Kanshu

Quick Facts

About the kata

Kanshu is the third kata a practitioner learns in Uechi-ryu. Per the English Wikipedia and an article by Andreas Quast, it was created in 1956 by Seiki Itokazu, a student of Kanei Uechi per uechiryu-kenkyujo.com. It was originally named Daini Seisan, "second Seisan", and per Wikipedia is still sometimes called that today. The old name hints at the kata's purpose. Per Shubukai (traditionaluechi-ryu.com), the kata was meant to introduce movements later met in Seisan. Uechiryu-kenkyujo.com adds that it shares a common line of techniques with Seisan, teaches precision of movement and timing, and introduces crane techniques. Shubukai names the hajiki uke block and the sequence mawashi uke – kentsui uchi – uke – boshiken – uke – nukite as the most important parts. Kanshu has no settled interpretation of its movements: per Wikipedia, the bunkai for Kanshiwa and Seisan date to Kanei Uechi's time, while for Kanshu each dojo creates its own, and they differ. At WUKF competitions it counts among the required (shitei) Uechi-ryu katas and among the freely chosen (tokui) katas. We have not been able to find the number of movements or kiai shouts in the sources.

Meaning of the name

Per the English Wikipedia, the name Kanshu (完周) is made up of the first character of Kanbun Uechi's name and the character 周, which writes the family name of Shu Shiwa (Zhou Zihe), with whom Kanbun studied in China. The name Kanshiwa (完子和), the style's second kata, was formed the same way. Uechiryu-kenkyujo.com reads both parts as a tribute to these two masters.

Creator and history

Of the eight Uechi-ryu katas, per the English Wikipedia only Sanchin, Seisan and Sanseiryu come from Pangainoon; the rest were added by Kanei Uechi and other senior students of his father Kanbun. From 1931, Kanei sought new ways to bring the style closer to students, and with other senior instructors added the preparatory exercises junbi undo and three bridging katas between Sanchin and Seisan; Kanshu is one of them. Per Wikipedia, Seisan introduces, among other things, knee strikes, the single-knuckle strike shoken zuki and nukite, which carried over into the bridging katas. Andreas Quast (ryukyu-bugei.com) places the style's new katas at roughly 1950 to 1960 and dates Kanshu among them to 1956. Itokazu himself split from Uechi-ryu with Takashi Kinjo in 1978; their group took the name Pangainoon-ryu, later Konan-ryu.

Competition status

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