Rōhai

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Rōhai
Other names	Meikyo
Martial art	Karate
Place of origin	Tomari, Okinawa, Ryūkyū Kingdom
Creator	Kosaku Matsumora

The Rohai kata are a family of kata practiced in some styles of karate. The name translates approximately to "vision of a Crane" or "vision of a heron". The kata originated from the Tomari-te school of Okinawan martial arts. It was called Matsumora Rohai, after Kosaku Matsumora, who was presumably its inventor. Anko Itosu later took this kata and developed three kata from it: Rohai shodan, Rohai nidan, and Rohai sandan.

In modern Karate, some styles teach all three kata (such as Shito ryu). However, other styles employ only one of them as a kata (such as Wado-ryu, which teaches Rohai shodan as Rohai). Gichin Funakoshi, founder of Shotokan, redeveloped and renamed Rohai as Meikyo (明鏡), literally "bright mirror", often translated as "mirror of the soul." Meikyo is a combination of all three different Rohai kata, containing elements of each.