Thursday, August 13, 2015

Shimabukuro Zenpo and George Donahue

 
 
 
Shimabukuru Zempo
 
Not having been to Okinawa myself I tend to listen to those with that experience.

 

Once during a discussion with George Donahue (a Kishaba Juku Shorin Ryu) stylist who was raised in Japan, was a youth Japanese TV star, and did train on Okinawa, he remarked about a point Shimabuku Zempo made to me in 1974.  At that time he was the Martial Arts editor for Tuttle Publicans, then the best publishing house of Martial Literature IMO.

 

A host in Central Pennsylvania was having a clinic with Shimabuku Zempo in 1984, I had never seen that type of Shorin Ryu in my area and was interested. It proved to be subtly different from what I knew. At the party afterwards I had the chance to talk to him. He had lived in the US prior to that time, for a while, and knew Isshinryu karate-ka there. He was quite personal, telling me the best American practices on Okinawa were the beer and the chesese. LOL

 

Then he made a statement to me.”“That on Okinawa there were maybe a hundred Shorin dojo, maybe 30 Goju dojo and 3 Isshin dojo”. I believe he was making a gentle point about Isshinryu.

 

I was explaining this to George when George inserted then “and if you got to those hundred  Shorin dojo, you will find each of them are doing a different version of Shorin karate:

 

I found that an interesting observation.

 
George Donhue
 


2 comments:

Victor Smith said...

I have to add a comment about spelling errors I made on this post.

Unfortunately Blogger does not list this post and it seem I cannot correct them.

What Bill Lucas pointed out " it’s Kishaba Juku not Kashiba Juku. Also, it’s Zenpo not Zempo"

I apologize for the errors.

I prove the adage 'Real Men do not use Spell Check.;

Victor Smith said...

When Blogger did not let me correct the spelling on this post today, I worked out a different way to do the same thing, so mission accomplished.

That made me thing of that day in 1984 and something else Shimabukuro Zenpo said during our discussion. This should be placed in time of 1984, I imagine things on Okinawa of today are quite different. The point he was making was "On Okinawa everyone wanted to train under an instructor who had been training at least 50 years. On one wanted to train with a Sho Dan or a Ni Dan. Everyone wanted the instructor with the most experience."

I understood he was commenting on what the difference between Okinawa and the United States was like, for no one here could have had that time in training unless they had come from Okinawa, perhaps.

Something to keep in mind.