The Two Dynamic Karate Books — Comparing Ōyama Masutatsu (1967) and Nakayama Masatoshi (1966)

This article was written in Japanese and then translated into English. Addressed to readers outside Japan, it examines the two great works of postwar karate literature that — remarkably — appeared under almost the same title within a single year of each other: Nakayama Masatoshi’s English-language Dynamic Karate (Kodansha International, 1966) and Ōyama Masutatsu’s Japanese-language Dynamic Karate (『ダイナミック空手』, Nichibo Shuppansha, 1967). It compares them along five axes — their bibliography, their character, their reception, the lives of their authors, and the human networks that connect the two men.

A note on conventions for readers. Japanese personal names are given surname-first in Hepburn romanization (so in “Ōyama Masutatsu,” Ōyama is the surname). Karate terms are italicized and glossed on first use — for example kata (prearranged forms), kumite (sparring), and tameshiwari (the breaking of boards, tiles, and the like). For book titles, the original Japanese (or Chinese) title is given first; where an actual English-language edition exists, its real published title is used, and otherwise the English is a literal translation supplied only for reference. Such reference translations may differ from any title under which the work has actually circulated.

Introduction — Two Different Books That Share the Name Dynamic Karate

There is a curious coincidence in the history of postwar karate. In the late 1960s, just one year apart, two large-format technical manuals with almost identical titles appeared — in different languages, from different publishers, representing different schools, and written by different authors. One was the English-language Dynamic Karate, published in 1966 by Kodansha International and written by Nakayama Masatoshi, chief instructor of the Japan Karate Association (JKA), the largest Shōtōkan-lineage organization in postwar Japan. The other was the Japanese-language Dynamic Karate (『ダイナミック空手』), published in 1967 by Nichibo Shuppansha and written by Ōyama Masutatsu, the founder and head of the Kyokushin Kaikan.

The two books share a title, yet they differ greatly in character, intended readership, and school affiliation — and even in the personal histories of their authors. And yet a number of slender threads run behind both men: Funakoshi Gichin (widely regarded as the founder of Shōtōkan karate) and his son Gigō (also read Yoshitaka); Takushoku University; and the prewar Tokyo lineage of the Shōtōkan school. Taking these “two books of the same name” as our point of entry, this essay sets out to retrace, carefully, where the two great currents of postwar karate history diverged — and where they crossed once more.

A caveat at the outset. Some of the factual matters treated here rest on the recollections of the people involved or on biographies based on those recollections, and a number of points have not been established to scholarly certainty. This is especially true of Ōyama Masutatsu’s life: his own autobiographies and the biographies written about him often disagree, and the reliability of their contents is itself a subject of debate. For that reason this essay avoids categorical assertions and makes a point of indicating, source by source, where the accounts differ.

1. Ōyama Masutatsu, Dynamic Karate (Nichibo Shuppansha, 1967)

1-1. The character of the book

Ōyama Masutatsu’s Dynamic Karate (『ダイナミック空手』) is a large-format, hardcover technical manual published in 1967 (Shōwa 42) by Nichibo Shuppansha. The first edition is said to have been a landscape-format B5 volume of roughly 190 pages, with a paper dust jacket. From that first edition onward it was reissued in changing bindings — a 1970 printing, a 1976 printing, and a revised and expanded edition of 1981 (206 pages, ISBN 978-4-8170-6406-6), among others — and remained in circulation over a long period.

Before this, Ōyama had already put out the English-language works What Is Karate? (1958) and This Is Karate (1965). What Is Karate? in particular became a bestseller, said to have sold several hundred thousand copies worldwide; translated into Hungarian, French, and other languages, it raised Ōyama’s name overseas, above all in North America. It is worth noting that in the same year as the present book, 1967, Nichibo Shuppansha also issued another English-language work of his, Vital Karate — making 1967 a pivotal year in Ōyama’s publishing history, one in which his English-language and Japanese-language books intersected. If those English-language works represented the high point of the “outward-facing Ōyama,” then Dynamic Karate can be positioned as the first full-scale large-format technical manual that the same author compiled in Japanese.

The contents are multilayered. Beginning with explanations of fundamentals — warm-up exercises, stances, how to form the fist, and footwork — it proceeds to the basic techniques of punching, kicking, and blocking, then to moving (stepping) drills, kata (prearranged forms), kumite (sparring), and on to tameshiwari (breaking demonstrations) and self-defense. Near the opening it also places an overview of karate history, presenting — in Ōyama’s own way — a grand bird’s-eye map of “karate within the history of the world’s fighting arts.” In later years the book was split into installments and is said to have been used as teaching material for Kyokushin’s correspondence courses. It was a book that served a dual function: as an introductory text for the general reader and as an instructional manual for practitioners.

Running through the whole book is Ōyama’s fundamental idea of “a karate that can withstand real fighting.” While valuing both kata and kumite, he repeatedly inserts explanations of a body usage that does not presuppose sundome (“point-stop,” non-contact) competition but instead keeps direct striking in view. The book can be read as a blueprint for the stage preceding the 1970s, when the Kyokushin Kaikan would systematize itself as “full-contact karate.”

1-2. For whom was it written?

The primary intended readership of Ōyama’s Dynamic Karate was, first, the rapidly broadening base of karate enthusiasts in Japan at the time. Ōyama had launched the International Karate Organization Kyokushin Kaikan in 1964, and was organizing the direct-striking line that had continued since the days of the Ōyama Dōjō. For him, this book became a vehicle for delivering his school’s technical system and philosophy to a wide, unspecified readership, without relying on house newsletters or oral transmission.

The second intended readership was the serious practitioners, both inside and outside Japan, who had come to know Ōyama through his English-language What Is Karate? series and now wished to consult the Japanese original. Contemporary testimony survives in the form of enthusiasts’ reviews describing the book’s use “in installments for correspondence study,” indicating that it also functioned strongly as a reference work for those training on their own.

From a commercial standpoint, the book also had the general-reader market in view; Japan was experiencing its first karate boom in the late 1960s. Around this time Nichibo Shuppansha was intensively issuing technical books on karate and the martial arts, and Dynamic Karate was one product carried along by this “martial-arts book boom.”

1-3. Its evaluation in karate history

The book’s standing in karate history can be organized into roughly three points.

First is its position as a theoretical and technical urtext of Kyokushin and of full-contact karate. In later years, many of the instructors of the various organizations that branched off from the Kyokushin Kaikan cited this as “the first book of Ōyama’s that they read closely,” and the technical vocabulary and training systems of the full-contact schools that spread from the 1970s onward drew, to a considerable degree, on this book as a shared reference point.

Second, even within Ōyama’s own body of work, it is noted as a “technical book” standing in a separate line from his autobiographical and philosophical writings, and as the prototype for the later works that followed — such as Hiden Kyokushin Karate (“The Secret Teachings of Kyokushin Karate,” 1976) and Kore ga Tameshiwari da (“This Is Tameshiwari,” 1984). Surveying Ōyama’s bibliography, one sees a structure in which, between the cluster of English-language books and the cluster of autobiographies, there stands a cluster of Japanese-language technical books centered on this work.

