The Creator of Gensei Ryu

Seiken Shukumine was born in 1925 on Okinawa. As a child he started to practise Karate under the supervision of Ankoh Sadoyama. When Shukumine turned 14 he became the student of Sokko Kishimoto. Here Shukumine stayed until Kishimoto's death. During the second world war, Shukumine joined the marine division of the Japanese Kamikaze corps. Here he was trained as a Kaiten pilot (One-man-torpedo). The Kaiten was used towards the end of the war. Shukumine developed a special technique/ strategy to deal with his situation, since he knew that he might see service in the war. He survived the war, but found his master dead and Okinawa flattened by bombs. For these reasons he withdrew to a desolate island and started to develop his karate. With his background as Kaiten pilot in mind, Shukumine started to develop new Karate techniques. These combined with the classical techniques to form an improved version of the Okinawa-te he had learned from Sadoyama and Kishimoto. In 1949 Shukumine demonstrated his Karate for the first time. This was done in public in the town of Ito, Japan. In October 1950 Shukumine participated in a Karate exhibition arranged by Nippon TV. He did this along with R. Sakagami (Itosu-kai), H. Nishiyama (JKA.), Y. Konishi (Ryobu-kai), H. Kenjo (Kenshu-kai), K. Izumikawa and S. Akamine (Goju-ryu). Shukumine demonstrated Kushanku Dai, Tamashiwari (breaking 34 roofing tiles) and hachidan tobi geri (Jumping kick containing 8 kicks). In 1953 Shukumine instructed the troops at the Tachikawa military base. During the rest of 1950's Shukumine's Karate spread to the rest of Japan and he called his style Gensei Ryu (Gen = Universe, Sei = Control, Ryu = School). In 1964 Shukumine published the book Shin Karatedo Kyohan, which describes the techniques and tactics of Gensei Ryu Karate. At the same time, Shukumine introduced a further development of Gensei Ryu Karate which he called Taido. It was only in the 1960's that Gensei Ryu Karate spread beyond Japan, to places such as USA, South America, Africa and Europe.

[ Seiken Shukumine ]