2. The Mysteries of Naha Te (B)

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By Graham Noble

So . . . writing in 1935, Mabuni and Nakasone, two of the leading authorities on Okinawan karate, admitted that they knew hardly anything about the emergence of the art and its different styles, even in the Meiji era (1868 to 1912), which was still in living memory. Both Mabuni and Nakasone had been born in the late 19th century, and Mabuni had begun his karate training in the early 1900s. If these two experts knew so little about the emergence of modern karate then it must now be pretty much impossible for us to recover this early history. Still, I suppose we can’t help speculating . . . . if just a little.

What form of kempo might Kanryo Higaonna have learned in China? That too is impossible to say. It’s an interesting question, but it’s all so long ago now, and all modern attempts to answer it have only added to the confusion. The detailed study of karate history is a phenomenon of recent years: as Akio Kinjo recalled, when he started training in Goju Ryu in 1955 there was very little written down about the history of the art. “I started researching karate when I entered Ryukyu University in 1955,“ Kinjo wrote, “but soon I found it very difficult or almost impossible to do so due to the small number of books or written materials on karate. I visited the university library and many other large libraries to find valuable books on karate, but I could not find them. Even if I found a historical article regarding the origins of karate, it was always very simple, just about five or six lines of short sentences. Its contents were also not so new to me.” When Kijnjo began to take an interest in the subject, of course, anyone who might have had any personal knowledge of Naha-te’s origins was long since dead.

There was little literature on Goju Ryu till relatively recent times, and for Juhatsu Kyoda’s To-on Ryu, there was virtually nothing until the early 2000s. The first technical books on Goju kata (Sanchin, Seiunchin and Sepai) were actually by Shito Ryu founder Kenwa Mabuni in the mid-1930s and all that Mabuni had to say about the origins of the style was that “The founder of our style Goju Ryu Kempo, Kanryo Higaonna Sensei, travelled to China to study Kempo (mastering Fujian style Kempo).” Kei Miyagi, Chojun Miyagi’s son, in his 1965 book ”Karate Do no Tanoshima”, simply noted that his father had learned the Naha-te kata from Higaonna. Gogen Yamaguchi (“Karate, Goju Ryu by the Cat”, 1968) likewise wrote that “Mr. Miyagi was born into an old family in 1887 (sic) in Naha City, Okinawa. In those days there were two schools of Okinawan Karate: Kanryo Higaonna Kanryo’s ‘Naha Te and Matsumura Soshu’s ‘Shuri Te.’ Mr. Miyagi learned Naha Te from Mr. Higaonna. Aside from traditional Okinawan Te, Mr. Higaonna also studied the Chinese Kempo of Dharma while visiting Fukien Province in China. He was therefore able to unite some aspects of Okinawa-Te and Chinese Kempo.” Compared to other styles of karate, textbooks on Goju Ryu remained quite rare, and it was only in 1978 that Eichi Miyazato’s “Okinawa Den Goju Ryu” was published, showing all the Goju kata and giving brief histories of Kanryo Higaonna and Chojun Miyagi.

In that book, Miyazato wrote that Higaonna had gone to Fuzhou “in Meiji 10 (1873) at the age of twenty three” and returned to Okinawa fifteen years later at the age of thirty eight, which would have been in 1891. Actually, in 1873 Higaonna would have been twenty years old, not twenty three, but there seems to have been an error in the text because Meiji 10 would be 1877, which fits in with a Higaonna age of twenty three, and gives a stay in Fuzhou of fifteen years or so. But this is far from an established history, and just a year earlier, in the directory of styles contained in the Uechi Ryu book “Okinawa Karate Do”, Miyazato had written that Higaonna had left Okinawa aged twenty four and returned at around thirty two years old, a stay of eight years. In fact no one seems able to agree just when it was that Kanryo Higaona went to Fujian, or how long he stayed. An afternote to Saburo Kinjo’s article about Higaonna in the June 1957 “Gekkan Karate-do” stated that he travelled to Fujian when he was seventeen and returned age thirty eight, which gives dates of 1870 to 1891 and a stay of twenty one years. Reikichi Oya (1959) wrote that “Master Higaonna, who, as the guiding light of Naha, shared equal renown with Master Itosu . . . stayed in the Fukien Province of China from about the age of seventeen or eighteen to the age of thirty five studying Chinese kempo.” The chronology in Tokumasa Miyagi’s 1987 “Karate no Rekishi” (“Karate History”) gave a leaving date of 1872.

In his book on Okinawan masters (Pat McCarthy translation) Shosin Nagamine wrote that Higaonna ”trained diligently in China for ten years.” Nagamine doesn’t say when Higaonna left for Fuzhou but he does state that he began learning Te in Okinawa in 1873 under Maya Aragaki, which means that he must have sailed for Fuzhou sometime thereafter. That would give a date from, say, the mid-1870s, although in the article he wrote for the February 1978 edition of “Aoi Umi” magazine (“The Restorer of Naha-te Kanryo Higaonna”) Nagamine wrote that Higaonna lived for ten years in Fuzhou and returned to Okinawa when he was about 40 years old and “in the prime of his life.” That would give dates of 1883 to 1893 for Higaonna’s Fuzhou stay, which seems rather late and out of line with most other versions of this history.

