Byakuren Kaikan
白蓮会館A Japanese full-contact school that, despite using Kyokushin competition rules, did not emerge from Kyokushin but from Shorinji Kempo instead.
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Who It Suits
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What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for Byakuren Kaikan
About Byakuren Kaikan
Byakuren Kaikan is a Japanese full-contact karate school founded in 1984 by Masayasu Sugihara, who was born in 1951 in Osaka. Its classification is a common source of error, and the catalog corrects it here: the school borrows its competition rules from Kyokushin, but its actual technical roots lie in Shorinji Kempo, an art itself derived from Shaolin boxing. The name means white lotus, and according to the source there are three reasons behind it: it was the name of the protective unit to which Sugihara had belonged, it was also the name of one particular technique, and because the founder was setting out on a new path, he chose to begin it symbolically all over again from a white belt. The competition rules correspond to Japanese full-contact karate in its Kyokushin form. Hand strikes to the neck and face are forbidden, while kicks to the head are permitted; grabbing and holding are not allowed, there is no direct frontal knee strike, and strikes to the groin are prohibited. Victory by knockout is possible. Protective gear is worn in every category except black-belt competitions, which are fought without it. Today the school operates in Japan as a nonprofit organization and belongs to JFKO, the association of Japanese full-contact organizations. It is precisely this match in competition rules that is most likely the reason Byakuren Kaikan is commonly described as an offshoot of Kyokushin: in the ring it looks the same, yet the technical foundation from which it actually grew is a different one entirely.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.