The Real Story of Goju Ryu Karate and Chojun Miyagi

By Al Case

Goju Ryu Karate is the invention of Chojun Miyagi. That's right, all you Karate Kid Aficionados, there really was a Mr. Miyagi. Interestingly, however, the real Mr. Miyagi was not a Karate purist.

Most people think of the founder of an art as pure, he studied only one style, and never stepped off the path. This is because of the true believer mentality that infects many people who learn one thing, and hold to it as the most sacred thing ever learned in the history of mankind. The founders of martial arts systems, however, were not so constrained; Aikido, Kenpo, Krav Maga or whatever, the founders invariably studied many arts before settling on the method they thought was best.

Miyagi's initial training in the martial arts was under Ryuko Aragaki. a neighbor of his, who was considered quite the fighter. Miyagi must have done well, for Aragaki introduced him to his teacher Kanryo Higashionna. Miyagi had 3-5 years of martial arts training at the time.

For thirteen years Miyagi studied with Higashionna. Higashionna was considered to be one of the foremost Karate men of the time, and he was renowned for his Sanchin Kata. He was fond of standing and letting up to four men push on him, and holding his ground.

After thirteen years Higashionna passed on, and Miyagi decided that to continue on in the martial arts, he would have to study with the teachers who trained his teacher. Thus, he made pilgrimage to China, where he studied Shaolin and Bagwa Zhang.

Now Miyagi was master of both hard and soft methods of martial arts. He returned home to Okinawa and began teaching his style, eventually choosing a name from the Bubishi. The name he selected was goju--'hard/soft.'

The Gojo karate style is thus based on hard martial arts, but puts forth a development from hard to soft. There are hard blocks and strikes, and yet there are drills and concepts which take the student into the softer realms of the martial arts. Being a full bodied martial art, the style became one of the few Karate systems to rival the karate evolving from Gichin Funakoshi.

In the final judgement, Goju is a system with many attributes. It has evolved into methods like Jundokan, Meibukan, Shorei kan and isshinryu. The strength of the system, however, lies not just in fundamental Karate, but in the strivings of a unique teacher who strived to grasp both the hard and the soft, and then combined them in the Goju Ryu Karate Method.

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