Third, it is notable that in the later revised and expanded edition, the chapter on karate history and the sections on tameshiwari and self-defense were augmented or replaced. The book is a rare one in which, across successive revisions, one can read the evolution of Ōyama’s own view of karate and of the martial way.

That said, the book must not be treated as gospel. It contains passages that situate Ōyama’s own career in mythologized terms, as well as anecdotes that are difficult to verify as historical fact, and among later researchers and enthusiasts the work of scrutinizing its contents continues. The stance of this essay is to position the book as “one of the indispensable primary sources for thinking about postwar Japanese karate history,” while recommending that its statements be read not at face value but against other primary sources.

2. Nakayama Masatoshi, Dynamic Karate (Kodansha International, 1966)

2-1. The character of the book

Nakayama Masatoshi’s Dynamic Karate is a large-format, English-language hardcover technical manual of 308 pages, published in 1966 (Shōwa 41) by Kodansha International (a first edition with slipcase also exists; the volume measures roughly 26 × 19 cm, a slightly landscape B5 format). The author was Nakayama Masatoshi, the first chief instructor of the Japan Karate Association (JKA), an incorporated association. The JKA had been founded immediately after the war, in 1949 (on 27 May), as a voluntary body with Funakoshi Gichin as its supreme master, and received its incorporation as a public-interest association in 1957 (some sources say 1958); it is the largest Shōtōkan-lineage karate organization of the postwar period. (The present book, published in 1966, thus appeared after incorporation.) Nakayama was the central figure on both the technical and the organizational sides.

As the title suggests, the book’s basic concept is to recapture karate from a “dynamic” point of view. Its highlight is the bold use of stroboscopic photography. Employing strobes with a flash duration as short as one ten-thousandth of a second (1/10,000 sec) — cutting-edge technology for the time — it recorded the single motions of punches, kicks, and blocks as stop-motion sequences, with a precision never before achieved. Both the publisher’s description and contemporary reviews emphasized the innovativeness of this strobe photography.

The contents place their weight on a thorough explanation of stances, stepping drills, and basic techniques, with kumite and kata treated as supplementary. In particular, by venturing into a systematic exposition of “the basics” (kihon), it became a book read in later years as a “book of fundamentals”; as a text of the Shōtōkan school it is, in effect, the standard reference. Together with the later eleven-volume Best Karate series (1977–), it ranks at the summit of Nakayama’s technical writings.

As a bibliographical note: from its 1966 first edition onward this book ran through many printings in the English-speaking world and remains a living classic still in print today. Together with the circumstance that no Japanese translation appeared for a long time, this makes it a most unusual book in postwar karate history — “a karate technical manual by a Japanese author, written from the start for an English-reading audience.”

2-2. For whom was it written?

The first intended readers were the overseas practitioners of Shōtōkan-lineage karate, which in the 1960s was spreading to Europe, the Americas, Southeast Asia, South America, and elsewhere. From the late 1950s the JKA had systematically dispatched instructors abroad and developed local dōjō. Instructors and branch heads overseas needed an English-language standard text by which to show their students “techniques faithful to the Japanese fundamentals.” This book was planned as the “official manual” answering that demand.

The second intended readers were the educated public, university students, and martial-arts researchers of the English-speaking world. In the 1960s English-speaking world, karate was being received with a certain orientalism, as a “mysterious Eastern fighting art.” Amid this enthusiasm, Nakayama intended to present karate not as “mystery” but as “a rationally analyzable use of the body.” The heavy use of strobe photography was a concrete embodiment of that intention.

Third, the book has an aspect of having been produced within a relationship of collaboration between Western martial-arts researchers — Donn F. Draeger foremost among them — and the JKA. The English Wikipedia entry on Nakayama notes that Draeger was a notable co-author of his. The book can also be read as the product of a joint effort to hand the mainland Shōtōkan tradition over to the English-speaking world while aligning it with the insights of a researcher who approached Japanese budō from the outside.

2-3. Its evaluation in karate history

First, the book is highly valued as the standard text standing at the starting point of the postwar “Shōtōkan opened to the world.” Many instructors in Western Shōtōkan-lineage dōjō used it as their first instructional book, and it continues to be referenced as a classic exposition of the fundamentals to this day.

Second, the fact that it made karate’s high-speed movements visible through strobe photography is regarded as an epoch-making achievement in the media history of martial-arts books. The trajectories of punches and kicks, which had until then been mystified as “too fast for the eye to follow,” were rendered into objective records and turned into material anyone could analyze. This was a symbolic milestone in the effort to modernize karate as “a technical system that can be taught rationally.”

Third, the book is also the starting point of the series of Nakayama’s writings that culminated in the later eleven-volume Best Karate — Vol. 1 Comprehensive, Vol. 2 Fundamentals, Vols. 3–4 Kumite, Vol. 5 Heian, Tekki, Vol. 6 Bassai, Kanku, Vol. 7 Jitte, Hangetsu, Empi, Vol. 8 Gankaku, Jion, and Vols. 9–11. The long labor of building up the technical language of the JKA — the “standard language of the Shōtōkan school” — in both English and Japanese has its first full-scale fruit in this book.

Still, this book too is not an absolute authority. In later years, debate arose within Shōtōkan itself over whether the “deeply lowered, settled posture” and “linear footwork” that it presents in fact coincide with the movements of Funakoshi Gichin himself in his Okinawan period. There is also a need to read it in relative terms — as a book that captured a particular era’s image of Shōtōkan, one strongly reflecting the mainland refinements introduced from the time of Funakoshi Gigō (Yoshitaka) onward.

2-4. The road to Dynamic Karate — the body of work that preceded it

Dynamic Karate was not Nakayama’s first work. In the years from the late 1950s to the early 1960s preceding it, keeping pace with the JKA’s development of its instructional system, a number of important works and manuals had accumulated in both English and Japanese. It is fairer to position Dynamic Karate as the culmination of that sustained body of writing.

The first to mention is the English-language Practical Karate series. From 1963 to 1964, six volumes were published by Charles E. Tuttle, co-authored with the martial-arts researcher Donn F. Draeger. Each volume treats applied and self-defense techniques organized by concrete situation — against an unarmed assailant, against weapons, against multiple opponents, against attacks on women, against street criminals, and against ruffians — a “thematic series” of applied English-language works. Whereas Dynamic Karate treats the foundations of karate technique, Practical Karate focuses on application and self-defense, standing in a complementary position. The collaboration with Draeger, in particular, is significant for having prepared the “perspective of analyzing budō objectively from the outside” that would run through Nakayama’s later works.

Second — and standing in the closest relationship to Dynamic Karate — is the Japanese-language Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei (“A New Course in Karate-dō”), published in 1965 (Shōwa 40) by Tsuru Shobō. This was the book in which Nakayama, as sole author, first brought to fruition in Japanese the techniques and theory of karate that he had organized and developed within the JKA. The methodology that would be carried over directly into the later Dynamic Karate — analytical description drawing on the vocabulary of mechanics, anatomy, and physiology; stop-motion photographic breakdowns of movement; the standardization of technical terminology — was already fully developed at the stage of this book. The fact that many later Western Shōtōkan researchers share the convention of introducing Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei as “the Japanese-language counterpart of Dynamic Karate” is because the structural correspondence between the two books is evident at a glance. As a matter of record, Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei was subsequently reissued in a popular edition in 1966 (under the name of Nakayama Masatoshi, chief instructor of the JKA, Tsuru Shobō) and ran through many printings; from 1968 it was also developed into a set of kata-by-kata installments as the Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei: Kata Series (compiled by the JKA Instruction Department under Nakayama’s supervision, Tsuru Shobō, covering Heian Yondan and others).

