Okinawa Goju Ryu 沖縄剛柔流

The history of Okinawian Karate is filled with trips to southern China. The Okinawians had some native fighting methods which date back to the 1400’s and earlier, however most of the major modern evolutionary advancements were made when certain individuals traveled to China. There are many styles of Okinawa Karate, each with their own history and lineage.

Naha is a coastal port city which saw many travelers. The Okinawians had strong trade relationships with China. Kanryo Higaonna, born in Naha and exposed to some local martial arts, was fortuate enough to have travelled to southern China where he stayed for some time and learned White Crane Kung Fu. He had become so strong and powerful that the martial arts he taught was called Naha Te.

Once before and once after his death one of his top students Chojun Miyagi, traveled to southern China in search of the school and people with whom his teacher had trained. He was unsuccessful in his search, but had learned from multiple masters along the journey. Through training and learning, his hard and external Naha Te was affected by the flowing internal Kung Fu. It was in the 1930’s was when the unique system that Miyagi taught was finally named GoJu for “hard soft”.