The exhibition room of Okinawa Karate Kaikan is currently dedicated to Chōjun Miyagi as well as the history and characteristics of Gōjū-ryū.
And we can find very interesting “news”… here the list of more relevant ones in my opinion.
1928: a copy of an article of Kyoto Imperial University Newspaper (November 1, 1928) about a karate (tode) training session. There also two photos in the article, one of a group training session (all in morote chudan no kamae, sanchin training?), and the other of Chōjun Miyagi in neko ashi dachi / yama uke (like at the end of seiyunchin kata). I never saw these two photos before.. This article is really important because is a written document about the first trip of Chōjun Miyagi in mainland Japan. In the same period there was the meeting with Gichin Funakoshi and Yasuhiro Konishi (see photo below).
1930: copies of three articles about Jin’an Shinzato performance in November 1930 during “The 10th Anniversary Festival of the Establishment of Meiji Jingu”. The event included a martial art kata exhibition and karate was performed together judo and kendo on November 3 and 4 at Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya Public Hall. The articles was published by “Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun” (Nov. 5, 1930), by “Okinawa Asahi Shimbun” (Nov. 11, 1930) and “Hawaii Hochi” (October 16, 1930).
1935: during the tug-of-war held in 1935, Chōjun Miyagi carried out the very important duty “Kanuchibo“, ie helding the Kanuchibo pole that joined the “female rope” with ” the “male rope”. There’s a photo in the exhibition about that matter which is more detailed and enlarged than the known one (see below), where the pole is displayed in almost the full lenght.
1936: of the trip of Chōjun Miyagi in Shangai, we have the commemorative plaque signed by Miyagi and others. There is also a photo displayed at the exhibition with Miyagi seated during a dinner, very similar to the one taken in 1940 at Kyoto (see below), but with a lady in front, together with men in military uniform and jacket – tie.
1940: do you remember my article about the Gōjū-ryū‘s video? You can find it at THE Goju-Ryu video
In the article I stated: “According to Okinawan Prefectural Museum, the photographer, Manshichi Sakamoto, took many pictures during the film and Chōjun Miyagi was in one of the pictures “performing shime on Kotaro Kohama at the Teacher’s College” (as reported in Morio Higaonna’s book). To have more information about the pictures, I wrote to Akiyoshi Sakamoto: he answered me that at the beginning of 2005 they gave all the plates to Japan Folk Craft Museum.
I wrote two times to Japan Folk Craft Museum to have more information about the video and the photos but, unfortunately, I hadn’t receive any answer.”
And the news is…. there the photos! Other than the sanchin shime on Kotato Kohama they displayed:
- a smiling Chōjun Miyagi looking at the scene with other operators (you can find a portion of this photo in the brochure of the exhibition);
- two more photos of Chōjun Miyagi during sanchin shime;
- Chōjun Miyagi supervising the group training of seiyunchin kata;
- a student in kuri uke during kururunfa kata;
- a student in neko ashi dachi / tora guchi during kururunfa kata;
- two students in kururunfa bunkai;
- a student during tensho kata;
- a student during tan exercise.
To conclude: a terrific exhibition with a lot of material about Chōjun Miyagi and Gōjū-ryū. My hope is that in the future will be available a catalog of the exhibition to have materials to research about…
© 2019, Roberto Ugolini
Bun bu ryō dō 