Third — though not Nakayama’s own work — one must also mention, as the first full-scale large-format English technical book that the postwar JKA sent out to the English-speaking world, Karate: The Art of “Empty Hand” Fighting, co-authored by Nishiyama Hidetaka and Richard C. Brown (Charles E. Tuttle, 1960). Said to have sold more than 300,000 copies overseas, this is a postwar English-language bestseller and the representative work of Nishiyama, who, together with Nakayama, bore responsibility for the early-postwar overseas instruction of the JKA. The standard forms of the Shōtōkan school that Nakayama was organizing as chief instructor and the technical system of this book stood in a relationship of shared instructional structure within the JKA of the time. Dynamic Karate can also be read as a book that, building on the layer of English-speaking Shōtōkan readers that Nishiyama’s book had opened up, responded anew — this time armed with even more systematic and scientific description, and with the new weapon of visualization through strobe photography.

Taking all of this into account, Dynamic Karate was not a single volume that suddenly materialized in 1966. It was a “culminating” work, published when the time was ripe, on three foundations: (1) the development of the applied repertoire through the six-volume Practical Karate (1963–64); (2) the bringing-to-fruition of the technical system in Japanese through Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei (1965); and (3) the layer of English-speaking readers opened up by Nishiyama Hidetaka and others through Karate: The Art of “Empty Hand” Fighting (1960). Only when read against this prehistory does the book’s innovativeness come into sharp relief.

3. Who Was Ōyama Masutatsu?

Ōyama Masutatsu (1923–1994; birth name Choi Yeong-eui, Korean 최영의) was one of the most widely known Japanese martial artists outside Japan in the second half of the twentieth century. (With the coming into force of the San Francisco Peace Treaty he lost Japanese nationality in 1952 and became a Korean national; in later years he naturalized as a Japanese citizen under the name “Ōyama Masutatsu.” Sources differ on the date of naturalization: the English Wikipedia and others give 1968 (Shōwa 43), while the official Kyokushin-lineage chronologies give 1962. His birth name “Choi Yeong-eui” and his date of birth are confirmed by an enrollment certificate issued by Waseda University.)

The first half of Ōyama’s life is full of contradictory accounts of his origins and career, and sorting them out has itself become a major theme of karate-history research. Even between his own autobiographies and the biographies based on his own telling, there are discrepancies as to his year of birth (1922 or 1923), his official date of birth (most commonly given in English-language sources as 27 July 1923 by the solar calendar, which corresponds to the fourth day of the sixth month of the old lunar calendar — the two are the same birthday expressed in different calendars, not competing dates), the timing of his arrival in Japan, and his wartime career. Here only the points of higher certainty are listed.

He was from Gimje, North Jeolla Province, on the Korean Peninsula. He spent his early childhood in colonial-era Korea and came to Japan in his late teens.
Around 1937–38 he entered the Yamanashi Aviation Technical School (today’s Japan Aviation High School; the official Kyokushin biography calls it the “Yamanashi Youth Aviation School”). After moving to Tokyo, he studied — according to his own account and the official Kyokushin account — Shōtōkan karate under Funakoshi Gichin, Gōjū-ryū karate under Yamaguchi Gōgen, and also under the Korean-Japanese karateka So Nei Chu (Cho Nyeong-ju). It has been suggested, however, that the actual hands-on instruction at Shōtōkan may have centered on Funakoshi’s third son, Gigō (Yoshitaka); this point is taken up again in Chapter 5.
He and some biographies state that he was enrolled at Takushoku University, but in later years Kojima Hitoshi and Tsukamoto Yoshiko, in Ōyama Masutatsu Seiden (“The True Biography of Ōyama Masutatsu,” Shinchōsha, 2006), wrote that, through inquiries to Takushoku University’s academic affairs office and alumni association, they were unable to confirm the fact of his enrollment. This point requires careful handling, as discussed below.
His entry into the Physical Education Department of the Higher Normal Division of Waseda University (April 1946) is confirmed by the Waseda enrollment certificate cited in the Japanese Wikipedia (enrolled under the name “Choi Yeong-eui,” date of birth “4 June 1923”). He was removed from the rolls in 1948. As to the reason, Ōyama himself variously said that he “could not pay the tuition” and that he “had things he wanted to do other than study.”
After the war came his “mountain retreat training” at Mt. Minobu, Mt. Kiyosumi, and elsewhere (the Kiyosumi retreat lasting about a year and a half, from April 1948 to November 1950); his “confrontations with bulls” at Tateyama, Chiba Prefecture (from November 1950 — according to his own account and the official Kyokushin biography, he faced a total of 52 bulls, of which three were killed outright with a single blow, while the horns of 49 others were struck off with a knife-hand blow; this series of episodes was released in 1954 as the documentary film Karate vs. the Raging Bulls); and his expedition to the United States (from 1952, where, billed as the “younger brother” of the professional wrestler “Great Togo,” he gave demonstrations while reportedly fighting wrestlers and boxers). In 1954 he opened the Ōyama Dōjō in Mejiro, Tokyo. In 1964 he completed his headquarters in Ikebukuro and formally launched the International Karate Organization Kyokushin Kaikan.
In 1969 he held the First All-Japan Open Tournament Karate Championships at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, raising in earnest the banner of “direct-strike (full-contact) karate.” From 1 to 3 November 1975 he held, at the (old) Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, the First Open Tournament World Karate Championships, popularly called the “Karate Olympics” (winner Satō Katsuaki, runner-up Royama Hatsuo, third place Ninomiya Jōkō). From then on he became a global symbolic presence of full-contact karate.

The significance of Ōyama in karate history lies, first, in his having systematized the direct-strike format of training and competition, and constructed a logic that connected it to “karate as a martial way (budō).” Second, it lies in his having pushed karate up into a material of mass culture that crossed national borders, by way of his own books, comics, and television. Third, it lies in his having run a vast international organization, the Kyokushin Kaikan, deploying a network of branches across more than 120 countries.

At the same time, there is a wide gap between myth and fact in Ōyama’s life, and later researchers continue, painstakingly, the work of filling in that gap. The stance of this essay is to refrain from filling it in carelessly and turning it into edifying legend, and instead to examine the matter while making the differences among the sources explicit.

4. Who Was Nakayama Masatoshi?

Nakayama Masatoshi (13 April 1913 – 15 April 1987; these are the most commonly cited dates, though some sources give the birth date as 6 April and the death date as 14 April) was the single greatest contributor to the development of postwar Shōtōkan karate as an international organization.

Nakayama’s family was an old house connected to the Sanada family (the lords of the Matsushiro domain) of Shinshū (Nagano Prefecture), and his ancestors are said to have included several swordsmanship instructors, according to the official English-language biography of the Japan Karate Association. Some secondary sources state that his great-grandfather was “the Shintō Munen-ryū swordsman Nakayama Hyōemon,” that his grandfather Naomichi was a physician who moved to Tokyo at the time of the Meiji Restoration, and that his father too was a physician. But the founder of Shintō Munen-ryū is held to be Fukui Hyōemon Kahei, and it is difficult to confirm a swordsman by the name “Nakayama Hyōemon” in public genealogical records; this series of family claims, together with the “physician’s lineage” account, requires further verification against primary sources.

