Greetings and Introduction

Gennō-ryū karate is an offshoot of Shotokan karate, and is a modern branch of the Okinawan karate tree, and yet also traditional.  We say this because, while our name is a recent creation, we perform our kata in a traditional Shotokan manner; however, our techniques, kata, drills, and tactics take advantage of all the research that has been done in the last 20+ years regarding the true purposes of the kata of traditional Okinawan and Japanese karate, and of the techniques that they contain.

Gennō is a word for a type of Japanese hammer, a tool that can also be used when necessary as a weapon.  It is also the name of a Buddhist priest who exorcised a fox spirit, a kitsune, from a large stone that was harming the inhabitants of a nearby village, who destroyed the stone with a hammer.  As will be seen in later posts on this blog, these two facts play a key role in why we named our style after this tool and person, and how this affects our tactics and choice of techniques and interpretations of those techniques.

We are an offshoot of Shotokan.  We perform our kata in the manner that Shotokan performs them, but our syllabus does not contain all of the 32+ kata that modern Shotokan contains.  We confine our kata study to the fifteen kata shown in the Kyōhan.

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Our three core kata, around which we base our primary techniques and tactics, are Naihanchi (called Tekki in Shotokan), Passai (called Bassai-Dai in Shotokan) and Kushanku (called Kanku-Dai in Shotokan). Our interpretations of the techniques within the kata are derived primarily from the research done by karateka such as Iain Abernethy, Don Came, John Titchen and Chris Denwood.

Our style was named by our founder, who studied Shotokan karate as his entry into the Okinawan arts.  We are based on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  We presently have no dojo, preferring to train in the manner of the Okinawans of the past; Outdoors.