what does ryu mean in my style and what to you train in

[matbla]

what do you train in and

 

what does ryu mean in my style

 

matsukazi shito- ryu

 

wnat to see if any one knows

 

from matt blake matbla@capital.net

[Shorin Ryuu]

Kobayashi Shorin Ryu (Shorinkan).

 

Ryu just means "style".

[Karategurl]

My kind of karate is Goju-Ryu Karate-do and it means the way and style of the empty hand technique. Really interesting... i love it.

[Master Jules]

Ryu means "school, style, or tradition"

 

Do means "way"

 

Kara, and Te, originally meant China, and Hand. After the Japanese invaded Okinawa in the mid 1600's, they changed the meaning of the Kanji to "empty", thereby changing the meaning of Kara-Te from "China Hand" to "empty hand"

 

GoJu means "hard-soft"

 

However, it is not "all hard", or "all soft"

 

Goju is the art of being hard and soft AT THE SAME TIME.....That is why its such a difficult art

[italian_guy]

I also train in Goju ryu.

[Shorin Ryuu]

Kara, and Te, originally meant China, and Hand. After the Japanese invaded Okinawa in the mid 1600's, they changed the meaning of the Kanji to "empty", thereby changing the meaning of Kara-Te from "China Hand" to "empty hand"

 

No doubt you could clean the floor with me, so I'll have to content myself with nitpicking your history...

 

At any rate, the first recorded use of the word "karate", was, as you mentioned, using the character for the Tang dynasty of China and Hand. Although the Tang dynasty was so long gone before this time period, it was still used to describe China in general on Okinawa. This first recorded instance was around 1900 (about five years before or after, I honestly forget).

 

However, the most common usage was simply "te", or "hand", which was rendered as ti in the Okinawan dialect. Usually when they wanted to influence the more Chinese-influenced variants of Okinawan martial arts, they would use the word toudi. "Tou" was the more accepted pronunciation of the same "kara" that meant "China" mentioned in the above paragraph. "Di" was just "ti" (te) in conjunction with "tou." So it was basically "Chinese hand".

 

And example of this would be referring to Sakugawa (early Okinawan martial arts pioneer) by one of his nicknames, Toudi (or Tode) Sakugawa.

 

I believe the first recorded usage of te or ti was in a poem written in the 1600s that basically said no matter how good your te was or how advanced your learning, it was useless if you did not have a good character (I like to use this to cite how separate the martial art "te" was from specific spiritual development in the old days...).

 

The term karate itself was not officially coined until 1936, where it was agreed upon in a group of Okinawan masters that a standard term was needed. Since the term "karate" was already in limited usage, they decided to use that, but changed the character for "China" to "empty", for nationalist, marketing and philosophical reasons, I suppose.

[Master Jules]

Now that is one heck of a good post !!!!

 

When I wrote my post, I was a lil tired, and didnt feel like going into detail to the lengths that you did, but your history is correct.....My post was an extremely shortened version, missing many of the points that you addressed due to my being tired and lazy at the time I wrote it.

 

Good job Shorin Ryuu !!!!