An overview of Nakayama’s life runs roughly as follows.

Born 1913, in Yamaguchi Prefecture.
In 1932, against the wishes of his physician family, he entered Takushoku University in Tokyo, where he studied Chinese.
While at Takushoku, there is a famous anecdote that he had originally intended to join the kendō club but, mistaking the practice hall, wandered into the karate club and stayed with karate. He studied Shōtōkan karate in earnest under Funakoshi Gichin and his third son, Funakoshi Gigō (officially read “Yoshitaka,” commonly called “Gigō”).
In 1937 (Shōwa 12) he graduated from Takushoku University. The same year he went to China. Accounts of this period differ: some sources describe him as an exchange student who went to deepen his study of the Chinese language and history (the institution is sometimes named as the Daitō Gakusha in Beijing), while English-language sources, including the English Wikipedia, describe him as having served as a military interpreter during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In May 1946 (Shōwa 21), after the war’s end, he was repatriated to Japan.
In 1949 (the JKA’s official biography gives 1948), with alumni of the various Shōtōkan-lineage universities of the Kantō region at its core, the Japan Karate Association was established as a voluntary body (incorporation as a public-interest association coming in 1957, or 1958 by some accounts). Nakayama carried the central administrative work.
In 1958, with incorporation, he became the JKA’s first chief instructor (per the JKA official biography, Shōwa 33). However, the year of his appointment as “chief instructor” is given by some sources as 1949 (JKA WF America and others) and 1955 (some biographies), and it is highly likely that he was already serving as de facto chief instructor, leading the teaching, during Funakoshi Gichin’s lifetime. In 1966 he published the English-language Dynamic Karate with Kodansha International.
From 1977 onward he published the eleven-volume Best Karate series. He led the internationalization of postwar Shōtōkan, training overseas instructors and organizing world championships.
He died in Tokyo on 15 April 1987 (aged 74). He was the first person in the history of Shōtōkan to be awarded ninth dan during his lifetime, and was posthumously awarded tenth dan.

Nakayama was also the greatest organizer of postwar Shōtōkan karate, standardizing it not only inside the practice hall but on paper as well. As we have already seen, by the time he reached Dynamic Karate he had put out a number of important works in both English and Japanese, and that stream did not break off until the year of his death. The total number of Nakayama’s sole-authored, co-authored, and supervised works — counting the kata-by-kata installments and derivative books — comfortably exceeds thirty, making him probably the most systematic and sustained writer among postwar karateka.

Arranged in order of publication, his principal works are roughly as follows.

1963–64: the six-volume English-language Practical Karate series, co-authored with the martial-arts researcher Donn F. Draeger and published by Charles E. Tuttle (USA / Tokyo). Treating applied karate by situation — against an unarmed attacker, against weapons, against multiple opponents, against attacks on women, against street crime, against ruffians — it is among the earliest systematic applied works for the English-speaking world. Draeger’s participation furnished a manner of exposition and an analytical framework aimed at Western martial-arts researchers.
1965: the Japanese-language Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei (“A New Course in Karate-dō”), published by Tsuru Shobō. A culmination that anticipated, in Japanese, the methodology of the later Dynamic Karate — standardized technical terminology, analytical exposition grounded in mechanics and anatomy, and photographic breakdowns of movement.
1966: the English-language Dynamic Karate: Instructions by the Master, published by Kodansha International. Adopting strobe photography across the board, it became established as the standard technical text for the English-speaking world. The same year, the popular edition of Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei (Tsuru Shobō) also appeared.
From 1968: the Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei: Kata Series, compiled by the JKA Instruction Department under Nakayama’s supervision and published in succession by Tsuru Shobō, developed as kata-by-kata installments such as “Heian Yondan.”
From 1977: the eleven-volume English-language Best Karate series, published by Kodansha International. Divided into comprehensive, fundamentals, kumite, and kata volumes, it was the grand summation of Nakayama’s later writing, reorganizing the Shōtōkan technical system as a complete body for English-reading audiences.
Beyond these, there are numerous kata-by-kata explanatory books, assorted derivative works, and mutual English–Japanese translations. After his death, Dynamic Karate and the Best Karate series have been reprinted in various countries — in 1987, 2012, and 2017.

Surveying this body of work, one can read three consistent features in Nakayama as a writer. First, an analytical, scientific style of description incorporating the vocabulary and concepts of mechanics, anatomy, physiology, and pedagogy. Nakayama thoroughly avoided speaking of karate as an “Eastern mystery,” striving instead to describe it as a bodily technique anyone could repeat and verify. Second, a thoroughgoing commitment to the objective visualization of movement through strobe and sequential photography. Nakayama was deeply involved in the selection of the photographs in his books and is said to have frequently attended the photo shoots himself. Third, he continued to present the same technical system in parallel in both Japanese and English. By rewriting the same concepts many times over in both languages, he had the effect of developing the technical language of Shōtōkan in two languages simultaneously. In these three points, the trajectory by which postwar Shōtōkan was organized into “a martial art legible as a world standard” is directly projected.

Nakayama’s significance in karate history lies, first, in his having reorganized Shōtōkan into “a modern martial art viable on a world scale.” Second, it lies in his having systematically developed technical books and manuals in both English and Japanese, driving forward the standardization of the technical language. Third, it lies in his having modernized the bodily usage of karate as something visualizable and analyzable, beginning with the introduction of strobe photography.

As a personal figure, Nakayama carried the layered background of a modern Japanese intellectual — a family that moved from a lineage of swordsmen to a lineage of physicians, and who then himself turned to the way of the martial arts. His own writing stands out for its careful avoidance of mysticism and its way of speaking about karate in the language of anatomy, mechanics, and pedagogy. Even compared with the leaders of other schools of the same era, he was a karateka of an exceptionally scholarly character.

5. What Connects the Two Men — Shōtōkan, Funakoshi Gigō, and Takushoku University

When the careers of the two men surveyed so far are placed side by side, a number of shared threads come into view behind them. This section organizes those threads along three axes: “Shōtōkan and Funakoshi Gichin,” “Funakoshi Gigō,” and “Takushoku University.” It should be said that this section is precisely the domain where interpretations diverge among researchers. The essay distinguishes here between what can be written with certainty and what cannot.

5-1. Shōtōkan and Funakoshi Gichin

Nakayama, during his enrollment at Takushoku University from 1932, was a direct student of Funakoshi Gichin and a member of the legitimate Shōtōkan line. The 1949 founding of the JKA, too, was a movement centered on the alumni of the various Kantō universities who had studied under Funakoshi before the war, and Nakayama stood in the position of carrying the “legitimate successor organization” of Funakoshi’s lineage.

Ōyama too, by his own telling, had a period after coming to Japan (in 1938, or by one account 1943) when he studied under Funakoshi Gichin in Tokyo. In general karate history as well, the placing of Shōtōkan at Ōyama’s point of departure is stated explicitly both in the official Kyokushin accounts and in Ōyama’s own autobiographies.

