Higaonna Kanryo

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Higaonna Kanryo

Higaonna (Higashionna) Kanyo (1853-1916) was a native of Nishi-shin-machi, Naha, Okinawa. He was born into a merchant family, whose business was selling firewood, an expensive commodity in the Ryukyu Islands. He founded the fighting style later to be known as Gojū Ryū Karate.

The characters of his family name are pronounced "Higaonna" in Okinawan, and "Higashionna" in Japanese. In Western articles the two spellings are often used interchangeably.

In the early 1860s he began studying the Okinawan martial arts under a teacher named Arakaki Seisho. At that time the word karate was not in common use, and the martial arts were often referred to simply as Te ("hand"), sometimes prefaced by the area of origin, as Naha-te, Shuri-te, or simply Okinawa-te.

In the 1870s Higaonna sailed to Fuzhou in the Fukien province of China. He spent at least several years there; accounts range from five to twenty, though the latter seems unlikely. He spent his time studying with various teachers of the Chinese martial arts. One of his first teachers was a kempo teacher named Ryoto. It was he who introduced Higaonna to the kempo master by the name of Liu Liu Ko (respectfully named Ryu Ryu Ko by the Japanese). Very little is known about Liu Liu Ko, except that he was supposed to have been a shoemaker, and that Higaonna recalled him as being enormously strong.

In the 1880s Higaonna returned to Okinawa and continued the family business. He also began to teach the martial arts in and around Naha. His style was distinguished by its integration of both go-no (hard) and ju-no (soft) techniques in one system. He became so prominent that the name "Naha-te" became identified with Higaonna's system.

Higaonna was noted for his powerful Sanchin kata, or form. Students reported that the wooden floor would be hot from the gripping of his feet.

Several of Higaonna's students went on to become influential masters of what came to be called karate, amongst them Chōjun Miyagi, Kenwa Mabuni, Kyoda Shigehatsu, Koki Shiroma, and Higa Seiko.

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