History of Kenpo Part 1 unedited.

In going through my DVD's, I came across a version of the History of Kenpo that seems to be the complete part 1 unlike the previous upload on the subject, it is now believed that was an edited version. www.DomoAji.com

[@pocollito1]

Anyways Mr Parker was a genius in kenpo that’s why he’s well recognized and respected for all the kenpo community

[@magazineretriever9036]

No one should ever talk smack about GM Ed Parker.

[@Scorch1028]

Ed Parker told the truth. Whoever calls him a liar is a piece of garbage.

[@richnielsen4465]

It's funny how he spends the entire video talking about Ed Parker's lies while ignoring his own. He didn't start praising James Mitose until he died. The Tracys spent years telling their students that Mitose had been dead for a long time. The statement that Bodhidharma never taught martial arts is completely false. There is evidence he taught not only at the Shaolin Temple, but in India, Indonesia, and Okinawa as well. Don't get me wrong I have a lot of respect for Al Tracy, but his was very much a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

[@user-mc6kw1ex5v]

Thank you for the true history of Kenpo Karate 😢

[@richnielsen4465]

@@user-mc6kw1ex5v The true history is only learned through multiple sources. Kajukenbo plays a big role as well.

[@Antoine24425]

I really enjoyed watching this video. Thank you for sharing.

[@samiibrahim5356]

1. Kenpo is the Ryukyuan & Japanese pronunciation for the Southern Chinese Martial Arts that in Cantonese are pronounced as Kyun4 Faat3. So, it is not a case of the Ryukyuan or Japanese people being exposed to Northern Chinese Martial Arts and hearing the Mandarin pronunciation Chuan Fa and pronouncing it Kenpo. During the T'ang dynasty (618) trade was taking place between Southern China, Ryukyu and Japan. This is also why the Korean's pronounced it Kwon Bup and the Indonesian's call it Kuntao (along with Malaysia and other surrounding areas) which is a loan word from Hokkien, a Southern Chinese language. So, if you want to start with a correct understanding of what Kenpo actually is, you have to know where it actually came from, not Japan, not Okinawa, not northern Shaolin but rather Southern Chinese Martial Arts. If you don't make that distinction early on, you will not have important information to help you identify fraudulent and watered down Kenpo history later on. 2. When you know where it came from, you can start to get an idea for the environment the people lived and worked in and that will give you an important clue as to why it is designed in the manner that it is. As you come to understand the nature of the sworn brotherhoods in the South of China and the lifestyle of those in "the rivers and lakes" and follow the history of famine, piracy, the imperial decrees of relocation, European and foreign trade, criminalized activity, opium smuggling and rebel activity, you may gain a deeper appreciation for the footwork and techniques emphasized in those Southern Chinese systems and how they relate to one another. This also explains some of the contributing factors to the civil wars that caused Southern Chinese immigration to the islands of Hawaii and the United States. If you can understand the motives and politics involved in the wars you can then better understand why Asians felt the way they felt about Christians and foreigners who would eventually want to be accepted as students of a society that is big on honoring their ancestors, the same ancestors who suffered much at the hands of foreign interference. 3. The earliest European and American people to come back from Asia with a grasp of the Martial Arts were not always given a deep grasp of the martial art they studied, aside from the language and culture barrier they were still viewed in a negative light. Likewise, when Funakoshi a Ryukyuan school teacher introduced and spread Karate in Japan, he changed it a great deal, not to make it better but because he was teaching it to the occupiers of his homeland. It was Choki Motobu who felt that in so doing Funakoshi was turning Karate into an ineffective joke that caused him to go to Japan and teach a more combat effective version of "Kenpo Karate." In Japan there was many organizations or secret groups who hated with every fiber of their being the Western nations, they went to war against Russia and attacked Pearl Harbor in America while doing all this they had a vast intelligence network mostly made up of two types of people. Prostitutes and Martial Arts experts. 4. Choki Motobu tried to introduce Kenpo to the Hawaiian public but was stopped by immigration in 1932, however he had some influence on Thomas Miyashiro who had been training in Kenpo Karate with another Okinawan sensei at a park. When he returned, he encouraged two of his best students to bring books on Kenpo Karate to Hawaii and to help Thomas Miyashiro spread the art to the public there. So, by 1933, Kenpo Karate was being mentioned in the Hawaiian newspapers, public demonstrations were being given and books were being read about it. All of this happened BEFORE the Mitose started teaching out of his garage in 1942. The first Southern Chinese had immigrated much earlier during the time when Captain Cook visited and been practicing Chinese Kyun Faat much earlier. In the 1930s many of the Chinese immigrants would meet at a horse stable and exchange techniques, later they would do this at a Laundry Mat and the zi3 gung1 tong4 (Chee Kung Tong) would later guide and look out for these Southern Chinese immigrant workers, especially in Maui where six tong houses were built by 1910. William Chow's father would first stay in Maui at the HQ before moving. 5. When James Mitose returns to Hawaii he becomes a manager at a brothel and when the prostitutes go on strike in 1942 for the right to date American Military, instead of spending all day working, then given opium and raped at night by the corrupt police who would arrest them and steal their money if they complained, Mitose took the time off to start teaching Kenpo & Jujutsu out of his garage, because if the brothel was to be closed down for good another way needed to be established to keep access to American military personnel. 6. I am skipping ahead past Mitose and the Black Dragon and the FBI arrests for the Spy plot and so on. Ed Parker born in a rough neighborhood in Hawaii had to learn how to defend himself as a kid, so he took up Judo with a Japanese expert who was also a student of Danzan Ryu Jujutsu. He earned a black belt in Judo. He also took up boxing from his father who among other things was a boxing commissioner. He also studied the Hawaiian martial art of Lua from his aunt, as if that was not enough to be a total badarse he took up Kenpo from William Chow. William Chow was the doorman at James Mitose's brothel. He collected money when drunk or stupid Military men did not want to pay the prostitutes. He was an expert in the Southern Chinese Martial Arts. James Mitose asked him to help out during the public demonstrations Mitose gave of Kenpo in 1942 where he had a baseball bat broken over William Chow's shin and showcased William Chow doing his breaking which was unique in that he did not just break stuff in half, he could pick up the broken half and against reduce it to dust. Did William Chow do other things to earn money for a time, did he eventually break a certain taboo in the criminal underworld that caused him and Mitose to have a falling out. Yes, but that is not for me to detail at this time, as I don't want to negatively impact people who may have a connection to this. In short, when you're a black belt in Judo, a decent boxer and versed in the rare art of Lua, taking lessons from William Chow and his senior students was taking it to the next level. 7. Ed Parker's father was friends with a Chinese man he met at the docks, this Chinese man later moves to California and is well connected. He then opens the doors for Ed Parker to further his training with the top Chinese Martial Arts experts in California. So, Ed Parker's public Kenpo Karate or his commercial American Kenpo becomes Ed Parker's way of taking the knowledge from all those legendary teachers and fitting it into a format suitable to the American mind-set and need for instant gratification and constant material accolades. It is the first layer of filter, as people stick with it, prove they are loyal and dedicated, they advance to the more classical Southern Chinese martial approach that requires much more hands on instruction. The thing is most people like Al Tracy don't stick around, it's not the norm in American culture to view your martial arts teacher as a father that you are to honor and take care of for the rest of his life, so naturally Al Tracy and his brother Jim go off to college as brown belts and later open a school and ask to be promoted to black belt. Years later when this becomes public knowledge that they left as only brown belts, they start the campaign of bad mouthing the very man who taught them and start advocating the James Mitose lineage even though they have NO IDEA about who and what he really is. I'll just leave it at that...