In other words, both men share a common point of departure: prewar-to-wartime Shōtōkan karate in Tokyo. This means that at the root of the two men’s postwar technical systems there exists — at least as a trace — a common image of “the basics.”

5-2. Funakoshi Gigō (Yoshitaka) — the slender thread that connects the two men separately

Here a figure deserving of attention is Funakoshi Gichin’s third son, Funakoshi Gigō (1906–1945). Having come up to Tokyo from Okinawa in 1923 at the age of seventeen to join his father, Gigō worked principally as an X-ray technician at the Ministry of Education’s physical-medical consultation office, while, after the death of his father’s senior disciple Shimoda Takeshi, he came to be called the “young master” and effectively served as the instructor-deputy for the karate clubs of various universities. He is known as the figure who, in substance, organized much of the present-day image of Shōtōkan: the systematization of the roundhouse kick and side kicks (rising and thrusting); the creation of the kumite form “Ten-no-kata,” the “Taikyoku” kata, and the bō (staff) kata “Matsukaze”; and the so-called “deeply lowered posture” and “long, linear footwork.”

That Nakayama, in his Takushoku days, received instruction from both Funakoshi Gichin and his third son Gigō is reported consistently — from the JKA’s official accounts, through the various biographies, to the English Wikipedia entry on Nakayama. The Takushoku University karate club was founded in 1930 (Shōwa 5), and it is corroborated by several Shōtōkan historical sources that there was a period in which Gigō, together with his father, was directly involved in the club’s on-the-floor training. That Nakayama’s image of Shōtōkan came to bear the strong influence of the mainland refinements from Gigō onward — rather than the movements of Funakoshi’s own Okinawan period — is naturally explained by this line of transmission.

Ōyama’s relationship with Funakoshi Gigō, on the other hand, is spoken of in a separate context. The period in which Ōyama is said to have studied under Funakoshi Gichin was in wartime Tokyo. At that time, several Shōtōkan historical sources record that, at Funakoshi Gichin’s dōjō, his son Gigō bore a considerable part of the practical instruction. Whether the person from whom Ōyama actually learned on the Shōtōkan floor was Funakoshi Gichin himself, or whether it was by way of Gigō, therefore still requires careful examination in terms of the sources. At the very least, there is a basis for reading that both men came into contact, through Funakoshi Gigō, with the mainland-period bodily usage of Shōtōkan.

For reference: in the inaugural issue of Gekkan Karate-dō (“Karate-dō Monthly,” Karate Jihōsha, 1956), in a conversation with Kinjō Hiroshi, Ōyama says: “It was around Shōwa 18, or perhaps 17. Until then I had been doing jūdō, but by chance, hearing that karate was good, I knocked on the door of Master Funakoshi.” The conversation also contains a reference to the bedridden “young master” (Funakoshi Gigō).

What is important is that the two men did not meet directly by way of Funakoshi Gigō. Nakayama connected to Gigō through the institutional route of Takushoku University and the JKA; Ōyama, through the separate route of a wartime Tokyo dōjō. Each connected to Funakoshi Gigō independently. Two trees that, having a common root, grew up as separate branches — that is the image that symbolizes the relationship of the two men.

5-3. Takushoku University — a shared element open to debate

Another thread connecting the two men — but the one requiring the most cautious handling — is Takushoku University.

That Nakayama entered Takushoku University in 1932 and graduated in 1937 is something on which the JKA, the records on the Takushoku side, the English Wikipedia, and the various biographical testimonies all agree, and it may be treated as established fact. Nakayama maintained a deep relationship with the Takushoku karate club and its alumni right up to the postwar period, laying the groundwork for the great weight that “the tradition of the Takushoku karate club” would come to carry within later Shōtōkan.

As for Ōyama, his own autobiographies, the official Kyokushin biography, and various fan sites and encyclopedia entries state that he “studied at Takushoku University.” The anecdote is often cited that, moved by the victory of the jūdōka Kimura Masahiko (1917–1993; enrolled at Takushoku in 1935, graduated 1941) — then a Takushoku student — at the 1940 (Shōwa 15) martial-arts tournament held under imperial inspection in commemoration of the 2,600th anniversary of the imperial line, Ōyama too set his sights on entering the same university.

In later years, however, Kojima Hitoshi and Tsukamoto Yoshiko, in Ōyama Masutatsu Seiden (Shinchōsha, 2006), conducted inquiries to Takushoku University’s academic affairs office and alumni association and wrote that no official record confirming Ōyama’s enrollment at Takushoku could be found. The Japanese Wikipedia cites this point with its source.

The stance of this essay is to enter the following reservations on this question.

Ōyama’s autobiographical accounts repeatedly count “Takushoku University” as one of his academic credentials.
On the other hand, no primary source from the institutional records on the Takushoku side has, at present, been made public to corroborate this.
Therefore, all that can be said with certainty at present is that “whether or not there was an institutional connection between Ōyama and Takushoku University is undetermined.”

This very indeterminacy is important in speaking of the relationship between the two men. For Nakayama, Takushoku University was the very gateway into the world of karate, and the matrix of the human and organizational network of his post-graduation life. For Ōyama, on the other hand, Takushoku University is, so to speak, a “Takushoku of the autobiography” — one he refers to repeatedly, yet difficult to confirm from the outside. The “Takushoku” thread that links the two men seems visible, yet on the horizon of the sources it is thin, and in places broken.

5-4. Summary — separate trees from the same root

To summarize, the threads connecting the two men can be organized as follows.

A common distant root: mainland-period Shōtōkan, and at its center the father-and-son pair Funakoshi Gichin and Gigō.
Different routes of connection: Nakayama by the institutional route of Takushoku University and the JKA; Ōyama by the non-institutional route of a Tokyo dōjō and his own autobiographical account.
An overlapping but non-coinciding academic record: Takushoku University — certain for Nakayama, undetermined for Ōyama.
No direct teacher–student relationship or shared training between the two has been confirmed.

The two men are something one might call “the two great trees of post-Shōtōkan” in postwar karate history. Nakayama re-polished the mainstream of Shōtōkan and opened it to the world. Ōyama branched off from the roots of Shōtōkan and, while placing Gōjū-ryū (Yamaguchi Gōgen) at his core, took in diverse elements — Kōdōkan jūdō, boxing, and even, for a short period, Daitō-ryū aiki-jūjutsu (Yoshida Kōtarō) — to raise a separate tree: “the martial way of direct striking.” The two grew from the same soil and, without ever directly intersecting, polarized the postwar map of karate into two.

6. The Bibliography in Ōyama Masutatsu’s Dynamic Karate

Even granting that the two men never directly crossed paths, one clear point of contact nevertheless remains — inside a book. In the bibliography of Ōyama Masutatsu’s Dynamic Karate — at least in the 1967 first edition that the present author has been able to examine — there appears Nakayama Masatoshi’s work Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei (Tsuru Shobō).