Meitatsu Yagi, the son of Meitoku Yagi, gave dates of 1877 to 1885, or eight years in China. In a June 1983 letter to Harry Cook, Seikichi Toguchi wrote that Higaonna went to Fukien “when he was young and studied a Chinese boxing art under Master Ryu (Lieu) for thirteen years.” Toshio Tamano, a student of Toguchi, thought that Higaonna had gone to Fuzhou at the age of twenty three or twenty four, but that no one knew for certain when he returned: depending on the source, it could have been at the age of thirty five or thirty eight, (1888 or 1891). Juhatsu Kyoda told Shigekazu Kanzaki that Higaonna had become a live-in student of his teacher (“Lu Lu”) and spent eleven years studying Chinese kempo. “I heard this from Sensei (Kyoda) as a legendary story,” Kanzaki wrote.

The confusion goes on . . . Ryusho Sakagami, in the chronology in his “Karate Do Kata Taikan” (1978), gave Higaonna’s China dates as 1872 to 1887, a long stay of fifteen years. Tetsuhiro Hokama, in his “History and Traditons of Okinawan Karate” wrote that Higaonna left for China in 1873 and stayed for approximately ten years, although in another book, ”100 Masters of Okinawan Karate”, he stated that Higaonna was in Fuzhou from 1876 to 1888, which is twelve years or so. Kenji Tokitsu (“Histoire du Karate-Do”) thought that Higaonna went to China in 1872 and stayed there for fifteen years, pretty much the same dates as given by Eichi Miyazato. Richard Kim, in his “Weaponless Warriors” (1974) wrote that while the history on the subject was vague, there was “general agreement” that Higaonna’s stay in China lasted “at least seven years and not more than eighteen.” Eizo Shimabuku in his 1964 book on karate masters didn’t give specific dates but wrote that Higaonna stayed in China for just three years. It seemed odd that Shimabukuro would be so out of line with the others but then Takao Nakaya, in his “KarateDo History and Philosophy” (2014 edition), stated that “Kanryo Higaonna created a great Naha-Te history, but some parts of his karate-do life were not certain. Nobody describes how long he was in China exactly with clear evidence. Chosin Chibana, Chojun Miyagi, Yuchoku Higa, and Kanryo Higaonna’s grandchild said it was three years.” I don’t know the sources for the views of Chibana, Miyagi and Higa, but the view of Higaonna’s grandson comes from modern research by Iken Tokashiki, the head of Gohakukai karate. So three years, or up to eighteen years . . . in short, we have no idea.

In his 1985 “Traditional Karatedo” (Volume 1) Morio Higaonna wrote that Kanryo Higaonna had travelled to China in “November 1868/69” (why November?) and that he had spent a year at the Fuzhou Ryukyukan before being introduced to his teacher Ryu Ryu Ko. According to this history, Kanryo spent a further thirteen years in Fuzhou as Ryu Ryu Ko’s personal student before returning to Okinawa. In this version, then, his return would have been in 1882/3.

Later, (1995) in his “History of Karate”, Morio Higaonna took Kanryo’s departure date back to 1867 while restating that he stayed in China for fourteen years. That 1867 date is out of line with the dates given by others, and it means that Kanryo went to China at the age of just thirteen or fourteen. That seems very young, but Morio Higaonna had to play with the dates for a couple of reasons: first, to fit in with his assertion that Kanryo studied in China for fourteen years, and second, to accommodate the fact (?) that c. 1882 he had a son. The information about Kanryo Higaonna’s son, presumably came from Iken Tokashiki, who researched Kanryo’s descendents and stated that Higaonna’s eldest son Kanjin was born in Meiji 16 or 1883. If Tokashiki is correct about this, of course, then all the stories about Kanryo Higaonna going to Fuzhou in the mid-1870s and returning to Okinawa after a stay of ten to fifteen years cannot be true. But it’s also doubtful that he went to China in 1867, as proposed by Morio Higaonna.

When Tokashiki began his research on all this in the 1980s, nobody was even aware whether there were any descendants of Kanryo Higaonna still alive, but eventually he was able to trace a fifty-six year old grandson of Higaonna who told him that “my grandfather was opposed to the (Japanese government) action in Ryukyu and is said to have gone to Fuzhou with four other people to petition the Chinese (Manchu) government for the continuance of the Ryukyu kingdom. He was in China for three years, doing manual labour (bamboo work) and is said to have been taught karate.” The action referred to was the Japanese annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom, which resulted in the severance of formal relations with China and the establishment of Okinawa as a prefecture of Japan. Tokashiki came to the conclusion that Higaonna had travelled to Fuzhou in 1877 and returned to Okinawa in 1880. It may just be coincidence but curiously we are back to the three years stay given by Eizo Shimabukuro in 1964.

