The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques (Bushido--The Way of the Warrior) [Hardcover]

Kiyoshi Arakaki (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2003 | Series: Bushido--The Way of the Warrior

Karate master Kiyoshi Arakaki outlines the essentials of karate as originally developed on the island of Okinawa where it all began. Includes over 150 photos and instructional captions.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[The] methods for striking with maximum power [are] probably the best I've ever seen in a traditional karate book." -- Black Belt, July 2003

From the Publisher

Tsuki That Exceed the Speed of Sound

[one section from the book, accompanied in the original by 15 illustrations]

There are two karate styles in Okinawa, and these two have different methods of tsuki, or punches. One style is called Shuri-te and the other Naha-te. This book deals mainly with Shuri-te style, and from time to time compares it with Naha-te style.

In both styles, instead of simply moving a solid object (the fist) from point A to point B, you consciously increase the speed of the fist as you punch. On television and in movies you have seen a cowboy crack a whip, making a sound that helps him move cattle into an enclosure. Some cowboys even use these skills in rodeo competition. It is so natural for them that they can produce the crack without thinking. This crack that exceeds the speed of sound is a key to karate. The tsuki of Shuri-te is like this whip (diag. 2). Think of your entire body -- waist, arm, wrist, and fingers -- as a whip delivering a tsuki that exceeds the speed of sound. This is the key to how a small and skinny person can fight successfully against a big, muscular opponent.

In Shuri-te, the energy point is the center of the body. This body center, the waist, is like the wrist of a cowboy cracking his whip. From this point you produce energy and transfer the energy to your opponent. Using the waist rotation method, you treat your body like a hard object. However, if you think of the body as a rigid object, you lose fluidity and cannot transfer all your body's energy to your target. If you use waist rotation as the key to producing power, the result will be more like using a length of 2 x 4 rather than a whip. The weight and mass of the 2 x 4 would be powerful but would lack the speed and explosion of energy delivered by the whip. Try whipping your waist, thinking of the waist as the center of your body. Opposing muscles will snap it first forward, then instantaneously back (figs. 3-4). This should feel the same as a cowboy's wrist moving up and down as he creates a whipping motion and energy. At this point, bulky body parts like tightened muscles and stabilized joints would interfere in the transfer of this whiplike energy.

This whipping motion applies not only to the waist but also to the arm, which is part of the same body-whip. It is completely different from the tsuki of modern karate, where a tight fist travels from the waist to a target in as straight a line as possible. Tsuki should be delivered this way: a fist is cocked at one's side near the waist. The fist, arm, and elbow stay close to the body until the fist reaches the center of the body. The fist begins moving out toward the target while arm and elbow are still touching the body, extending straight to the target. Turn the fist from inside to outside as the elbow leaves the body, hitting the target at the split second of completing the fist rotation. You must turn your arm from inside to outside like a whip in order to transfer the energy created from your body (figs. 5-7). Think of a willow tree with a supple trunk, a branch, and a leaf (diag. 3). The trunk is the grip part of the whip, the branch is the main body of the whip, and the leaf is the tip of the whip. After a fist departs from the body, it must snap like a whip while turning from inside to outside.

This usage of wrist and fingers has only been passed down by oral tradition. Thus, this core concept has been lost even in Okinawa.

The energy transfer of tsuki in Okinawan karate accelerates like a rocket that has a three-level booster system to increase its speed as it departs from earth. The best way for you to transfer your energy is to become like gelatin. If your body is as hard as a rock, you just absorb energy into your body. But when you touch gelatin, it vibrates. The gelatin transfers the energy it has just received. This thought can be applied to a whip, too. A whip is flexible. Therefore, you must not tighten up any part of your body, especially the arm and hand. You never make a tight fist to hit a target. Even after hitting the target, you loosen up your hand. Only a few Okinawan karate practitioners still know about this. Actually, you never consciously tighten the fist. Just as a good whipping motion moves fluidly from the wrist to the tip of a whip, so must your tsuki move with one unbroken motion from waist to target (figs. 8-9). Instead, you simply allow the target to curl the fingers into a fist (figs. 10-11). The only time the fist tightens is during the fraction of an instant when the fist reaches the center of the target. This is the only way to dig the fist into the target, because you can transfer 100 percent of your energy to the target without any loss (figs. 12-14). The experts, of course, hit the target with their knuckles at a 90-degree angle, and they are able to change the wrist angle instinctively to optimize contact with the target.