What follows is a collation of the bibliography in the 1967 first edition, based on the present author’s examination of the original. The original prints its references in two separate places — one list on p. 38 and another at the back of the book — with many titles repeated across the two. Here those two lists have been consolidated into a single bibliography, with the duplicated entries merged. Publicly searchable catalog and used-book data confirm the basic bibliographical facts of Ōyama’s volume — 1967 publication, 日貿出版社/Nichibo Publications, roughly 190 pages, and early later printings — but they do not reproduce the complete reference list. For that reason, the text below should be understood as a transcription-and-identification layer based on the original 1967 bibliography; where names or titles look garbled, the remaining uncertainty lies chiefly in identifying the works behind the printed entries, not in whether those entries appear in the first edition.

On the titles below. Following the convention set out at the head of this article, each work is given first in its original-language script (Japanese or Chinese), followed in parentheses by a romanized reading and an English rendering. Works that originally appeared in a Western language are left in their printed form. Where an actual English-language edition of a Japanese work exists, that real published title is noted. In all other cases the English is a literal translation supplied only for reference, and may differ from any title under which the work has actually circulated. The original bibliography also contains a number of apparent misprints in titles and names; these are reproduced as printed, with notes where helpful.

Bibliography

[Karate-related]

Mutsu Mizuho et al. (eds.), 『唐手拳法』 (Tōde Kenpō, lit. “The Fist Method of the Tang Hand [Karate]”), Tokyo Imperial University Tōde (Karate) Research Society, Hongō, August 1933.
Sai Chōkō (Cài Chánggēng), 『唐手教範鶴拳法』 (Tōde Kyōhan: Kaku Kenpō, lit. “A Karate Manual: The Crane Fist Method”), Renbukan, 1958.
Sai Chōkō, 『唐手教範太祖拳剛柔派』 (Tōde Kyōhan: Taiso-ken, Gōjū-ha, lit. “A Karate Manual: The Taizu Fist, Gōjū Branch”), Naigai Times, 1963.
Sawayama Muneomi, 『日本拳法』 (Nihon Kenpō, lit. “Japanese Kenpō”), Mainichi Shimbun, December 1964.
Funakoshi Gichin, 『空手道教範』 (Karate-Dō Kyōhan) — an English edition exists as Karate-Dō Kyōhan: The Master Text (trans. Tsutomu Ohshima, Kodansha International, 1973). Nichigetsusha.
Hase Yoshikatsu, 『空手道入門』 (Karate-Dō Nyūmon, lit. “An Introduction to Karate-dō”), Bunshindō.
Sasajima Kōsuke, 『中国体育史』 (Chūgoku Taiiku-shi, lit. “A History of Chinese Physical Education”), Shōyō Shoin. (The characters “大島雑記” printed before the title in the original appear to be a misprint.)
『新体育講座』 (Shin Taiiku Kōza, lit. “New Lectures on Physical Education”), vols. 1–26, Shōyō Shoin.
Ishikawa Bun’ichi, 『琉球の武勇伝』 (Ryūkyū no Buyū-den, lit. “Tales of Ryukyuan Martial Valor”), Hanagusuku Shoten.
Ishikawa Bun’ichi, 『大動乱—空手由来記—前後篇』 (Dai-Dōran: Karate Yurai-ki, Zen-/Go-hen, lit. “The Great Upheaval: A Record of the Origins of Karate, Parts One and Two”), Hanagusuku Shoten.
(ed.) 『太極拳運動』 (Chinese Tàijíquán yùndòng, lit. “Taijiquan [Tai Chi] Exercises”), 2 vols., People’s Sports Publishing House (Beijing). (The editor’s name, printed “武木科,” is likely garbled.)
『岳飛拳』 (Chinese Yuè Fēi quán, lit. “Yue Fei Fist”), Cheung Kee Book Co. (Hong Kong).
『北派佛家拳』 (Chinese Běipài Fójiā quán, lit. “Northern-School Buddhist-Family Fist”), Cheung Kee Book Co. (Hong Kong).
『少林金剛拳』 (Chinese Shàolín Jīngāng quán, lit. “Shaolin Vajra Fist”), Cheung Kee Book Co. (Hong Kong).
『武當八卦拳』 (Chinese Wǔdāng Bāguà quán, lit. “Wudang Bagua Fist”), Cheung Kee Book Co. (Hong Kong).
『梅花単刀』 (Chinese Méihuā dāndāo, lit. “Plum-Blossom Single Broadsword”), Cheung Kee Book Co. (Hong Kong).
『全図易筋経』 (Chinese Yìjīnjīng, lit. “The Fully Illustrated Yijinjing [Muscle-and-Tendon Change Classic],” attributed to Bodhidharma/Daruma), Nanpū Shuppansha.
『全図易筋経』 (Chinese Yìjīnjīng, lit. “The Fully Illustrated Yijinjing,” attributed to Bodhidharma/Daruma), Shinzenbi Shuppansha.
Seiwa(?), 『内家八卦掌』 (Chinese Nèijiā Bāguàzhǎng, lit. “Internal-School Bagua Palm”), Shinzenbi Shuppansha.
Kō Bankei (Hóng Wànxīn), 『五大健康修練法』 (lit. “Five Great Methods of Health Cultivation”), Shinzenbi Shuppansha.
『少林棍槍法闡宗』 (lit. “An Elucidation of the Shaolin Staff and Spear Methods”), Nanpū Shuppansha.
En Sozai (Yuán Chǔcái), 『武功秘訣の一・鉄砂掌功』 (lit. “Secrets of Martial Skill, No. 1: Iron-Sand Palm Training”), Nanpū Shuppansha.
Chō Renwa & Chin Tessei (Zhào Liánhé & Chén Tiěshēng), 『達摩剣』 (lit. “The Bodhidharma Sword”), Nanpū Shuppansha.
Ryū Hōmō (Liú Fǎmèng), 『武術大観』 (lit. “A Grand Survey of the Martial Arts”), Nanpū Shuppansha.
Nihon Karate-dō Fukyūkai (Japan Karate-dō Dissemination Society), 『空手道講座』 (Karate-Dō Kōza, lit. “Lectures on Karate-dō”), Tōkyō Shoin.
Nihon Karate Kenkyūkai (Japan Karate Research Society), 『空手道入門』 (Karate-Dō Nyūmon, lit. “An Introduction to Karate-dō”), Wakaba Shobō.
Miyagi Kōbu, 『空手の習い方』 (Karate no Naraikata, lit. “How to Learn Karate”), Sanyōsha.
Ryōbukan Konishi Dōjō, 『空手術入門』 (Karate-jutsu Nyūmon, lit. “An Introduction to the Art of Karate”), Uozumi Shoten. (The original prints the title as “空手術入,” apparently dropping the final character 門.)
Tōyama Kanken, 『空手道大宝鑑』 (Karate-Dō Dai-Hōkan, lit. “The Great Treasury of Karate-dō”), Tsuru Shobō.
Tōyama Kanken, 『空手入門』 (Karate Nyūmon, lit. “An Introduction to Karate”), Genbunsha.
Konishi Yasuyasu, 『空手上達法』 (Karate Jōtatsu-hō, lit. “How to Advance in Karate”), Sanyōsha. (Reading of the given name uncertain; possibly the same person as “Konishi Yasunori” below.)
Hironishi Motonobu, 『目でみる空手入門』 (Me de Miru Karate Nyūmon, lit. “A Visual Introduction to Karate”), Nishizawa Kōbundō.
Shukumine Seiken, 『新武道教範』 (Shin Budō Kyōhan, lit. “A New Manual of the Martial Way”), Nihon Bungeisha.
『月刊空手道』 (Gekkan Karate-Dō, lit. “Karate-dō Monthly”), vol. 1 no. 1 – vol. 2 no. 15, Karate Jihōsha.
Nakasone Genwa, 『空手道大観』 (Karate-Dō Taikan, lit. “A Comprehensive Survey of Karate-dō”), Tōkyō Tosho.
『空手道真髄』 (Karate-Dō Shinzui, lit. “The Essence of Karate-dō”), Dai-Nippon Karate-dō Shōtōkan.
Nakayama Masatoshi, 『空手道新教程』 (Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei, lit. “A New Course in Karate-dō”; widely described as the Japanese-language counterpart of his English Dynamic Karate), Tsuru Shobō.
Mabuni Kenwa et al. (eds.), 『空手道入門』 (Karate-Dō Nyūmon), Karate Kenkyūsha.
Sai Chōkō, 『興武館鶴拳法』 (Kōbukan Kaku Kenpō, lit. “The Kōbukan Crane Fist Method”), Naigai Times.
Sai Chōkō, 『太祖拳』 (Taiso-ken, Chinese Tàizǔ quán, lit. “Taizu Fist”), Naigai Times. (Original prints “太租拳”; the intended characters are 太祖拳.)
Ishiguro Keishichi, 『空手早わかり』 (Karate Hayawakari, lit. “Karate at a Glance”).
Ōtsuka Reikichi, 『空手の習い方』 (Karate no Naraikata, lit. “How to Learn Karate”), Kin’ensha.
Konishi Yasunori, 『空手道入門』 (Karate-Dō Nyūmon), Airyūdō.
Mabuni Ken’ei, 『空手道』 (Karate-Dō), Airyūdō.
Anjō Kei, 『空手道の楽しみ方』 (Karate-Dō no Tanoshimi-kata, lit. “How to Enjoy Karate-dō”), Baseball Magazine.
Sō Dōshin, 『秘伝少林寺拳法』 (Hiden Shōrinji Kempo, lit. “The Secret Transmission of Shōrinji Kempo”), Kōbunsha.
Yamaguchi Gōgen, 『剛柔の息吹』 (Gōjū no Ibuki, lit. “The Breath of Gōjū”), Bunkaidō.
Mutsu Mizuho (ed.), 『空手拳法』 (Karate Kenpō), Tokyo Imperial University Karate Research Society.
Mabuni Kenwa, 『攻防自在護身術空手拳法』 (Kōbō Jizai Goshin-jutsu Karate Kenpō, lit. “Self-Defense Karate Kenpō, Free in Attack and Defense”), Karate Kenkyūsha.
『空手研究』 (Karate Kenkyū, lit. “Karate Studies”), nos. 1–2, Karate Kenkyūsha.
Mabuni Kenwa, 『十八（セーパイ）の研究』 (Sēpai no Kenkyū, lit. “A Study of [the kata] Seipai”), Karate Kenkyūsha.

