和道流空手道 wadōryū karatedō Wadoryu Karate-Do
和道流空手道 (wadōryū karatedō), Wadō-ryū karate-dō, is the karate of Ōtsuka Hironori 大塚博紀, and his own federation and the Japanese encyclopedia date its name a decade apart.
Abstract
和道流空手道 names the karate of Ōtsuka Hironori 大塚博紀, a master of jūjutsu who learned karate from Funakoshi Gichin 船越義珍 and others and added old swordsmanship to it. 和道 is the way of harmony. He registered his school with the Butokukai in 1938 as 神州和道流空手術 and shortened the name to 和道流 the next year, the Japanese Wikipedia says; the federation of his line dates the style to 1934 and the name to 1929, a decade earlier.
Overview
The sense. A proper name, the name of a style of karate and of jūjutsu. 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 糸東流 [2].
The words. 和道 wadō, the way of harmony: 和 harmony, peace, 道 a way. 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, Wado-ryu [7]. The modified Hepburn is wadōryū karatedō.
The historical record
1922 to 1928, the teachers. Ōtsuka, having mastered the jūjutsu of 神道揚心流 and 為我流, learned karate from Funakoshi, Motobu Chōki 本部朝基 and Mabuni Kenwa 摩文仁賢和, and added the body movement of the swordsmanship of 柳生神影流 [2]. He began with Funakoshi in 1922, and in 1928 went to Mabuni to learn forms [8].
1938 and 1939, the name registered. When he received the rank of 錬士 from the 大日本武徳会 in 1938, Ōtsuka named his school 神州和道流空手術, the Wadō-ryū karate-jutsu of the divine land, and shortened it to 和道流 the next year [8][7].
1929 and 1934, the federation's dates. The federation of his line says: 和道流は、初代大塚博紀先生…によって昭和9年に創始された, Wadō-ryū was founded by the first master Ōtsuka Hironori in 1934, and 和道流の名乗りは、昭和4年、「日本古武道振興会」の設立と共に、その入会時に称したのが始まりである, the name Wadō-ryū was first used in 1929, when he joined the 日本古武道振興会 at its founding [9]. The Japanese Wikipedia dates that society's founding to 1935 [10]. The sources differ by a decade, and this history holds them side by side.
1941, the register. A collector's transcription of the Butokukai's register of ranks of April 1941 lists 大塚博紀（和道流） among the holders of the rank 錬士 [11].
1964, one of four. When the All Japan Karatedo Federation was formed in 1964, 和道流 was one of the four great styles whose bodies made it up [4].
Today. The name is written in English Wado-ryu. A rendering should keep 流 as -ryū, the school's own spelling of its name, and keep the name a name. School of the way of harmony is what it says.
A reading
和道流 is a name made of a word, the way of harmony, and the word suits a man who came to karate from jūjutsu, the soft art. Its date is disputed within its own tradition. The federation's 1929 rests on a society founded, by the encyclopedia's date, six years later, and the encyclopedia's 1938 and 1939 on the Butokukai's rank; the register of 1941 prints the short name. I read the name as settled by 1939 and in use by 1941, and the earlier dates as the line's memory of when the teaching began.
References
- 「和道流」, 世界大百科事典, in the article 空手, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/和道流-1442547
- 「和道流」, the Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/和道流
- 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
- "Wadō-ryū", the English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadō-ryū
- 「大塚博紀」, the Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/大塚博紀
- 和道流空手道連盟, 「和道流の歴史」. https://www.wado-ryu.jp/histor/
- 「日本古武道振興会」, the Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/日本古武道振興会
- 「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