Motobu Choki
The Okinawan
karate practitioner
Motobu Choki (1870–1944) was born in Akahira village of Shuri,
Okinawa. His father Choshin was a descendent of the sixth son of the Okinawan King, Sho Shitsu, namely Prince Sho Koshin, also known as Motobu Chohei. As the last of three sons, Motobu Choki was not entitled to an education in his family's style of
Ti (an earlier name for karate). Despite this Motobu was very interested in the art, spending much of his youth training on his own, hitting the
makiwara, and lifting heavy stones to increase his strength. He is reported to have been very agile, which gained him the nickname "Motobu no Saru", Motobu the Monkey.
Although he was reputed by his detractors to have been a violent and crude street fighter, with no formal training, Motobu was a student of several of Okinawa's most prominent karate practitioners.
Anko Itosu (1831–1915),
Sokon Matsumura(1809–1899),Kosaku Matsumora (1829–1898), and Shitsunen Tokumine Pechin (1860–1910) all taught Motobu at one time or another. Many teachers found his habit of testing his fighting prowess via street fights in the
tsuji (red light district) undesirable, but his noble birth (as a descendant of the royal Okinawan Sho family) may have made it hard for them to refuse.
Popular myth holds that Motobu only knew one
kata,
Naifanchi (
Naihanchi). Although he favored this
kata, and called it "the fundamental of karate," he also made comments on the practice of
Passai,
Chinto, and
Rohai. Other sources describe
Sanchin,
Kusanku, and
Ueseishi as having been part of his repertoire. He apparently developed his own
kata,
Shiro Kuma (White Bear), which seems not to have been handed down. Motobu lived and taught karate in
Japan until
1941, when he returned to Okinawa, dying shortly thereafter. Prior to this, he had made several trips there to study orthodox
kata and
kobudo in an effort to preserve the traditional forms of the art.
After a number of failed business enterprises, Motobu moved to
Osaka, Japan, in
1921. A friend convinced Motobu to enter a "
boxing vs
judo" match which was taking place. These matches were popular at the time, and often pitted a visiting foreign boxer against a
jujutsu or
judo man. According to an account of the fight from a
1925 King magazine article, Motobu is said to have entered into a challenge match with a foreign boxer, described as a Russian boxer or strongman. After a few rounds, Motobu moved in on the taller, larger boxer and knocked him out with a single hand strike to the head. Motobu was then 52 years old.
The
King article detailed Motobu's surprising victory, although the illustrations clearly show
Gichin Funakoshi as the Okinawan fighter in question. This publication error increased the bitter rivalry between the two men, and led to an apparent confrontation. The two were often at odds in their opinions about how karate ought to be taught and used.
The popularity generated by this unexpected victory propelled both Motobu and karate to a degree of fame that neither had previously known in Japan. Motobu was petitioned by several prominent individuals, including boxing champ "Piston" Horiguchi, to begin teaching. He opened a
dojo, the Daidokan, where he taught until the onset of
World War II in
1941. Motobu faced considerable difficulties in his teaching. Chief among those was his inability to read and speak mainland Japanese. Okinawan dialects are nearly incomprehensible to mainlanders. As a result, much of his instruction was through translators, which led to the rumor that he was illiterate.
Motobu Choki's third son, Chosei Motobu(1925- ), still teaches the style that his father passed on to him. As a point of reference, it is important to distinguish between the "Motobu Ryu" which Chosei teaches, and "Motobu Udun Ti", the unique style of the Motobu family, which bears a resemblance to
aikijutsu.Now Chosei Motobu is the second Soke of Motobu Ryu and the 14th Soke of Motobu Udun Ti.
Motobu's karate is marked by a series of two man
kumite drills, which were an advancement in the popular thinking and instructional methods of the time. His curriculum heavily favored the Naihanchi kata because of the correspondence between its applications (
bunkai) and actual fighting, which he experienced in brawls as a young man. Below are some of his ideas regarding the kata:
*"The position of the legs and hips in Naifuanchin (the old name for Naihanchi) no Kata is the basics of karate."
*"Twisting to the left or right from the Naifuanchin stance will give you the stance used in a real confrontation. Twisting ones way of thinking about Naifuanchin left and right, the various meanings in each movement of the kata will also become clear."
*"The blocking hand must be able to become the attacking hand in an instant. Blocking with one hand and then countering with the other is not true bujutsu. Real bujutsu presses forward and blocks and counters in the same motion."
Motobu trained many students who went on to become noteworthy practitioners of karate in their own right, including:
*Tatsuo Yamada, founder of Nihon Kenpo Karatedo
*
Yasuhiro Konishi, founder of Shindo Jinen Ryu
*
Kose Kokuba (Japanese: Yukimori Kuniba, founder of Seishin Kai
*
Hironori Ohtsuka, founder of
Wado Ryu*
Tetsuo Shimabuku, founder of
Isshin Ryu*
Shoshin Nagamine, founder of Matsubayashi RyuMotobu published two books on karate,
Okinawa Kenpo Karatejutsu Kumite-hen (1926) and
Watashi no Karate Jutsu (1933. Available in translation by Patrick and Yuriko McCarthy).
*McCarthy, Patrick and Yuriko. "Motobu Choki: Karate, My Art.'' International Ryukyu Karate Research Group. 2002
*Noble, Graham. "Master Motobu Choki: A Real Fighter." Dragon-Times, 2003. Available at: [
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