A Short History of Kenpo
Of all the major Martial Arts styles, Kenpo's origin and history are the least understood and the most confusing.
Kenpo is a mixture of five cultures: First and most importantly, Chinese; second, Japanese; followed by Okinawa, Hawaiian (before Hawaii become a state); and American.
The greatest confusion regarding Kenpo is the origin and the meaning of its name. Despite its birth in China, the art we call Kenpo was passed down through the Mitose family, who studied the original art in China in the 1600's and brought it back to Japan. Since the Mitose family was Japanese, they naturally used the Japanese language rather than the Chinese to describe their family system, which they later named Kosho-ryu which means Old Pine Tree Style.
Modern day usage of the terms Kung-fu (Chinese Mandarin dialect) or Gung-fu (Chinese Cantonese dialect), Wu-shu (Military / War Art), and Kuo-shu (National Art) to describe the Chinese martial arts has added more confusions. Each of the above names in general describes the same martial art.
Kung-fu (or Gung-fu) means disciplined technique, skill, time (that is a period of time used by a person to do a specific type of work), ability or strength—and is a generic term for exercise. Kung-fu is a term used outside of mainland China, most notably the United States, to describe any of the Chinese martial arts.
The original and more proper term is Chu'uan-fa meaning fist law or Chu'uan-shu which means fist art.
One characteristic common to the Asian languages is their use of the same written characters. However, the way the written characters are pronounced make the spoken language completely different from one country to another, or even from on region to another. China is a classic example with two major dialects: Mandarin (the official dialect) and Cantonese, plus hungers of local dialects. It was this type of diversifacation which led to the development of so many different martial art styles in China. There are over 300 styles of Kung-fu taught in China today.
Originally the martial arts in China were referred to as Ch'uan-fa meaning first law. The Japanese pronounce these same written characters as Kenpo or Kempo. In modern usage Kenpo spelled with the N indicates the original Chinese origin whereas Kempo spelled with an M indicates its incorporation into Japanese culture. It was James M. Mitose, whose family moved from Japan to Hawaii who establlished the spelling of Kenpo with an N in the martial art that we teach and call Kenpo. The original art taught by Mitose in Hawaii was called Kenpo Jiu-Jitsu. He wrote a book in 1953 titled What is Self-Defense? (Kenpo Jiu-jitzu)
Kenpo has been described many ways, but the term Kenpo Karate, using the original Chinese characters, is the most authentic and clear description of our style—also distinguishing it as completely different from the Japanese and Okinawan written characters (Kanji) which define Karate as "empty hands."
The actual word Karate is a homonym—a word with the same pronunciation as another word but with a different spelling, meaning, and origin. When written in its original form, (the one we use) it means "China Hands" or "T'ang Hands" (pronounced tong hands. Remember Tang is a breakfast drink) referring to the T'ang Dynasty (618-960 AD) or —more literally—China.
The second meaning—the one used by the Japanese and the Okinawans is Karate. Kara meaning "empty" and Te meaning "hand". In 1923 the Okinawan Masters changed the Chinese character from T'ang to the Japanese Kanji character for "empty" because martial arts now taught in Okinawa were no longer purely Chinese in nature. Over the years they had been comnined with the original Okinawa Te or Bushi No Te (meaning "Warrior's Hands") to form a new style. This became the father of all modern Okinawan and Japanese Karate, reflecting the changes they had made.
Although the term Karate usually denotes a Japanese or Okinawan style, there was no karate in Japan unutil 1923. By any standard Japan's Karate is a relatively modern martial art. The Kenpo Karate we teach, on the other hand, reflects the original Chinese martial arts passed down from one generation to another for hundreds of years—a tradition our school continues to this day.