少林流空手道 shōrinryū karatedō Shorin-Ryu Karate-Do
少林流空手道 (shōrinryū karatedō), Shōrin-ryū karate-dō, names karate after the Shaolin temple, and Funakoshi Gichin 船越義珍 wrote the school's name in these characters in 1924, two years after he had written it 昭林流.
Abstract
少林流空手道 names karate after the Shaolin temple, 少林寺, whose name Japanese reads shōrin. 少林流 is Funakoshi Gichin 船越義珍's spelling in 1924 for one of the two schools into which he divided the art, which he had written 昭林流 in 1922; three spellings of one sound, 小林, 少林 and 松林, now name related Okinawan styles, of which Chibana Chōshin 知花朝信's 小林流 was named in 1933. The Shaolin origin is the tradition's, and the Japanese encyclopedia notes that neither of the two old schools is known in China.
Overview
The sense. A proper name, the name of a style of karate, and of a family of styles that share its sound.
The words. 少林 shōrin is the Shaolin temple of China, 少林寺. The Japanese Wikipedia lists 少林流 with 松林流 and 少林寺流 as styles of the same or a similar sound as Chibana's 小林流, which is sometimes read コバヤシリュウ, kobayashi-ryū, to tell it from them [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'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 modified Hepburn is shōrinryū 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].
1924, Funakoshi writes 少林流. Tokyo City's collection of materials for citizens' physical education prints Funakoshi's appendix What is karate, and under 流儀, schools [7]:
大別して少林流、昭靈流の二派とす。顧ふに少林流のは少林寺流の略にて昭靈流は昭靈寺流の略ならんかと疑はる、サモなくは、後人技巧の上より靈肉一致と云ふ意味から名命した名前ではなからうか。後世師匠の名を採りて、色々の流儀があるやうだが、元々この二流に過ぎない Broadly there are two schools, Shōrin and Shōrei. I suspect Shōrin is short for the Shaolin-temple school and Shōrei for a Shōrei-temple school; if not, later men may have named them for the union of spirit and flesh their technique aims at. There seem to be various schools that took their masters' names, but originally there are only these two.
In two years the first character has moved from 昭 to 少, the Shaolin temple's own. The city's series of books on social education reprints the appendix in 1925 [8].
1926, a novel. A popular sporting novel of 1926 puts Motobu into a boxing ring and names his stance 唐手に於ける少林流、ピンアン四段, the Shōrin school of karate, Pinan fourth level [9].
1932, an Okinawan guide. Shimabukuro Gen'ichirō 島袋源一郎's guide to Okinawa, in its chapter on customs, under 流儀 [10]:
唐手は大別して明靈流と少林流の二派に分れるが前者は體質肥滿、骨格偉大な人に適し、基本姿勢は可なるも、敏活を缺くの嫌あり後者は體軀倭少、瘠せ形の人に適し機敏なるに反し、基本姿勢に缺陷がある。 Karate divides broadly into two schools, Meirei and Shōrin; the former suits the heavy and large-boned, sound in stance but wanting quickness, the latter the small and slight, quick but defective in stance.
It is Funakoshi's sentence of 1922 rewritten, with 明 for his 昭. The guide's edition of 1937 repeats it [8].
1933, 小林流. Chibana, a pupil of Itosu, named his school 小林流 in 1933, and founded the Okinawa Shōrin-ryū Karate-dō Association in 1948 [1].
The count. The National Diet Library's full-text search finds 少林流 in six books, dated 1924 to 1940: the appendix of 1924 and its reprint, the novel, the guide and its second edition, all on karate, and a book on China of 1940, where 外家とは則ち少林流であつて, the external school is the Shaolin school, names a Chinese tradition [8].
What is not a source. The Shaolin temple is the tradition's origin, not a documented one. The same appendix of 1924 traces the distant source of boxing to the temple: 拳法の遠源は少林寺に始まりて、元、禪より出で, the distant source of boxing begins at the Shaolin temple, and comes originally from Zen [7]. The Japanese Wikipedia notes that neither 昭林 nor 昭霊 is a school known in China [3].
Today. The name is written in English Shorin-ryu. A rendering should keep 流 as -ryū, the school's own spelling of its name, and keep the name a name. Shaolin school is what it says.
A reading
少林流 is in print in these characters from 1924, when Funakoshi wrote them two years after he first wrote the sound with another character. The Shaolin temple in it is a claim of descent that the tradition makes and the documents do not bear out, and Funakoshi himself offered a second reading beside it. I read 少林流 as a name for a lineage, the Shuri line, given the most famous temple in the history of Chinese boxing as its ancestor.
Notes
- Funakoshi's spellings: 1922 昭靈流 and 昭林流; 1924 昭靈流 and 少林流. Shimabukuro writes 明靈流 in 1932. The 1924 appendix prints 名命, as quoted.
References
- 「小林流 (空手道)」, the Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/小林流_(空手道)
- 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
- 東京市 編『市民体育資料』, 東京市, 1924, 富名腰義珍, 附録 唐手とは何ぞや, pp. 126–127, scan 63. National Diet Library pid 1915291. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1915291/1/63
- National Diet Library next-generation full-text search on 少林流, searched again 26 September 2026: 6 books, dated 1924 to 1940. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly&keyword=少林流
- 鳴弦楼主人『名人達人決死の大試合』, 大日本雄弁会, 1926, 琉球特有の武技唐手, p. 156, scan 87. National Diet Library pid 1018991. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1018991/1/87
- 島袋源一郎『沖縄案内』, 1932, 第十五章 風俗, p. 328, scan 225. National Diet Library pid 1170658. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1170658/1/225