Welcome to the world of Karate

Karate is one of the most famous martial arts in the modern world. This art originated in Okinawa and was earlier known as “Okinawa-te” meaning “Okinawa-hand”. After evolving through ages and subjected to modifications this art by 1917 came to be known as “kara-te” (karate) in Japan. The word karate is a combination of two Japanese words namely Kara and te. “Kara” meaning empty or bare and “te“ meaning “hands“. So karate is simply a martial art using bare hands for attack and defence.

Shito-Ryu is the most widespread style among other styles of karate like Wado-Ryu, Goju-Ryu, Shoto-Kan etc and has schools all around the world. Shito-Ryu has come to be known as the fastest style in the world and has largest number of followers than any other styles. Kenwa Mabuni was the founder of Shito-Ryu style of karate and he established The Nippon Karate-Do, the Shito-Ryu foundation in Osaka, Japan in 1930. Shito-Ryu style is the combination of lightning fast movements of Master Itosu for attack and powerful techniques of Master Higashi for defence, combined by their noble student Kenwa Mabuni. The name Shito-ryu was formed from the names of his masters, Higashi and Itosu. He took the first of his master’s name ”ITO” which is also pronounced as “SHI” and the first part of his second masters name “HIGA” which is also pronounced as “TO”. Thus the name of his system reflected the combined techniques of his two masters and came to be known as the Shito-system or Shito-Ryu.