Jiin
慈陰 · Ji'in
Literally: „love and shadow“
Also known as: Ji'in, Shokyo
A kata from the group with Jion and Jitte, from the Tomari-te tradition according to Funakoshi. The JKA removed it from its syllabus, while SKIF still practises it.
Quick Facts
About the kata
Jiin (慈陰) belongs with Jion and Jitte to a group of kata beginning with the same stance: left palm covering right fist. The English Wikipedia says it teaches many simultaneous techniques and quick direction changes without losing balance. Karatevancouver.ca ranks it as intermediate-level with 35 movements; themartialway.com.au counts 32 and gives two kiai. Gichin Funakoshi tried renaming it Shokyo, "shadow of a pine tree," but it did not catch on. He left it out of his fifteen basic kata, though garenewing.co.uk says he listed it in 1943 among forms taught in Shotokan. Masatoshi Nakayama omitted it from the Best Karate series, and the JKA dropped it from both syllabus and grading. Themartialway.com.au blames two irregularities: a straight punch to head level, absent from other JKA kata, and the final drawing-back of the left foot, without which the practitioner would not finish at the starting point. Garenewing.co.uk says Hirokazu Kanazawa preserved it in SKIF so it would not disappear. On the WUKF kata list from April 2024, it appears under seven styles, among the tokui kata in Shotokan.
The kata in different styles
Meaning of the name
Karatevancouver.ca translates the characters 慈陰 as "compassion and kindness" or "love and shadow," historyoffighting.com as "reflected compassion." The English Wikipedia gives "temple grounds"; according to garenewing.co.uk, this meaning corresponds to a different spelling, 寺院. Gichin Funakoshi, in his 1925 book, wrote the name only in katakana (ジイン), so we have not been able to determine which characters are the original ones.
Creator and history
In an article in an Okinawan newspaper from 1914, Gichin Funakoshi wrote, based on the words of his teacher Azato, that the Tomari-te teacher Gikei Yamazato (1835–1905) had been taught the kata by a shipwrecked Chinese fighter from Annam. According to the English Wikipedia, Hirokazu Kanazawa believes that the Jion group of kata originated at the Jionji temple and spread to Tomari from there. Ryusho Sakagami, a Shito-ryu teacher, regarded Jiin, Jion and Jitte as reworkings, carried out by Anko Itosu, of older, now-lost kata from Tomari.
Differences between styles
According to garenewing.co.uk, the Shotokan version lacks the last four movements practised in other styles, such as Shorin-ryu and Shito-ryu: the age uke block and the oi zuki punch, repeated in the opposite direction. On the WUKF list from April 2024, Jiin is among the tokui kata in Shotokan and Shisui-ryu, and among the sentei kata in Shito-ryu, Nanbudo, Sankukai, Shukokai and Budokan.
Competition status
- Sport karate (WKF) — Official kata list · valid from 1/1/2026 ↗
- WUKF (World Union of Karate-Do Federations) – Nanbudo — Sentei (selected) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗
- WUKF (World Union of Karate-Do Federations) – Sankukai — Sentei (selected) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗
- WUKF (World Union of Karate-Do Federations) – Shito-ryu — Sentei (selected) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗
- WUKF (World Union of Karate-Do Federations) – Shotokan — Tokui (free choice) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