CLUES FOUND DURING HEAT OF WAR

Tosa sensei in October 1954 (middle) and Shukumine sensei (right)

Suddenly time changed, and World War II broke out. After having enlisted in the navy in 1944, Seiken Shukumine was assigned to Kikusuitai, which was a special attack force.

The aim of this attack force was to attack enemy ships using a specialized submarine, which unfortunately had a week point. In spite of being equipped with a rudder it basically just moved in a straight line. Because of this, it was ofno actual use in combat, if the enemy's attack was faster or the distance to the place of an attack was long.

If you transfer the issue of the submarine to the karate-do games of nowadays, the outcome of battle is merely controlled by the competitor's height and physical appearance than the differences in their techniques. With the experience from the navy in mind, Seiken Shukumine seized the opportunity to figure out how a smaller and weaker person could be able to defeat over a bigger and more powerful person.

After having escaped the heat of war, Seiken Shukumine devoted himself to the development of a new style of Budo, which would transcend the them of a smaller and weaker person getting the advantage and control over a bigger and more powerful person. Seiken Shukumine devoted himself to the completion of this new concept while he stayed isolated in the mountains and on an uninhabited island for a period of time.


At last, in 1949 Seiken Shukumine showed some parts of his technical repertoire to the public. Later in 1953, Seiken Shukumine officially announced his techniques as "Genseiryu Karate-do". The style of Genseiryu Karate-do, which is based on the principals and techniques from the old master Soko Kishimoto, was very conspicuous in its original techniques such as Ebi-geri and Shajo-geri.

Under the regulations of Martial Sports, any karate player had to adjust to the fact that a player's height and physical differences was favored instead of technical skill. Because of this, Seiken Shukumine created a new form of Budo, which he called Taido, by further developing the style of Genseiryu Karate-do and reconsidering the theory of karate-do and Budo in general from different angles more than 35 years ago.