The Difference Between Japanese & Okinawan Goju

What’s up everybody? I’m the Goju-Ryu Philosopher, and today I want to take a look at something that came to me in a comment on one of my earliest videos, and seems to pop up every now and then in discussions of Goju-Ryu in my comment section, and online. Us Goju practitioners seem to make a huge distinction between the Goju that comes from Okinawa, and the Goju that comes from Japan. As the Western karate community has been aware for some time, all karate has its origins in the fighting systems developed in the Ryukyu Kingdoms, particularly those on the main island of Okinawa, from which modern Okinawa Prefecture in Japan takes its name. While Okinawa is part of Japan now, for most of its history, it was an independent kingdom, with a tributary relationship to Imperial China, and a complex trade connectivity with Japan, China, and the rest of continental Asia. However, during the Meiji Restoration, Japan asserted control over Okinawa, using an incident where 54 Okinawans were killed after being stranded on Taiwan as a pretext for expanding conflict and the detachment of a military expedition to Taiwan in 1874.

Ryukyu became the last domain in Japan in 1872, before transitioning into a prefecture in 01:19 - 1879 with the forced abdication of king Sho Tai. However, since most of karate’s development as a fighting system had taken place in the 1850s or earlier by some accounts, it bore no real resemblance to the Japanese martial arts against which it has made a name for itself. While there is some evidence for the cross-pollination of Chinese influence on Okinawan Karate and certain Japanese Jujutsu styles (such as Kito Ryu or other Koryu Jujutsu styles who referred to their style as Hakuda, white hand), and many karateka were influenced by studying Jigen Ryu, a style of Kenjutsu, by and large, Karate had an entirely unique heritage when compared to the Japanese martial arts. Karate did not become a widespread part of mainland Japanese society until the 1920s, although it was briefly considered for addition to Japanese Army training before it was determined that it took too long to become proficient. By the time Itosu Anko and his student Funakoshi Gichin, and Miyagi Chojun his contemporaries, were starting to gain traction in the mainland, Kano Jigoro’s Kodokan Judo had already had its famous challenges against other Jujutsu styles, and all but secured the position of the main unarmed combat sport of Taisho Japan.

02:33 - While the Kodokan teaches Atemi Waza, striking techniques, that are similar to those found in most styles of karate, the competitive rules of Kodokan Judo favored Nage Waza and Shime Waza, throws and pins, mean the Judo no longer focuses on these techniques. In the Meiji and Taisho periods, Japan was asserting itself on the world stage, and to that effect, it needed to convince the chauvinistic imperial powers of Britain, France, and America that it was capable of being a modern nation just like them. This was why the concept of Bushido, the Way of the Samurai, was codified as a Japanese equivalent to the chivalry of formerly feudalistic European states. Fukuzawa Yukichi wrote his Essay on Leaving Asia, arguing for Western education standards, and the newly restored imperial government fought and won the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, cementing their status as a military force to be reckoned with. But many Diet members were focused on building even more similarities to the West, including in the Martial Arts.

Sumo and Judo were similar enough to wrestling, and Kendo was taking 03:40 - its place as the analogue for fencing, but the Japanese government was missing a comparable sport to pugilism, the sweet science, fisticuffs, the quintessentially civilized fighting sport of boxing. And seeing this, the Japanese rushed to fill that void using the new striking techniques from their southernmost prefecture, karate. This is where Japanese Karate was born as a separate entity from Okinawan karate. The mainland Japanese began promoting the style they used to deride as ‘rough’ and ‘brutish’ as their new pride and joy, and of course, began fitting it into the framework of Budo and competition. In fact, they never stopped, promoting it all the way to the Tokyo Olympics next summer.

But 04:35 - I’m here to focus on Goju-Ryu specifically. So we’re gonna take a look at how Goju changed during this transition to Japan, where the differences are between Japanese Goju and Okinawan Goju, and which of these styles is the better fighting system. Let’s get into it. Obviously, if we want to talk about Goju-Ryu in Japan, we first have to acknowledge that Goju was one of the first officially named ryuha in the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai. Goju-ryu was officially named in 1933, though Miyagi was often unenthusiastic about separating his lineage from his contemporaries. Nevertheless, his style was one of the first to be recognized as a martial art by the Japanese government, and he served as the Okinawan representative of the Butoku Kai for several years.

