松涛館空手道 shōtōkan karatedō Shotokan Karate-Do
松涛館空手道 (shōtōkan karatedō), Shōtōkan karate-dō, is the name of the karate taught in the line of Funakoshi Gichin 船越義珍, and he never called his karate by it.
Abstract
松涛館空手道 names the karate taught in the line of Funakoshi Gichin 船越義珍, who brought the Okinawan art to Tokyo in 1922. 松濤, pine waves, was his pen name, 松濤館, the hall of pine waves, the dōjō his students opened for him in 1939, and 涛 is the new form of 濤. He professed no school, the name 松濤館流 is what others came to call his line, and in 1956 the Japan Karate Association asked its members not to use it.
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, naming Funakoshi as its founder [1], and the Japanese Wikipedia counts it among the main styles of modern karate, with 剛柔流, 糸東流 and 和道流 [2].
The words. 松濤 shōtō, pine waves, the sound of wind in pines, was Funakoshi's pen name from his youth; 館 kan is a hall; 松濤館 was the name of his dōjō [2]. 濤 is the old form of the character and 涛 the new: the Japanese Wikipedia heads its article 松濤館流 and gives 松涛館流 as the new-form spelling, and the two are one word [2]. 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 [3]; 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 [4]; and a roundtable held by an Okinawan newspaper in 1936 proposed that the name be unified as 空手 [5]. As an ordinary word, 空手 is empty-handed, cited from sermons of 1586–99 [6].
The text in English. The name came into English as a sound, Shotokan, and the Japan Karate Association writes it so on its own English pages [7]. The modified Hepburn is shōtōkan 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 [4]. 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 [4].
1930, 昭霊流少林派 (reported). The Japanese Wikipedia reports that Funakoshi, who professed 無流派主義, no school, entered a demonstration at the Meiji Shrine in November 1930 under the school name 昭霊流少林派, the Shōrin branch of the Shōrei school, citing the demonstration's program [2].
1939, the dōjō. His students opened a dōjō for him at Zōshigaya in Tokyo in 1939 and named it 松濤館 after his pen name [2].
1941, the pen name in print. Shimabukuro Gen'ichirō 島袋源一郎's history of Okinawa, 『琉球百話』, credits the spread of karate to the universities to 松濤富名腰義珍先生を始とし、本部朝基、摩文仁賢和等諸先生, Master Shōtō Funakoshi Gichin first, and Masters Motobu Chōki, Mabuni Kenwa and the rest: the pen name printed as his title, in his lifetime [9].
1948 to 1956, the association and the name. The Japan Karate Association was founded in November 1948 with Funakoshi as its chief instructor, by its own account [7]; the Japanese Wikipedia's life of him dates its founding to May 1949 [10]. Bodies outside it came to call his line 松濤館流, and him its founder [2]. The association's monthly of 1956 carried a note, as the Japanese Wikipedia quotes it: 協会のことを未だに松濤館流と称しているところがあるが、松濤とは船越義珍先生の号であって、先生自身も流名は名乗られなかったので、松濤館流という言葉は使わないように, some still call the association Shōtōkan-ryū, but Shōtō is Master Funakoshi Gichin's pen name, and he himself gave his karate no school name, so do not use the word Shōtōkan-ryū [2].
What is not a source. A 松濤舘 stood in Kamakura two centuries before the dōjō. The gazetteer of Sagami province, compiled in 1841 and printed in 1888, gives the life of the blind Edo poet Takano Rantei 高野蘭亭 (1704–1757), for whom the abbots of Kenchōji and Engakuji built a retreat: 諸上人相謀營草堂於瑞鹿山側甚有幽致名以五勝曰松濤舘, the abbots together built him a thatched hall beside Mount Zuiroku, a place of deep seclusion, and he named its five beauties, the first 松濤舘 [11]. It is a homonym, and no source ties it to the pen name. The National Diet Library's full-text search finds 松濤館 in 250 books, dated 1828 to 1944 where dated, and none of the passages it returns speaks of karate; it finds neither 松濤館流 nor 松涛館流 [12]. Funakoshi's memorial stone, carved 空手に先手なし, there is no first attack in karate, stands in Engakuji's grounds today [10].
Today. The name is written in English Shotokan. A rendering should keep 流 as -ryū, the school's own spelling of its name, and keep the name a name. Pine-wave hall is what the characters say, and the karate of Funakoshi's line is what the name means.
A reading
The name is right, and it is a name its bearer declined. Funakoshi wrote in 1922 that karate's schools were in truth two, and he would not add a third under his own name; his students named a hall for him, and the hall's name became the name of what he taught, over the objection of the association he led. I read 松涛館空手道 as a name given by students and kept by them, honest about its origin in the one word it borrows, a poet's name for the sound of the pines. Written here in the new form 涛, it is one of the two spellings the name has.
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 Funakoshi's entry as 昭霊流少林派. It would settle what the program printed.
A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.
References
- 「松濤館流」, 世界大百科事典, in the article 空手, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/松濤館流-1339869
- 「松濤館流」, the Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/松濤館流
- 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
- Japan Karate Association, "History". https://www.jka.or.jp/about-jka/history/
- 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
- 「船越義珍」, the Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/船越義珍
- 『新編相模国風土記稿』 第1輯, 鳥跡蟹行社, 1888, the life of 高野蘭亭, pp. 56–57, scans 138–139. National Diet Library pid 763967. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/763967/1/139
- National Diet Library next-generation full-text search on 松濤館, searched again 26 September 2026: 250 books, 244 of them dated, 1828 to 1944; on 松濤館流 and 松涛館流, none. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly&keyword=松濤館