Upcoming Class

I will be keeping class logs on the Kenpo Classes with the YMCA. I will use this entry for a bit of history and background of American Kenpo as well as attempt to explain the spirit in which my classes would be taught. 

The modern history of American Kenpo began in the 1940s, when Great Grandmaster James M. Mitose (1916-1981) started teaching his ancestral Japanese martial art, Kosho-Ryu Kenpo, in Hawaii. Mitose's art, later called Kenpo Jiu-Jitsu, emphasizes punching, striking, kicking, locking, and throwing. Mitose's art was very linear, lacking the circular motions in American Kenpo.

James Masayoshi (Masakichi) Mitose was born in Kailua-Kona, North Kona District, Hawaii on December 30, 1916. On October 22, 1920, at the age of three, he was sent to Japanto be given formal education and upbringing with family living there. While there, in addition to his schoolwork and university studies, he trained in the art of Kenpo. He returned to the United States on February 25, 1937, arriving at Honolulu, Hawaii on the SS Tatsuta Maru at the age of 20.

Mitose began teaching Kenpo in Hawaii in 1936, and in 1942 set up a martial arts school.  He gave the style he taught a number of different names during his lifetime, including "Shorinji Kempo" and "Kempo Jujutsu," (both names of recognized Japanese martial arts), but over time, settled on the name Kosho Shōrei-ryū Kenpo. The word "Kenpo" (or "Kempo") is a Japanese form of "

When the attack on Pearl Harbor happened, James Mitose enlisted in the National Guard, and was honorably discharged after three weeks. He spent most of the war teaching Kenpo in Hawaii, to prepare American civilians against a possible Japanese invasion.

Tracy Kenpo claims a martial lineage through Mitose to the Yoshida clan based on Mitose's claims that his family in Japan lived near a "Mt. Akenkai's Shaka-In temple". Mount Akenkai might be Mount Kinkai, near the town of Kinkai, Nagasaki on the island of Kyūshū. This may have been where the Kosho sect of the Yoshida (Urabe) clan taught.

Michael Brown of Rhode Island Martial Arts claims to possess documents showing three families of James Mitose. The first family being from Mitose's father's side. This includes his father, Otokichi Mitose and Otokichi's parents, Kaheiji Mitose, and Kano Kawakami Mitose. The second family, from Mitose's mother's side, includes his mother Kiyoka Yoshida Mitose and Kiyoka's biological father, Sakuhei Yoshida. Sakuhei Yoshida was married to a woman who was not Kiyoka's biological mother.

Sakuhei Yoshida conceived Kiyoka Yoshida Mitose with a woman outside of his marriage named Toju Kosho. James Mitose would learn Kosho-ryū from the family of Toju Kosho. It is worthwhile to note that on Mitose's parents' record of marriage, Kiyoka Yoshida Mitose's mother is not named as Toju Kosho. Instead the name Toju Unknown occupies this position of the document.

To his students and in the book, What is True Self-Defense?, Mitose described his teachings as those of Japanese style. In the book, Mitose describes methods similar to yoga and the tai sabaki principles found in many Japanese arts. The evidence of What Is Self Defense? and accounts and photos strongly suggest, however he got it, Mitose had a background in an Okinawan style. Some modern proponents of Kosho Shōrei-ryū believe that he used an Okinawan art as a vehicle for his teaching of a native Japanese art.

The contents of What Is Self Defense? seem to echo those of an earlier book: Karate Kenpo by Mutsu Mizuho (1933). This includes the arrangement of diagrams and photographs; in one case, a photo (of Higaonna Kamesuke) is reproduced entirely. The earlier book contains the forms Passai-sho, Kushanku-sho, Niseishi, Chinte and Gojūshiho along with the 15 kata which Gichin Funakoshi introduced in his books. The versions are very similar to those found in Shotokan. Mitose's book also includes a picture of Motobu Chōki, reproduced from Motobu's book, in a position that usually indicates a student acknowledging his teacher. It is from here that some assume that Mitose was acknowledging Motobu as his teacher. Mitose listed Motobu as a Kenpo master in his book.

