Shorin-ryu Seibukan
少林流聖武館An Okinawan school from 1962 that keeps Chotoku Kyan's line most faithfully. It brought no new doctrine but preserves karate as it looked before the war.
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About Shorin-ryu Seibukan
Shorin-ryu Seibukan is an Okinawan karate school opened in 1962 in Yonabaru on Okinawa by Zenryo Shimabukuro, who lived from 1906 to 1969. Shimabukuro was the foremost student of Chotoku Kyan, with whom he trained for about ten years, and his school is among the most faithful carriers of Kyan's line. That is precisely its defining trait: Seibukan brought no new doctrine but keeps the shape of karate as Kyan taught it, which makes it one of the few fixed points for comparing what Okinawan karate looked like before its post-war transformation. The style is also called Sukunaihayashi, the Okinawan reading of the characters for Shorin. Technically it holds to natural high stances, short distance and economical movement; it does not work with large wind-ups or with the deep stances that entered karate with the Japanese physical-education setting. The name Seibukan means roughly the school of the sacred art, and Shimabukuro gave it to his dojo. After his death in 1969 his son Zenpo Shimabukuro took over the leadership. The catalogue entry naming Zenpo as founder is incorrect — Zenpo is the successor; the founder was his father Zenryo.
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