Gichin Funakoshi was born in Okinawa in 1868. He learnt karate ("Hand of Tang" as the ideograms read at that point) from two old masters, Yasutsune (Ankoh) Itosu and Yasutsune (Anko) Azato, training secretly at night because martial arts were at that time banned in Okinawa. Eventually as attitudes changed, Funakoshi gave a demonstration of his art to high Okinawan officials. Funakoshi modified the art, taking inspiration from traditional Japanese budo (kendo, judo, etc) and emphasising the philosophical aspects. It was this new karate-do that he took to the Japanese mainland in and in 1936 Funakoshi opened the first Shotokan karate-do dojo in Tokyo.

Books by or about G. Funakoshi