Shishi no Kun

Quick Facts

About the kata

Shishi no Kun is a kata for the six-foot bo staff. In the Matayoshi Kobudo overview on the English Wikipedia it stands fifth and last among the bo kata, after Shushi no Kun, Choun no Kun, Sakugawa no Kun, and Tsuken no Kun. Oshukai likewise places it, as Shishi no Kon, at the end of its bo kata, after the two basics Bo Kihon Ichi and Bo Kihon Ni. The name is easily confused with Shushi no Kon. The English Wikipedia on Okinawan kobudo merges both names into a single entry. Matayoshi's list, Oshukai, the official WUKF kobudo kata list, and the Okinawan association ODKS, however, treat them as two separate kata, and so we describe them the same way. The Boston dojo Kodokan, training in the Matayoshi lineage, writes that Taira and Matayoshi each have their own version of Shishi no Kon, adding Soeishi in parentheses. thekaratepage.com notes that Sueyoshi and Soeishi sound almost alike in the Okinawan dialect, and that even Shinken Taira confused the two names in his book Ryukyu Kobudo Taikan. We could not find in the sources the number of movements, the kiai, the embusen shape, or the kata's author.

The kata in different styles

Meaning of the name

We have not been able to establish definitively the original spelling of the name. The Okinawan association ODKS reads as Shishi nu Kun a kata written 末吉の棍, and lists next to it the similarly sounding Shiishi nu Kun, written 添石の棍. The official WUKF list likewise has two entries, Sueyoshi (Shishi) no Kon and Soeishi (Shishi) no Kon, while Kodokan Boston writes Shishi (Soeishi) no Kon for Matayoshi and Taira. We found the interpretation of the name as "lion staff", from the characters 獅子, in none of these sources.

Creator and history

Per the English Wikipedia, Tatsuo Shimabuku learned Shishi nu Kun from Shinken Taira in his Agena dojo in the late nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties, along with Hama Higa nu Tuifa, Chatan Yara nu Sai, and Urashi Bo. Kodokan Boston points to shared roots: Taira studied under Yabiku Moden, a student of Chinen Sanda, and Shinko Matayoshi under Chinen Sanda himself and his student Oshiro Chojo; the staff techniques thus partly derive from Chinen Sanda. thekaratepage.com states that in Japan and Okinawa alike, Soeishi nu Kun, with Choun nu Kun and Shushi nu Kun, is attributed to the Soeishi-ryu school, though only from a comparison of techniques.

In competition

The official WUKF kobudo kata list has no entry called Shishi no Kun under that name. Among the bo kata it has two entries with Shishi in parentheses, Sueyoshi (Shishi) no Kon and Soeishi (Shishi) no Kon, and separately Shushi no Kon Sho and Dai as well as Shushi (Suji) no Kon. We could not document which of the two entries a Matayoshi or Taira competitor would enter this kata under.