However, Japanese Goju-Ryu actually has its roots several years before the styles naming, 05:31 - with one Yogi Jitsuei. Yogi was a Naha-born martial artist who became Miyagi Chojun Sensei’s student in 1928 or 29, before matriculating into the Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. While he was there, he met one Yamaguchi Jitsumi, who he would befriend and teach. Yogi may have introduced Yamaguchi to Miyagi in 1931 (although there’s little evidence that this consisted of more than a letter of recommendation), and may have hosted Miyagi during a brief mainland visit in 1933. Together, these two formed the Ritsumeikan University Karate Research Society in 1934, and would finally be visited by Miyagi again in 1935 and 36, when Yamaguchi was famously given the moniker Gogen, meaning rough, which uses the first character of Goju as its first character.

While it’s been theorized that 06:25 - this may have been a snide comment on Yamaguchi’s lack of refinement, he liked the name enough to go by it for the rest of his life, and even to carry on the tradition of including “Go” as the first character in the symbolic names of his children. These two would go on to found the Goju-Kai, in 1950, as joint founders. This organization would become the center of Goju-Ryu in mainland Japan, especially since Miyagi’s death in 1953 left the Okinawan side of his lineage without a clear successor to spread his style into Japan. However, this organization was restructured in 1972, with Yamaguchi as President, and Yogi and one So Neichu, a zainichi Korean whose influence kept Yamaguchi’s club alive during his service in Manchukuo, serving as vice-presidents. Yamaguchi broke with Yogi and Okinawan Goju-Ryu proponents in 1973, splitting the Japanese Goju community.

Yogi would later become one of the supporters of Higaonna Morio’s association, 07:23 - the IOGKF, at its founding in 1979. These would become and remain the two predominant strains of Japanese Goju through to this day, although Higaonna Sensei has since moved the IOGKF’s Honbu back to Naha, and his Okinawan teacher Miyazato Ei’ichi has passed away. Following this split, Yamaguchi’s organization, the one which comes to mind when you say ‘Japanese Goju’, had very little contact with Okinawan karateka, completing the divergence between Japanese and Okinawan Goju. Now that we know where Japanese Goju diverged from Okinawan Goju, it’s time to see where the biggest differences in them lie. The first, of course, and most obvious, is going to be in their sport focus.

Let’s take a look at the way that sparring worked in Japanese Goju. First off, it’s important to remember that sparring and partner drills have always been a part of Goju-Ryu, ever since before it was even a style. Higaonna Kanryo would frequently have his students Miyagi, Kyoda, and Higa spar and drill with each other. However, the modern kumite that we know today wasn’t invented until karate became Japanese. While it’s not clear who was the originator of the exact style of point sparring that the WKF has made famous today, it bears a lot of similarity to the point sparring formats developed by Yamaguchi.

08:45 - In his childhood, Yamaguchi, like most other Japanese boys, had practiced Kendo, and he specifically modeled his version of karate sparring off of his experiences with Kendo matches. While Kendo is practiced with shinai, bamboo practice swords that are designed to not cause lasting injury, the competitive format of Kendo rules is based on the assumption that these are direct stand-ins for live blades. The allowable targets, men (the head), dou (the body), and kote (the wrist) are all places where if you were cut by a sword, you would either die, or in the case of the wrists, be unable to hold your weapon, in which case you would be killed on the next stroke. However, each strike is scored when it touches, since with a sword, you don’t need to project too much force through someone to injure or even kill them. However, when Yamaguchi applied this ‘first-blood’ style scoring to kumite, something may have been lost in translation.

