Shindo Jinen-ryu
神道自然流The Japanese karate of Yasuhiro Konishi, named in 1933. It joins Okinawan karate with jujutsu, kendo and aikido in a single syllabus.
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About Shindo Jinen-ryu
Shindo Jinen-ryu is the Japanese karate named and established in 1933 by Yasuhiro Konishi (1893–1983). Unlike most karate schools it did not arise inside an Okinawan lineage but from the other direction: Konishi was first a Japanese martial artist of the old kind. He trained jujutsu in the Muso-ryu and Takenouchi-ryu schools and kendo in the Ono-ha Itto-ryu and Shindo Munen-ryu lines, and only then, in 1924, added karate under Gichin Funakoshi, where his classmate was Hironori Otsuka, later the founder of Wado-ryu. He went on to study with three further key figures of his time: Motobu Choki, Kenwa Mabuni, who founded Shito-ryu, and Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido. Shindo Jinen-ryu is therefore an attempt to fold these sources into a single syllabus, not to transplant one Okinawan school into Japan. The name expresses Konishi's conviction that training in a natural way leads to mastery of the body and thereby to the foundation of a moral life. Technically this means that alongside kihon, kata and kumite the syllabus carries elements ordinary karate does not: an entering strike is finished with a throw or a joint lock, the body mechanics are closer to jujutsu, and the timing bears the mark of kendo. The style is administered by the Japan Karate-Do Ryobu-Kai with roughly fifteen branches in Japan and as many abroad; since Konishi's death in 1983 it has been headed by his son Takehiro.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.