Mitose is known to have taught only one Kata at his school: the Naihanchi Kata, which also was Motobu Chōki's primary form and the only one featured in Motubu's second book Okinawan Kenpo Kumite Hen. Mitose also taught the use of the Makiwara, a signature Okinawan training method. Okinawans had a thriving community in Hawaii, including martial arts training. Higaonna Kamesuke stayed in Hawaii after 1933 with Thomas Miyashiro, and taught classes in Kona. Higaonna had studied under Mutsu and Motobu, and taught Karate Kenpo in Mitose's home town of Kona just a few years before Mitose opened his school, although Mitose was still in Japan at the time.

Mitose ultimately called his style Kosho Shorei-ryū Kenpo, which can translate to "Old Pine Tree School of Encouragement". Bushi Matsumura's style, which he taught to Ankō Itosu who taught it to Gichin Funakoshi and Motobu Chōki among others, was Okinawan "Shōrin-ryū", which is often translated as "Little Pine Forest". In his early days in Hawaii, when Mitose started teaching after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he called his art as simply Kenpo-jujitsu (Nerve Strike method) and would refer to it as Shorinji Kempo or Go shin jitsu. The word "Shorin" is characteristic of styles from Okinawa, although Shorinji Kempo is a Japanese art founded by Doshin So.

William K. S. Chow studied Kenpo under James Mitose, eventually earning a first-degree black belt. Chow began teaching an art, which he called Kenpo Karate, that blended the circular movements he had learned from his father with the system he had learned from Mitose. Chow experimented and modified his art, adapting it to meet the needs of American students.
In 1944 Chow began teaching what he called “Kenpo Karate” at the Nuuanu YMCA in Honolulu. As Mitose had never related his kosho-ryu style with karate, this was a departure for Chow. His many students would include such notables as Edmund Parker, Joseph D. and Adriano D. Emperado, Ron Alo, Paul Yamaguchi, Bobby Lowe, Ralph Castro, Sam Kuoha, John Leone, Nick Cerio, William G. (Billy) Marciarelli (Kachi/Kenpo) and Paul Pung. He did not create or perform many kata but focused more on individual techniques.

William Chow’s legacy would blossom with the migration of kenpo to the mainland of the United States with Parker (American Kenpo), Ralph Castro (Shaolin Kenpo), Adriano Emperado and his students (Kajukenbo, Karazenpo go shinjutsu) and later with Nick Cerio (Nick Cerio's Kenpo) who would be instrumental in helping to bring kenpo to students in the eastern United States. Ron Alo was one of the first to bring Kara Ho kenpo to the mainland, teaching Chow's art in Southern California before he developed his own Alo Kenpo system. Chow is credited with championing and spreading a family of martial arts known for their speed, efficiency, and effectiveness. Many would expand, modify and add to what Chow had given them.

Ed Parker learned Kenpo Karate from William Chow,and according to Al Tracy, eventually earning a sandan. The system known as American Kenpo was developed by Ed Parker as a successor to Chow's art. Parker revised older methods to work in modern day fighting scenarios. He heavily restructured American Kenpo's forms and techniques during this period. He moved away from methods that were recognizably descended from other arts and established a more definitive relationship between forms and the self-defense technique curriculum of American Kenpo.

Parker began codifiying his early understandings of Chinese Kenpo into a distinct and evolving personal interpretation of the art. Here he dropped all Asian language elements and many traditions in favor of American English. During this period, he de-emphasized techniques and principles organized in the same manner as in Chinese and Japanese arts in favor of his own curriculum of forms and techniques. Parker took his art through continual changes. Parker always suggested that once a student learns the lesson embodied in the "ideal phase" of the technique he should search for some aspect that can be tailored to his own personal needs and strengths. Furthermore, Parker's students learned a different curriculum depending on when they studied with him. Some students preferred older material to newer material, wanted to maintain older material that Parker intended to replace, or wanted to supplement the kenpo they learned from a particular period with other martial arts training.

One of the best-known students of Ed Parker is Elvis Presley.