenwa 摩文仁賢和 (1889–1952): 糸 and 東 are the first characters of the surnames of his two Okinawan teachers, Itosu Ankō 糸洲安恒 of the Shuri line and Higaonna Kanryō 東恩納寛量 of the Naha line, read shi and tō, and 流 is a school. The dates given for the naming run from 1931 to 1939, but his book of October 1934 styles him a master of 剛柔流 and speaks of my school without naming it; the earliest dated print reported to give 糸東流 as his is the Butokukai's register of ranks of April 1941.

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 [1], and the Japanese Wikipedia counts it among the four great styles, with 松濤館流, 剛柔流 and 和道流, and as a style of both the Shuri and the Naha lines [2].

The words. Read as words, 糸 thread and 東 east say nothing: the name is made of initials. A chronology of 2004 co-written by Mabuni's son says it was 糸洲、東恩納の二人の頭名字から命名, named from the initial characters of the surnames of the two men, Itosu and Higaonna [3]. Neither teacher's name reads the characters the way the style name does: 糸 is ito in Itosu and 東 is higa in Higaonna, and in the style name they take their Sino-Japanese readings, shi and tō [4]. 流 ryū is a current, and in the arts a school. 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 [5]; 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 [6]; and a roundtable held by an Okinawan newspaper in 1936 proposed that the name be unified as 空手 [7]. As an ordinary word, 空手 is empty-handed, cited from sermons of 1586–99 [8].

The text in English. The name came into English as a sound, Shito-ryu, in the 1960s [9]. The modified Hepburn is shitōryū 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 [10]:

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'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 [6]. 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 [6].

1902 to 1908, the two teachers. Mabuni, born in Shuri in 1889, entered Itosu's teaching at thirteen and Higaonna's at nineteen, by one biography [11]; another has Itosu from 1903 and Higaonna from 1908 [12].

October 1934, his own book. Mabuni's 『攻防自在 空手拳法 十八の研究』, dated 25 October 1934, styles him in its advertisements 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; it announces a book of his own forms as 摩文仁流空手拳法, Mabuni-ryū karate; and its first chapter opens 我が流派に於ては, in my school, and names no school [13].

1934 to 1939, the dates for the name. The Japanese Wikipedia says that in 1934 he opened a dōjō in Osaka named 養秀館 and took the name 糸東流, and that 糸東流 was registered with the 大日本武徳会 in 1939 [2]. The chronology of 2004 enters the name under 1935 and again under 1939, the second time with the registration [3]. No telling opens a document of any of these years.

April 1941, the register. The Butokukai's register of ranks of April 1941 is known from a collector's transcription of its karate pages, which lists 摩文仁賢和（糸東流） among the holders of the rank 錬士, beside 富名腰義珍（松濤館流） and 大塚博紀（和道流） [14]. The register's edition of 1937 gives no school for any living holder [15].

December 1943, Funakoshi. Funakoshi's 『空手入門』, in the Portuguese of its English translation: os únicos estilos que nos chegaram do passado são o Goju-ryu do Mestre Miyagi e o Shito-ryu do Mestre Mabuni, the only styles that have come down to us from the past are the Gōjū-ryū of Master Miyagi and the Shitō-ryū of Master Mabuni [16].

What is not a source. The National Diet Library's full-text search finds 糸東流 in no book it reaches [17]. The English name Hankō-ryū, half-hard style, which English books from 1979 give as Mabuni's first name for his style, has no Japanese witness, and its earliest English telling, of 1976, gives it instead to the naming of 剛柔流 [18][4].

Today. The name is written in English Shito-ryu. A rendering should keep 流 as -ryū, the school's own spelling of its name, and keep the name a name. Thread-east school is what the characters say and not what the name means; the school of Itosu and Higaonna is what it means.

A reading

The characters are the easy part: two teachers' initials, read in the sound a reader of Chinese characters would give them, and a school. What the name records is a lineage, the Shuri line and the Naha line in one man, the two lines the Japanese Wikipedia reads into the two schools Funakoshi wrote of in 1922. The date is the hard part. In October 1934 Mabuni wrote my school and did not name it; by April 1941 the Butokukai lists him under 糸東流. The name was fixed between those dates, and I read the registration of 1939 as the date the tellings share, on a document I have not seen.

Sources not seen

『大日本武徳會範士教士錬士名鑑』, 長島孝有 編, 大日本武徳会本部雑誌部, April 1941 (National Diet Library Search, https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000136-I1970867909771177689). It would settle the date of Mabuni's rank and the form in which the register prints 糸東流.

摩文仁賢和・仲宗根源和『空手道入門』, 空手研究社興武館, 1935, digitized by the National Diet Library (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3456304) and served only to readers registered in Japan. It would settle whether Mabuni used 糸東流 of his own school in print before 1939.

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

References

  1. 「糸東流」, 世界大百科事典 (旧版), in the article 空手, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/糸東流-1332267
  2. 「糸東流」, the Japanese Wikipedia, § 歴史. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/糸東流
  3. 沢勲・摩文仁賢三・樋口豊治・長田眞男「空手道学の略史とITによる手技術と急所の相関モデル」, 大阪経済法科大学論集 88, 2004, pp. 83–121, the chronology at p. 91. https://keiho.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/1921
  4. Mark Bishop, Okinawan Karate: Teachers, Styles and Secret Techniques, second edition, A & C Black, London, 1999, pp. 105–107; the first edition, 1989, carries the same passage on the name.
  5. 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
  6. 「空手道」, the Japanese Wikipedia, § 歴史 and § 空手の表記. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/空手道
  7. 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
  8. 「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
  9. 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
  10. 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
  11. 「摩文仁賢和 Mabuni Kenwa – 糸東流空手道」, WEB秘伝 (BAB Japan). https://webhiden.jp/master/mabuni_kenwa/
  12. 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.
  13. 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
  14. 「大日本武徳會武道範士教士錬士名鑑」, 「まるふじ文庫」の収集武道書 (Yahoo! ブログ), 25 November 2016, transcribing 『大日本武徳會範士教士錬士名鑑』 of April 1941, at the Wayback Machine. https://web.archive.org/web/20161226055045/http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/marufujibunko2015/27817398.html
  15. 『武道範士教士錬士名鑑』 昭和12年, 大日本武徳会本部雑誌部, 1937, p. 296, scan 160. National Diet Library pid 1055514. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1055514/1/160
  16. Gichin Funakoshi, Karatê-Do Nyumon, Editora Cultrix, São Paulo, 1988, the Portuguese of the English of Kodansha International, 1988, p. 30.
  17. National Diet Library next-generation full-text search on 糸東流, searched again 26 September 2026: none. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly&keyword=糸東流
  18. 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

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