8. A Revival (B)

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By Graham Noble

Eichi Miyazato remembered that there were some people who thought Goju Ryu might die out after Chojun Miyagi’s death, but in fact the roots he had put down before the war proved surprisingly strong. Training at Miyagi’s garden dojo resumed in 1954, led by Miyazato himself, but as the number of students grew the garden space became cramped and in 1957 Miyazato built a new dojo in Naha, the Jundokan. By that time, there were several other small centres of Goju teaching. Meitoku Yagi, for example, said that he had opened a dojo in the Daido district of Naha in 1952; Yagi claimed that he was the only Goju Ryu student who had ever been given permission by Miyagi to open a dojo. In 1954 Seikichi Toguchi opened his Shoreikan dojo in Koza City, and Seko Higa, who was then in his fifties, was teaching in Itoman.

Higa had been established in Itoman for several years, since late 1947 in fact. That was the time his students finished building a home and dojo for him; apparently the dojo was the living room and foyer of the house. This Itoman dojo was probably the first karate dojo built after the war. In 1949, with the help of Jinsei Kamiya, a training place was built for the Itoman Athletic Association, and training in judo and karate was held there, with Seikichi Toguchi as the karate instructor. There is a group photograph taken at the Association’s opening which shows Miyagi, Higa, Toguchi, and guests Shosin Nagamine (Shorin Ryu) and Seiyu Nakasone (Tomari-te).

Toguchi wrote that in 1952 an organisation was formed to promote Goju Ryu, the Goju Ryu Shinkokai. The founding members were Seko Higa, Keiyo Madambashi, JInsei Kamiya and Genkai Nakaima, all karateka from the early days of Goju. Nakaima drafted rules and regulations for this new body which included proposals for grading examinations. Up to this point Chojun Miyagi had never given rank to anyone, although kyu and dan grading levels were then common in modern Japanese martial arts, including karate. When he saw the proposals, Miyagi said that he would never give dan ranking to his students and that grades should come only from the Butokukai . . . which is a little odd since he must have been aware that the Butokukai had been abolished after the war by the American occupying forces. After Miyagi’s death, the Shinkokai was renamed the Okinawa Karate Do Goju Kai and Seko Higa elected as its first president. A ranking system was then established, and as Toguchi explained, “The truth of the matter is that we, his (Miyagi’s) senior students, promoted each other in an effort to promote Goju Ryu.”

Miyagi never named a successor as head of Goju Ryu. He must have chosen not to, because his decline was gradual and he must have been aware that his time was limited. But he left some mature, motivated seniors and after he died there was a strong wish to carry on his teaching. Without Miyagi’s unifying presence those seniors such as Higa, Yagi, Miyazato, Toguchi and others, went their own ways, although their kata and teaching methods remained similar, and they all tried to keep to Miyagi’s core teaching. On the question of Miyagi’s successor, Seikichi Toguchi wrote (“Okinawan Goju-Ryu 2”, 2001): "Let me first say that I was not named the successor of Goju-ryu by Miyagi, but nor was anyone else. There are some Goju-ryu teachers who claim to have been privately appointed successor by Miyagi. These claims are ludicrous and disrespectful of his memory. He never publicly named anyone as successor. Common sense would dictate that if he were to appoint someone, it would have been a longtime student and it would have to be of public record to have any value. Miyagi was not a man to do things in a haphazard manner - everything was very deliberate and precise.”

For many years the practice of Okinawan Goju Ryu remained largely within the the island, except for a handful of students from the American forces who had been stationed there in the post war years and had taken the style back to the USA. But otherwise, outside of those pockets of practice, it was difficult to learn Goju in the West. Also, little had been published on the style, even in Japan. Kenwa Mabuni, the founder of Shito Ryu, had shown Sanchin, Seiunchin and Sepai in a couple of his 1930s books, and later his son Kenei had also shown a few of the Goju kata (Seiunchin, Sepai and Kururunfa) in his own books, but those works only gave fragments of Goju Ryu. Chojun Miyagi’s son Kei (Takashi) also wrote a couple of small books in the 1960s which showed Gekisai, Sanchin, Tensho, Saifa, and Seiunchin, but again, these were basic instructional works and didn’t show the whole Goju style.

Of course, these were Japanese books too and unavailable to karate people in the West. Gogen Yamaguchi’s “Karate. Goju Ryu by the Cat” (1968), which showed Sanchin, Tensho and Shisochin, was in English, but that too was never widely available, and otherwise pretty much all you had was Mas Oyama’s 1959 “What is Karate?”, which showed Oyama’s versions of the basic Goju forms Saifa and Seiunchin. Occasionally there might be an article which listed all the eleven Goju Ryu kata, and if you had an interest in the style then you might wonder what these more advanced forms looked like and what secrets they might hold, but for years the whole Goju system remained out of reach for most Western karateka. It wasn’t until Miyazato’s 1978 “Okinawa-den Goju Ryu” (I think) that all of the Goju kata were published in Japanese, and the first full presentation of Okinawan Goju Ryu in English, with all the kata and training methods, came a few years later in Morio Higaonna’s four volume series “Traditional Karate Do.” (1985 – 1990). Higaonna also played a leading role in spreading the style outside of Okinawa and Japan, and as more people learned the kata, and video tapes became available, Okinawan Goju Ryu at last became widely accessible. The kata also became increasingly popular in competition, and nowadays I suppose you might see children performing Suparimpei, the highest form in Goju Ryu, which was once taught only to the most senior students of the style, and only after many years of training.

People talk a lot these days about “Legacy”, but Chojun Miyagi really did leave a legacy: his Goju style, with its kata, training methods and teaching structure. It’s a specific body of techniques and forms and due to the efforts of Miyagi’s students and grand-students it has remained surpringly unchanged over the years. But Eichi Myazato, when he thought of Miyagi, also remembered something less technical. “The secret of karate that Miyagi Sensei passed on to his students,” Miyazato wrote, “is best summed up by the words ‘modesty’ and ‘hard training.’ “

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