Shorin-ryu Kyudokan
小林流究道館An Okinawan branch of Shorin-ryū founded by Higa Yuchoku in Naha, practiced with protective gear and contact deliberately kept below full power.
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Catalogs & Databases for Shorin-ryu Kyudokan
About Shorin-ryu Kyudokan
Shorin-ryū Kyudokan is an Okinawan branch of Shorin-ryū that carries the name of its founder: Higa Yuchoku was born on February 8, 1910 in Naha, and he died in that same city on November 4, 1994. His path to mastery was made up of several different lines of training, and that fact is clearly visible in the resulting school. According to the sources, he trained from 1927 under Shiroma Jiro, then from 1934 under Shinzato Jinan, and later, from 1948, under Chibana Choshin — the very man who gave Shorin-ryū the modern form it carries today. The exact year in which Higa opened the Kyudokan dōjō is not reliably documented. The catalog records the year 1947, but does so with an explicit reservation: that date would mean the school was founded a full year before its own founder even began training under Chibana, which is clearly a problem, so the figure is left standing only until a second source can confirm or correct it. Technically, Kyudokan belongs to Okinawan Shorin-ryū with everything that classification entails: a natural, upright stance, work carried out at close range, kata serving as the main carrier of technique, and strikes delivered out of relaxation rather than out of muscular tension. Paired practice differs from the Japanese full-contact styles in that contact is deliberately kept below full power and protective gear is worn, so that a strike is aimed with precision but is not driven all the way home.
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Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.