[Karate-related, Western-language books] (printed in English in the original; reproduced as given)

This Is Karate, Masutatsu Oyama, Japan Publications.
What Is Karate?, Masutatsu Oyama, Japan Publications.
Secrets of Chinese Karate, E. Parker.
Korean Karate, Woo Kongsu.
Complete Book of Self Defense, Bruce Tegner.
Super Karate Made Easy, Moja Rone.
Zen Combat, Jay Gluck.
Practical Karate (series), Nakayama & D. Draeger.
Karate: The Art of “Empty Hand” Fighting, N. Nishiyama & R. Brown.
Technique of Self-Defense, C. Lee & R. Figueroa.
Karate par l’image (series), H. D. Plée (French; English: “Karate Through Pictures”).
Karate by Image, H. D. Plée.
Natural Weapons: A Manual of Karate, Judo, and Jujitsu, K. Freudenberg.
Manual of Karate, E. J. Harrison.
Judo and Karate Belt Degrees, B. Tegner.
Judo-Karate for Law Officers, B. Tegner.
Mas. Oyama’s Karate, B. Lowe.
Hand to Hand Combat, R. Begala and J. Louise.
Karate (Tropical Book No. 40), J. Kuhl.
Karate Is My Life, R. A. Trias.
My Method of Self-Defense, M. Kawanishi.

[Other]

Tōhei Kōichi, 『生活の中の合気道』 (Seikatsu no Naka no Aikidō) — published in English as Aikido in Daily Life. Rikugei Shobō.
Kudō Kazumi et al. (eds.), 『柔道講座』 (Jūdō Kōza, lit. “Lectures on Jūdō”), vols. 1–5, Hakusuisha.
Sō Dōshin, 『少林寺拳法』 (Shōrinji Kempo), Kōbunsha.
Shioda Gōzō, 『合気道の楽しみ方』 (Aikidō no Tanoshimi-kata, lit. “How to Enjoy Aikidō”), Seitōsha.
Nakasone Genwa, 『武道物語』 (Budō Monogatari, lit. “Tales of Budō”), Banrikaku.
Dōmyō Hiroaki, 『ソ連の格闘技サンボの技と訓練』 (lit. “A Soviet Combat Sport: The Techniques and Training of Sambo”), Kōwadō.
Charles A. Bucher, Foundations of Physical Education (Japanese trans. by Ebashi Shinshirō as 『体育の基礎理論』), Kyōdō Shuppan.
Tokyo University of Education, Physical-Education History Laboratory (ed.), 『図説世界体育史』 (lit. “An Illustrated World History of Physical Education”), Shinshichōsha.
Emmett A. Rice, A Brief History of Physical Education (Japanese trans. by Imamura Yoshio and Tomi as 『世界体育史』), Fumaidō.
Marion R. Broer, Efficiency of Human Movement (Japanese trans. by Miyahata Torahiko as 『身体運動の力学』), Baseball Magazine.
Ferenc Mező, The History of the Olympic Games (Japanese trans. by Ōshima Kenkichi as 『古代オリンピックの歴史』), Baseball Magazine.
Mao Zedong, “A Study of Physical Education” (Japanese trans. by Yamamura Jirō as 『毛沢東の「体育の研究」付・太極拳』, “…with an appendix on Tai Chi”), Baseball Magazine.

[Other Western-language books] (reproduced as printed)

Aikido in Daily Life, K. Tohei.
What Is Aikido?, K. Tohei.
Aikido: The Art of Self Defense, K. Tohei.
Secret Fighting Arts of the World, J. F. Gilbey (printed “Gilley”).
Athletics of the Ancient World, E. N. Gardiner (printed “E. V. Gardiner”).

From scholarly studies to popular handbooks, a great many works are listed here, among them what appear to be Western-language and Chinese-language volumes. Several Western-language titles can be confirmed independently, but others are difficult to identify exactly under the printed names. There may be errors in the book titles or authors’ names, and some entries may reflect garbled romanization, mistranscription, publisher-list errors, or mistakes already present in the original bibliography. Leaving aside the works written in Japanese (and possibly in Korean or other languages not mentioned here), exactly how Ōyama Masutatsu obtained — and how he worked his way through — this large body of apparently Western- and Chinese-language material is a question that awaits future research.

