The Beginnings 

Karate is a fighting technique that makes use of the body’s natural weapons and thus the Japanese term for Karate being “Empty Hand”.

Many students who start karate, are of the opinion that they will receive “Super Powers” and in a short period, will be able to beat anyone up and become a type of “Bruce Lee”. This is unfortunately not the case.

The Instructor (Sensei) is there to assist you in developing this true power and strength that is within the student, but it is only by a students own dedication, commitment and by striving, from the outset, to develop the true power of the body and mind, that the student will start to experience the “True Feeling” and understand the “True Meaning” of Karate both from the beauty of the external form as well as the inner feeling of confidence and peace.

Karate is a disciplined sport, and we should, at all times endeavour to use Karate as a vehicle to the perfection of ones own character, thereby striving to become the person that we were meant to become.

 

Background – Budo Karate-Do South Africa

Budo Karate-Do South Africa is a full member of Karate South Afirca (KSA) and also a full member of the World Karate Federation (W.K.F.), which is the world body controlling semi-contact karate.

Bodokan South Africa was founded by Hanshi Richard Salmon in the early 1960 and he was one of the pioneers of early karate in South Africa.
Hanshi Richard was the first ever Springbok Karate captain.

He now heads up Budo Karate-Do South Africa and has studied martial arts under some of the most famous masters of all time such as Kaiso Gogen Yamaguchi of Goju-Kai (The Cat), Master Chojiro Tani founder of Shukokai and Osensei Ueshiba Morihei the founder of Aikido to name just a few.

 

Background – Shito-Ryu Karate

In brief, Shito-ryu was founded by Kenwa Mabuni who originally studied under Yasutsune Itosu and also under Kanryo Higashionna.

Later he named his style of karate the Shito style, taking the first characters of each of his teacher’s names. ‘Shi’ is the one of the Japanese readings for the character meaning “string” which is the first of the two characters which make up the name “Itosu”.

“Higashi” is the first character of Master Higashionna’s name. Master Mabuni combined them to get “Shito” as the name of his style.

The Shito-Ryu taught within Budo Karate-Do South Africa is from one of Mabuni’s principal students Master Chojiro Tani called Tani-ha Shito-Ryu.

This style in turn has been handed down through Tani’s disciples Master Kumiro, Master Tomiyama and Shihan Marinus. Technically, Shito-ryu karate has a lot more flowing and natural type movements and is performed in a lighter, more angular and rangy fashion than they are in schools derived from Naha-te alone.

Shito-ryu stresses speed, and fighting is generally initiated from a higher, more upright stance than Shotokan employs. On the other hand, because the style has so many kata, a great deal of time is spent perfecting any one of its 40 to 60 forms and places great emphasis on technical aspects of the art.