Tomari Passai

Quick Facts

About the kata

Tomari Passai is a version of the Passai kata that was passed down in the Tomari-te tradition, that is, in the karate of the port village of Tomari on Okinawa. The English Wikipedia lists it under the name Oyadomari no Passai, after the Tomari-te master Kokan Oyadomari (1827–1905), and places it as a separate stage of development between the Passai of Matsumura Sokon and the Passai of Itosu Anko, from which Bassai Dai derives. The Tomari character shows right from the start. The kata opens with a salute in which the right fist rests in the open left palm; Wikipedia calls this a common Chinese salute and takes it as evidence that Passai has roots in Tomari. According to Matthew of ikigaiway.com, this is followed by a slow step forward with the left leg into a cat stance, then the aggressive forward advance typical of Passai, and soon also slowly rising hands that recall the Kusanku kata. On the official WUKF kata list of April 7, 2024, Tomari Passai is among the sentei selection kata for Shorin-ryu; Shito-ryu and Shukokai list it there as Tomari Bassai among the tokui kata. We have not been able to confirm the number of movements and kiai shouts in the sources, so we do not state them.

The kata in different styles

Meaning of the name

The name says this is Passai from Tomari (泊). What the word Passai itself means remains uncertain. Funakoshi Gichin interpreted it as "breaching an enemy fortress"; the characters 拔塞 read literally as "pull out of a fortress" or "remove an obstacle". According to one of the main theories cited by the English Wikipedia, the name comes from a lion dance in the Chinese province of Fujian, where it is called 拍獅, literally "strike the lion".

Creator and history

The lineage begins with Teruya Kishin (1804–1864), whom Matthew of ikigaiway.com calls the patriarch of all Tomari karate; he taught both Matsumora Kosaku and Oyadomari Kokan. According to the English Wikipedia, Oyadomari learned Passai, Rohai and Wanshu from Teruya, and the Tomari style with this Passai was then passed down through three generations in the Oyadomari family. Kyan Chotoku, who practised Tomari-te under both Matsumora and Oyadomari, credited most of his knowledge of Passai, according to ikigaiway.com, precisely to Oyadomari. Kyan's leading student, Shimabukuro Zenryo, founded the Seibukan school in 1962, whose Oyadomari Passai is ranked by the English Wikipedia among the oldest surviving versions of the kata.

Differences between styles

The English Wikipedia describes Matsumura's Passai as a kata with a markedly Chinese character, whereas it calls Oyadomari's version "more Okinawanised". The Passai in Shorin-ryu closely resembles Oyadomari's version and is much softer than the Bassai Dai of Shotokan. A modern revision of the Tomari lineage was made by Nagamine Shoshin, who, according to ikigaiway.com, added open-hand techniques into both forward 45-degree diagonals. Shito-ryu practises four versions of Bassai, and Tomari Bassai is one of them (karatephilosophy.com); on the Shukokai kata list it appears as Tomari no Bassai.

Bunkai – applications

According to the English Wikipedia, the Seibukan school understands its Oyadomari Passai as a kata for fighting at dusk or at night, because it contains many sagurite techniques, "searching hands". We have not been able to find a more detailed explanation of the individual movements in the sources.

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 — Sentei (selected) · valid from 4/26/2024 ↗

Related katas

• Variant of: Bassai Dai