Happoren

Quick Facts

About the kata

The name 八歩連 is read in karate as Happoren, Papuren, or Pappuren. According to Dimitris Petrakis of the Shito-ryu Shukokai Union, these are pronunciation variants of one name, not different kata, and the characters mean "eight linked steps." The kata comes from Chinese white crane boxing; it was taught to Okinawans by Go Kenki (Wu Xiangui), a tea merchant from Fuzhou. Shitokai lists it among three kata of the crane lineage after Go Kenki, alongside Hakucho and Nipaipo. Today another kata is practiced under the same name. According to Petrakis, it was made famous in WKF competition in 2007 by Japanese competitor Hiromi Inagaki, who learned it from Tadashi Hashimoto; Petrakis counted at least 38 movements in it. The older lineage, according to Tsutomu Kamohara, was passed down by Tani Chojiro, who most likely took it from Miyagi Chojun and Kenwa Mabuni. The traditional version, per karatephilosophy.com, alternates tension and relaxation with many slow techniques and coordinated breathing, while the competition version tends to be fast and explosive. The number of movements differs by version; karatephilosophy.com gives 64. On the official 2024 WUKF kata list, Papuren is a tokui kata for both Shito-ryu and Shukokai.

The kata in different styles

Meaning of the name

The character 八 means eight and is read hachi in Japanese. Petrakis renders the Chinese reading ba bu lien into Japanese as Pa-pu-rien; because the syllables pa and ha are written with the same katakana sign and differ only by a small circle (handakuten), the name Happoren arose alongside Papuren (パープーレン, ハーポーレン). Petrakis places the kata among those whose names carry a step count, like Gojushiho (54) or Nijushiho (24), and writes that the original form does have eight steps. Karatephilosophy.com adds that the original version may have had eight steps, while today's is much longer. The Shito-ryu Shukokai Union writes the Chinese form as 八步連, Japanese articles on bunka-bujutsu.com as 八歩連.

Creator and history

According to karatebyjesse.com, Go Kenki was born on 20 January 1886 in Fuzhou, came to Okinawa in 1912, and died in 1940. In his free time he taught a handful of local masters in his tea shop, among them Mabuni, Miyagi, Kyoda, and Matayoshi; there Happoren is described as a more advanced form of today's Sanchin. According to karateyalgomas.com, Kenwa Mabuni learned the kata directly from Go Kenki together with Nipaipo and Haffa, and adapted and simplified the techniques for Shito-ryu. The Shukokai lineage, according to Tsutomu Kamohara, runs from Tani Chojiro to Haruyoshi Yamada. In Shitokai, according to the Japanese blog bunka-bujutsu.com, Papuren was formally introduced around 2010 together with the kata Ananku and Matsumura Seisan, and spread quickly. The blog's author believes this form is unrelated to Go Kenki's version, and mentions a second, concurrently introduced version that apparently reached Tani from Mabuni.

Differences between styles

The author of bunka-bujutsu.com compares Shito-ryu with the Fuzhou boxing style ming he quan (screaming crane): the embusen are similar, but the differences are large — in the first three steps, ming he quan slowly extends the fingers of both hands, whereas Shito-ryu at that point strikes once with the bottom of the palm. According to the same author, this is a form of Fuzhou crane boxing unknown to the Yongchun white crane. Shukokai practices the kata in two directions, south and north, and Petrakis attributes this change most likely to Yamada. Pappuren is also taught in some Shotokan schools, for example by Kosaku Yokota, who spreads Asai Shotokan. Petrakis notes that the Chinese versions, Patrick McCarthy's 1988 version, and the Shukokai version look quite different.

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 ↗