Shorinji Ryu Renshinkan
少林寺流錬心舘An Okinawan lineage transplanted to Kagoshima in 1955, which pioneered fighting in bogu protective gear before that was common in karate.
Quick Facts
JapanCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for Shorinji Ryu Renshinkan
About Shorinji Ryu Renshinkan
Shorinji-ryū Karate-dō Renshinkan was founded by Isamu Tamotsu on November 8, 1955, in Koma-chō, in Kagoshima. The school did not actually originate on Japan's main islands; it was only transplanted there. Its lineage runs from Okinawa, through Matsumura Sokon and Kyan Chotoku, to Nakazato Joen, who named the style after the Shaolin monastery in China. Tamotsu was the one who carried it from Okinawa over to Japan, doing so in the nineteen-fifties. It is easy to confuse this school with the similarly named Shorinji-ryū Kenkokan, but the two are in fact separate schools with separate lineages, and the resemblance in name should not be mistaken for a shared origin. From a competitive standpoint, Renshinkan stands out for having pushed for fighting in protective gear known as bogu at a time when that was not yet common practice in karate. This approach carries its own internal logic: the protective gear is not treated as a concession or a softening of the art, but as the very condition that allows a technique to be delivered at full intensity and still carried through to the point of impact, rather than being pulled back and stopped just short of the target. The school upholds what it calls the seven virtues of budō — compassion, courage, honor, humility, loyalty, sincerity, and integrity — and it treats training as a means of shaping the person as a whole, not merely as a way of drilling combat skills. Leadership of the school has remained within the founder's own family: the second sōke was his son, Iwao Tamotsu, who lived from 1945 to 2016.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.