Love this blog – don’t stop blogging, I check this every week for comments.

I also found a great book on karate that I wanted to share with you – you can find it at http://www.thesecretsofkarate.com
please take a look – it`s great.

Sherry

I remember spouting off numbers in the 70’s that there were a least 50 styles of karate and 300 styles of kung fu. Well nowadays kung fu has renamed itself apparently to wushu (I’m out of touch I guess).

My point is bringing this up is many karateka that attain the master status are not always satisified with their style but rather seem to tweek it by combining new methods/styles and creating a new style of karate. Lets face it people innovate just as the old masters did back in the day.

What I am trying to say is I would have no idea now how many of the karate styles combine some jiu jitsu moves. I would guess that many might but I know little of other styles except the ones I’ve trained in (Lima Lama and Kenpo).

As far as goverence of the arts, as the masters have splintered off many of them have cut ties. Mitose has passed as has Chow and Parker. I do not believe that there is any links from Hawaii to Japan and my guess is that there are no links from Parkers organization to Hawaii. As each style was formed, many of them created there own hirachy and dropped any formal ties.

Our sytle of American Kenpo Karate still has ties to the Tracy’s organization out of respect but our hirachry is that of a parallel organization. I do not believe that Tracy’s has any formal ties to Parkers organization but we attend many of the same functions as we are all Kenpo brothers and sisters.

As far a Chinese Kenpo Karate and later American Kenpo as Parker taught it, and later the Tracy’s, there was not an emphsis on weapons. There are offshoot of kenpo that do practice more weapons.

We have weapons kata such as the hook and spear, staff, and sword but I have not been involved in sparring with said weapons. I have branched out on my own and learned that many of the formal ways of using the staff do not work. For instance twirling the staff and striking with the short half-strikes would hurt and maybe break ones thumbs if they struck anything hard.

I did a post on this way back and upset some people. You see if I am to use a weapon, I would use it like I fight – with critical distance and inital movement. I tried every strike hard on the bag and found out just as I have with some hand strikes – many moves were impracticle. Too much time on my hands I suppose.

Anyway as one meaning of karate is empty hand, especially in California where almost any weapon is illegal, I do not depend on weapons.

My best guess is there now might be hundreds of styles of karate that valid stylistic differences from anything else out there. But there are bound to be a lot of similar styles… sorry this got kind of wordy.

This combination of karate and jujitsu is interesting – makes it sound similar to wado-ryu karate, any connection there? Does American Kenpo karate still maintain links with Japan? Does your style of karate include any kobudo training – I thought kenpo karate and kobudo were closely linked? Sorry! Too many questions!