The tsuki of Shuri-te will always quiver because the whipping motion of the body creates energy and transfers energy completely. If a whip does not quiver, it is not a whip, it is a stick. If your body is like a stick, you destroy the speed of the tsuki. If you shake and whip the arm, the arm will relax naturally after striking and transferring energy to the target. There should be no moment when you see a punch stop in the tsuki of Shuri-te. Contrast this with modern karate, which uses the action-reaction method of pulling back the left hand to the waist so as to send energy into the right hand punch, much like a set of mechanical pistons.

When those karate practitioners who understood and performed the essence of karate as a martial art began to migrate from Okinawa to Japan and introduce karate, there were not enough of them to teach properly. They tried to teach karate to Japanese who did not have an understanding of karate by using pictures which only showed frozen moments of karate movement. This was no more successful than teaching a sports novice how to play football by using a few photos and limited instruction. As a result, the Japanese misinterpreted the Inner Physical Dynamic System of karate as being based on mechanical engineering. Thus, the essence of the original was lost.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha International (JPN); First English Edition edition (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770027591
• ISBN-13: 978-4770027597
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,265,401 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Secrets of the basics, March 20, 2004

By 

Donald P. Jeffrey "sokesmk" (, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques (Bushido--The Way of the Warrior) (Hardcover)

I've seen good reviews and a bad review about this book. What the book is, is a manuscript showing you the technical aspects of the basics, the science of Karate if you will.

This is somthing highly overlooked and in most parts of the world, lost. You can not become a good Karateka without mastery of the basics. Here the author teaches you what you have missed due to constent watering down of techniques as it is passed from master to student throughout the generations.

Basics to Okinawan masters, secrets to us.Until now that is. keep in mind, this book as with all Okinawan Karate books is not designed for sport as much as it is (was) designed for combat.

Time to review your basics and get them right with this book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well aranged Book, Compilation of Okinawa Karate Info..., February 2, 2003

By 

C. J. Hardman (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques (Bushido--The Way of the Warrior) (Hardcover)

I found most of the information here has already published in other books on Okinawa Karate. While there isn't a whole lot here that an experienced Karateka will find new, the information has been arranged well, and ascends in an ordered fashion so that the reader can understand one theory in the light of others mentioned previously. Arakaki discusses principles common to most Okinawa styles, and offers advice on basic techniques. There is decent historical information, and photos of some of the old Okinawan masters which appear to have been "borrowed" from uncredited sources (many of the pictures show cross-grain which means they were taken from other printed sources).

As with most Kodansha books, this volume is a work of top quality. The printing, photos, quality of the paper and binding is top-notch! This is a great book for beginners starting out in Shorin-ryu Okinawa Karate, especially those who practice the style of the author, Muso-kai Karate. For those with more experience, you're probably not going to see anything new here, and might be better served to consider Nagamine's "The Essence of Okinawan Karate-Do" for technical aspects, or Bishop's "Okinawan Karate: Teachers, Styles, and Secret Techniques" for history of various styles and the lineages of the various master teachers from "way back when".

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is full of "pet theories" and inacuracies., September 23, 2005

By 

Steven R. Barth - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Secrets of Okinawan Karate: Essence and Techniques (Bushido--The Way of the Warrior) (Hardcover)

Firstly, let me say that I have been a student and instructor of Okinawan Shorin-Ryu Karate for over 30 years now and have had many opportunities to train with Japanese and Okinawan teachers.

The best chapter of the book is his first chapter which deals with tsuki (punch). He does a fairly admirable job of explaining how the Shuri styles of Karate rely on relaxed, snappy, whip like body motion to generate energy into their techniques. From there, it goes downhill fast!

Throughout most of the book he presents pet theories such as Imaginary Center of Balance, Imaginary Third Leg, Balance through un-balance and condones practices such as "falling into the punch" and "leaning the body towards the direction of motion". None of these concepts are substantiated by the teachings of any Okinawan instructors I have ever trained with. In fact, they go directly against them as well as against the principles of maintaining good posture, body alignment, and balance.

He attempts to justify his theories by constantly reciting Newton's laws of motion but never really demonstrates how these quoted physical laws prove his theories. While attempting to quote modern physics principles he simultaneously disregards these same principles by stating that "the principles of Western body mechanics do not apply to Okinawan Karate."

His thought pattern is very disjointed and he tends to get off-topic very easily. In many cases, the photographs which he provides are not successfully linked to any of the ideas which he is attempting to justify and could be discarded completely.

The bottom line is that the vast majority of his ideas as presented in this book are not Classical Okinawan Karate principles but rather, his own un-substantiated theories which in fact go against authentic Okinawan teachings.