Kanku Sho

Quick Facts

About the kata

Kanku Sho is the shorter of the two Kanku kata, though according to themartialway.com.au it is more demanding on fitness, especially when practised repeatedly. The JKA now counts it at 48 movements; the book Best Karate 9 still gave 47. Under the JKA's current interpretation, kiai come on the sixth and the last movement. Garenewing.co.uk notes that both Kanku kata have a similar number of mid-level techniques – roughly 32 in Dai and 38 in Sho. Themartialway.com.au ranks it among Shotokan's most acrobatic kata. It has two jumps – according to controlconceptscanada.ca, the turning jump kaiten tobi and the kick mikazuki tobi geri with a mid-air turn – and both give great trouble to practitioners who are still learning them. According to themartialway.com.au, it is also the only kata in which tsukami uke appears with the other hand gripping one's own wrist (kaeshi dori). The English Wikipedia points out that the kata begins differently from Kanku Dai. Themartialway.com.au nonetheless writes that both share a similar embusen and sequence of movements, since Itosu took Kanku Dai as his model.

The kata in different styles

Meaning of the name

Garenewing.co.uk breaks the name into three characters: 観 (kan) meaning view or to look, 空 (ku) sky or emptiness, and 小 (sho) small. The kata was originally called Kusanku Sho, after the Chinese official Kusanku, whose eighteenth-century teaching survives in the kata Kusanku; the qualifier sho distinguishes it from the larger version.

Creator and history

Garenewing.co.uk and themartialway.com.au attribute its creation to Anko Itosu, a teacher of Shuri-te, though both with reservations ("it is said," "it is believed"). Historyoffighting.com writes that the kata most likely arose from Kanku Dai and was passed down as part of Itosu's teaching. GKR Karate states that Itosu may have created the small version in response to the bo staff fighting widespread at the time; the same page, however, also attributes its creation to Sakugawa, so we give that claim no weight. Gichin Funakoshi renamed Kusanku Sho to Kanku Sho when he introduced the kata to mainland Japan; the English Wikipedia dates the renaming to 1935, historyoffighting.com to the nineteen-thirties. According to garenewing.co.uk, both jumps are almost certainly the work of his son Yoshitaka Funakoshi – a photograph survives from the early nineteen-forties showing him performing the second jump. The same source also mentions a version in which Yoshitaka learned the kata on a trip to Okinawa and brought it to Shotokan.

Differences between styles

The official WUKF kata list of 7 April 2024 lists it as an optional tokui kata under three names: Kanku Sho in Shotokan, Budokan and Shisui-ryu, Kusanku Sho in Shorin-ryu, and Kosokun Sho in Shito-ryu and Shukokai. According to GKR Karate, when Funakoshi adopted it into Shotokan he replaced the cat stances neko ashi dachi with back stances.

Bunkai – applications

Garenewing.co.uk takes from Kanazawa the name soete kake dori for the kata's main sequence, literally "hooking capture with the added hand." The same source most often interprets the jo uke technique as gripping the short jo staff and twisting it out of the opponent's hands. Historyoffighting.com writes more generally that the kata contains movements typical of Itosu's kata: double strikes and movements that can control or disarm a person holding a staff.

Competition status

• Sport karate (WKF) — Official kata list · valid from 1/1/2026 ↗
• WUKF (World Union of Karate-Do Federations) – Shito-ryu — Tokui (free choice) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗
• WUKF (World Union of Karate-Do Federations) – Shorin-ryu — Tokui (free choice) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗
• WUKF (World Union of Karate-Do Federations) – Shotokan — Tokui (free choice) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗

Techniques in the kata