Tokashiki’s version of events rests on someone’s – supposedly - orally transmitted account of what happened over a hundred years before, so it can’t really be accepted as a true historical record, but supposing it to be true, then Higaonna did not travel to China to learn Chinese Kempo, or to avenge his father. And if he was there just three years then, if all the stories about the slow pace of learning in the old days are correct, he can’t really have learned much kempo, supposing he could even have found a teacher.

That wasn’t an easy time to make the journey to China, either. The 1870s and 1880s were a troubled period for the relationship between the Ryukus, China and Japan. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the new Japanese government abolished the old feudal domains in 1871 and established a system of prefectures (ken). The Ryukyu Kingdom became Ryukyu Fief, part of the new Kagoshima Prefecture. Tribute missions to China still took place in 1872 and 1874 but in 1875 Japan ordered that relations with China were to be severed and in 1879 King Sho Tai was exiled to Tokyo. In that year too Ryukyu Fief was detached from Kagoshima and became a Prefecture itself, Okinawa Ken.

In 1876 the Japanese government imposed tight travel restrictions on Okinawa and anyone who wanted to travel to China had to endure a long bureaucratic process which first involved applying for permission from the Foreign Ministry at Tokyo. The applications would then be passed to the Home Ministry, then back to Naha for approval, then back to the Home Ministry, then the Foreign Ministry, and finally back to Naha and the applicant. As George Kerr wrote: “The answer, after all of this, would almost certainly be ‘no.’ Such a cumbrous bureaucratic device was expected effectively to curb Okinawan interest in travel overseas. Anyone who crossed to China without valid permission risked arrest and punishment.”

Nevertheless there were some who slipped away to China as political exiles. For the most part they were members of the faction known as ‘The Stubborn Party’, the Dasshin-nin, former high ranking officials of the Ryukyu Kingdom who longed for its return and looked to China for help or intervention. Over the years a number of this group travelled to China to try and ask for help from the Imperial Court. This anti-Japanese opposition lasted through to the 1890s, until the last hopes of any restoration died with the defeat of China in the 1894/5 Sino-Japanese war.

According to Andreas Quast in his “Karate 1.0”, the first Ryukyuan political refugee in China was Kunigami Pechin Seisho, who was also the last tributary envoy from the Ryukyus. He was with the Tributary Mission of 1874 but didn’t return home when the mission was finished. Others followed, particularly after the demands made by Japan in 1875 and the establishment of Okinawa-ken in 1879. Andreas noted that nineteen high ranking officials went to China in 1875, a further thirteen in 1879, and more in 1880, 1882 and 1884. He estimated that between 1874 and 1896 the total number of political refugees in China was over a hundred. This was, then, the political background to Tokashiki’s version of Kanryo Higaonna’s history.

Andreas did observe that in the main these refugees were people who had held high positions Iin the old Ryukyuan government; they were the ones who were most attached to the old ways and values, and the ones who had lost most in the Japanese takeover. And of course, they would have been the people who might have had some access to the Chinese court.

But Kanryo Higaonna doesn’t fit that profile at all: as far as we know he was a simple seller of firewood. Although his grandson told Tokashiki that Kanryo had gone to Fuzhou to petition the Chinese government to help restore the Ryukyu kingdom, it’s almost impossible to believe he would have had any way of doing that. Apparently the grandson said that Higaonna travelled to China with four others, so perhaps he went as a kind of servant to more high-ranking refugees. Maybe it’s all just a story anyway, with that troubled period acting as a convenient backdrop.

Even for those high ranking refugees in China, it’s unlikely that they would have had much of an interest in learning Chinese martial arts while they were there. Andreas Quast, though, did find an interesting old (1898) Okinawan newspaper reference to a school which had been set up by members of the Stubborn Party. This was led by Urasoe Chochu, a former magistrate who was one of the leaders (leader?) of the Stubborn Party, and who had left for China back in 1884. The article noted that Urasoe had stayed in China “a long time”, but that after returning to Okinawa “in recent years” he had begun teaching children at his home in Shuri. Assisted by a few others he had about fifty or sixty pupils and taught the Confucian Classics, arithmetic, calligraphy – and also Todi, “Chinese Hand”, which the article described as “a Chinese style of Ju-jutsu.”

This sounds like a confirmation that some Ryukyuans did study kempo in China and brought it back home . . . but I still wonder. Presumably Urasoe was a significant figure when he went to China in 1884; he had been a magistrate, apparently. We don’t seem to have his dates, but he must have been a mature man at that point. Supposing he was around forty at the time, then that is not usually an age when you would begin learning a karate-type of art. Surely, if he was an enthusiastic practitioner of martial arts, then it’s more likely that he would have learned them from his youth – and that would have been in Okinawa, and not China. Of course, he may have subsequently taken an interest in Chinese styles when he was there, but there is no indication of what style he was teaching at his home; and of course, that transmission of Todi, or kempo, or whatever it was, has long since disappeared.

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