7. In Closing — What the Two Books of the Same Name Left Behind

Let us look back over postwar karate history, narrowing our focus to the two years 1966 and 1967. Within these two years there appeared, under almost the same title, an English-language standard text of Shōtōkan addressed to the world and a great Japanese-language work of the direct-strike line. The two books symbolically embody two different aspects of the karate of their time — a rational, educational modernization on the one hand, and a combat-oriented deepening of the martial way on the other.

The two authors grew up from the same Shōtōkan soil, yet extended their branches in different directions. Nakayama delivered a common set of “fundamentals” to dōjō around the world, placing karate before the world’s citizens as “an analyzable technique.” Ōyama, upon the “fundamentals” he had inherited in the prewar Shōtōkan, layered direct striking, a philosophy of spirit, and a body usage derived from Gōjū-ryū, pushing karate out into mass culture as “a martial way of real fighting.”

The relationship between the two men was neither one of direct teacher and student nor one of rivalry. The two “Dynamic Karate” books do not fiercely criticize each other; they simply advanced their respective work independently, within the same atmosphere of the same era. And yet, as the report that Nakayama’s name appears in the bibliography of Ōyama’s Dynamic Karate suggests, the roots of the two great trees did, in certain places, surely touch within the same ground of postwar karate.

The karate of the postwar period cannot be told from a single author, a single organization, or a single school. Rather, it is precisely the existence of such “different books of the same name” that offers an excellent point of entry for rereading postwar karate history as the dialogue and parallel running of multiple actors. It is the author’s hope that this article may serve, for readers abroad, as one such point of entry.

Principal References and Sources

Ōyama Masutatsu, 『ダイナミック空手』 (Dainamikku Karate, “Dynamic Karate”), Nichibo Shuppansha（日貿出版社; Nichibo Publications）, 1967 (first ed., ca. 190 pp.); early printings include at least the 1970, 1972 fifth printing, and 1976 editions; later revised and expanded edition, 1981 (206 pp., ISBN 978-4-8170-6406-6), among others.
Ōyama Masutatsu, What Is Karate?, Tokyo-News Co., 1958 (first ed.); revised new edition, Nichibo Shuppansha, 1963, and others.
Ōyama Masutatsu, This Is Karate, Japan Publications, 1965 (first ed.).
Ōyama Masutatsu, Vital Karate, Japan Publications / Nichibo Shuppansha, 1967.
Masatoshi Nakayama, Dynamic Karate: Instructions by the Master, Kodansha International, Tokyo / New York, 1966 (reprinted by Kodansha USA in 2012 and by Penguin Books Australia in 2017).
Nakayama Masatoshi, 『空手道新教程』 (Karate-Dō Shin Kyōtei, “A New Course in Karate-dō”), Tsuru Shobō, 1965 (first ed.); popular edition, 1966; and, from 1968, the 『空手道新教程形シリーズ』 (Kata Series, compiled by the JKA Instruction Department under Nakayama’s supervision, Tsuru Shobō).
Masatoshi Nakayama & Donn F. Draeger, Practical Karate, 6 vols., Charles E. Tuttle, Rutland, Vt. / Tokyo, 1963–1964.
Hidetaka Nishiyama & Richard C. Brown, Karate: The Art of “Empty Hand” Fighting, Charles E. Tuttle, Rutland, Vt. / Tokyo, 1960. (Not Nakayama’s own work, but positioned in this article as a precursor — the first full-scale English technical book that the postwar JKA addressed to the English-speaking world.)
Masatoshi Nakayama, Best Karate series, 11 vols., Kodansha International, 1977 onward.
“Nakayama Masatoshi (karateka),” Japanese Wikipedia (accessed May 2026).
“Masatoshi Nakayama,” English Wikipedia (accessed May 2026).
“Ōyama Masutatsu,” Japanese Wikipedia (accessed May 2026).
“Mas Oyama,” English Wikipedia (accessed May 2026).
Japan Karate Association (JKA), “Nakayama Masatoshi” official profile (webhiden.jp).
International Japan Karate Association, “Memories of Master Nakayama Masatoshi” (ijka.jp).
Shōshikan, “The Two Yoshitaka Masters and Shōtōkan Karate” (jkashoshikan.wixsite.com).
Kojima Hitoshi & Tsukamoto Yoshiko, 『大山倍達正伝』 (Ōyama Masutatsu Seiden, “The True Biography of Ōyama Masutatsu”), Shinchōsha, 2006 (the reliability of its contents requires separate verification).
Kyokushin Kaikan official site, “Introduction to Sōsai Mas Oyama” (kyokushinkaikan.org).
Office Mas-Oyama, “The Complete Bibliography of Sosai Mas Oyama: A Legacy in Print” (mas-oyama.com).
USAdojo, “Masatoshi Nakayama: Shotokan Karate” (usadojo.com).

This article is a draft still undergoing fact-checking. The following points in particular require re-confirmation against the original books and primary sources.
(1) The bibliography above is based on the present author’s examination of the 1967 first edition of Ōyama’s Dynamic Karate. Publicly searchable data confirm the basic bibliographical frame — 1967 publication by 日貿出版社/Nichibo Publications, roughly 190 pages, and early later printings including 1970, a 1972 fifth printing, and 1976 — but they do not reproduce the complete reference list. What remains to be checked is therefore not the presence of the listed entries in the 1967 first edition, but the exact identification of garbled or ambiguous titles and names, and whether later editions altered, deleted, or added any bibliography entries.
(2) The actual training relationship between Ōyama and Funakoshi Gigō.
(3) Whether there was any institutional connection between Ōyama and Takushoku University.
(4) Nakayama’s family lineage: while secondary sources transmit the claim of a great-grandfather, “the Shintō Munen-ryū swordsman Nakayama Hyōemon,” the founder of Shintō Munen-ryū is held to be Fukui Hyōemon Kahei, and the said name cannot be traced in public genealogies. The broad outline given in the JKA’s official English profile (“the Sanada family; a swordsmanship-instructor lineage”) is retained, but the individual names and schools require verification against primary sources.
(5) The weight and timing of Ōyama’s prewar/wartime teachers (Funakoshi Gichin / Funakoshi Gigō / So Nei Chu / Yamaguchi Gōgen). His own telling, the official Kyokushin accounts, and third-party testimony vary as to his first teacher, his principal instructor, and the locations of the dōjō.
(6) Ōyama’s relationship with Daitō-ryū aiki-jūjutsu. The Japanese Wikipedia and Kyokushin-lineage profiles record that in 1956 he briefly studied “aiki-jūjutsu and cane technique” under Yoshida Kōtarō of Daitō-ryū and received a scroll (mokuroku). The character of that scroll, the appropriateness of calling such brief study “full licensure,” and the weight of Daitō-ryū elements in the Kyokushin technical system remain under scholarly examination.
(7) The relationship between Ōyama’s Dynamic Karate (1967, Nichibo Shuppansha) and his own English-language What Is Karate? (1958) and This Is Karate (1965). Nichibo Shuppansha’s current official bibliography positions this book as the first Japanese-language karate book formed with the two English works as its “matrix”; collating the correspondence of chapter structure, photographs, and description against the physical originals is an important task of postwar karate-history research.
Should new primary sources be confirmed on these points, this article will be revised accordingly.