The fist is, forgive me for saying, a more blunt instrument, as is a foot or 09:49 - shin, and being touched by an opponents attack doesn’t guarantee injury, let alone mean one is unable to fight. Depending on the strength of the punch, the size of both attacker and defender, how far the attacker projects, and how the defender moves their body, a strike can land but do anywhere from massive damage to no damage whatsoever. But, because of Yamaguchi’s legacy, Japanese Goju-Ryu schools will often include point sparring that scores based on first blood rather than effective striking. Given how far the WKF’s ruleset has spread, it would be unwise to say that Okinawan Goju doesn’t do point sparring, but it is fair to say that it’s given a lot less weight in training. In fact, many Okinawan Goju schools teach their students how to take a punch, usually by covering how to harden one’s muscles at the area of impact, and move or guard or both to minimize the amount of damage that a strike would be able to do.

10:50 - The goal of each strike might be to end the fight with a single blow, but if guarded properly, even a blow that technically lands shouldn’t be enough to end a fight on its own. Both Japanese and Okinawan Goju-Ryu practitioners spar with protectors, but Miyagi Chojun Sensei outlined his goals for protectors, which he was attempting to develop before his death, as allowing people to practice sparring with more contact, more regularly, without receiving lasting damage. Meanwhile, Japanese Goju sparring generally requires punches to be pulled in something called ‘sundome’, meaning “stopping an inch away”, especially with head punches, which is a trend shared by WKF Kumite. This focus effects how competitors practice guarding, which is why you’ll occasionally see fighters in Karate Combat and other full contact promotions getting KO’ed by headshots that an Okinawan karateka would have either slipped or guarded. The other clear difference between Japanese Goju and Okinawan Goju is how they perform their techniques, especially the kata and stances.

Neither Yamaguchi nor Yogi 11:58 - had been able to study with Miyagi for very long, and given that Miyagi’s pre-war style of instruction was generally to teach Sanchin, Tensho, and then the kata he felt best suited the body type of the practitioner, it’s unlikely that either of them ever learned the full kata syllabus directly from Miyagi. In fact, it’s well known that Yamaguchi trained with some of Miyagi’s other students, such as Meitoku Yagi, who may have been the ones who taught him most of his kata. The problem arises from the fact that neither Yamaguchi nor Yogi had the opportunity to spend years polishing their kata before beginning to teach or founding the Goju Kai. In the modern Goju Kai lineage, Yamaguchi’s sons have introduced some teachings from other lineages, making their kata look much more like other Goju lineages, but they still tend to have larger movements and lower stances than Okinawan lineages, and those stances tend to be more rigid. This is both a result of the lineages having focused much more heavily on the appearance of the kata, due to their unfortunate inxability to learn as deeply as Okinawan teachers, and as the influence of Japanese martial arts, some of which focus on very precisely executed movements.

These features 13:11 - translate much better to competitive performance, since they are large enough for judges to see at a distance, but they have been criticized by Okinawan Goju practitioners on occasion. Finally, the least significant difference between Japanese and Okinawan Goju, but an interesting one nonetheless, is that the Japanese love to say “Osu”, whereas the Okinawans really do not. “Osu” is a form of very masculine Japanese slang that you’ll hear all the time in Japanese dojos, and not just Goju-Ryu but Shotokan and Kyokushin as well. Okinawan Goju practitioners, on the other hand, tend to find this a little rude, and prefer “damatte keiko”, shut up and train. Thanks so much for listening to me tell you the historical and modern differences between Japanese and Okinawan Goju.

I promised you I’d tell you which of the two is better, so here it is: 14:08 - whichever one best suits your goals! I know that’s a cop-out answer, and speaking frankly I prefer Okinawan Goju, but maybe that’s because I’m not particularly skilled at the WKF Kumite format. In any case, though, if you enjoyed this video, there’s a button you can click to say that, and right near that button is a little box where you can tell me which style of Goju you prefer, or if you’ve found that a combination of their different aspects is more up your alley. And while I’m doing calls to action, if you’d like to see more of these kinds of breakdowns, or learn more about different ideas and sub-styles within Goju Ryu, then you can subscribe to this channel, and turn on notifications, so that you see more of these videos as I upload them. I’ve been the Goju-Ryu Philosopher, and damatte keiko! .