[@bensigl3766]

Oh. My. God! It took him OVER AN HOUR to actually talk about Kenpo. An hour of pontificating on Religion, History, Politics in a 90min video is ridiculous!

[@deejin25]

He spends an hour talking about how fake and horrible Ed Parker was, then... Spends his life teaching what Ed parker taught??

[@BradYaeger]

Thanks for adding this , really appreciate it .

[@LeAnnRathbone]

Our pleasure!

[@budd139091]

Love Kenpo Karate

[@erkwild2000]

Thank you for posting this.

[@LeAnnRathbone]

You're welcome

[@deejin25]

Just for fun watch Al Tracy's videos he moves with glacier like slowness, his strikes barely have focus, he has no demonstrable power and flow. He moves like he is phoning it in. Even later in Life Parker moved crisply, with power, speed flow and precision. All his top students took it further and fought, did forms, weapons, demos, competed, many did full contact. I've seen a ton of Tracy's students and they're okay but they just don't have what the American Kenpo people did that I saw. Ed parker also just let himself get out of shape, if he'd been into conditioning, diet and something like yoga he'd have stuck around far longer, maybe even til the 2020s.

[@deejin25]

How is it possible to be a professional martial artist, make millions be able to afford all the gear you need, the most nutritious food, have access to thousands of training partners and get so damned out of shape and stay there?

[@VicNorth2023]

"This is Karate" by Oyama has a number of references to Chinese Kempo as well as illustrations of Chinese Kempo hand techniques that exist in Kyokushin but no other Okinawan or Japanese Karate style according to Mas Oyama.

[@thevoidire]

Learned so much from this vid :)

[@senseihitmanwayofkempo8305]

I wish tom conners 2 was alive 2day .... i meet him 1985 took his instuctor n mgt class n late 80s i was shocked such a buff dude could dye so young

[@MrAntotheninja]

Are kenpo, kenpo karate, shorinji kenpo different from each other?

[@LeAnnRathbone]

Kenpo and Kenpo Karate are usually the same thing, Shorinji kenpo is actually Kempo which is a Japanese martial art that was supposed to be an offshoot of Shaolin Kung Fu Which is different than Kenpo.

[@MrAntotheninja]

@@LeAnnRathbone but I don't see any resemblance between shorinji kempo and shaolin kungfu. Some shotokan karate moves do resemble shaolin kungfu techniques. Is the word 'kempo' also different from "kenpo"? Or it's just variation in spelling?

[@LeAnnRathbone]

​@@MrAntotheninja The short version of this question is Kempo with an "m" is often used to refer to Chinese and Okinawan branches of the karate or kung fu, whereas Kenpo, with an "n," has come to be accepted by many as referring to Mitose's branch of Kenpo. Kempo is also often used as an alternative for Ch'uan fa, or what is better known today as Kung Fu. Most practitioners prefer to use the term Chinese Kempo. Included are the many styles that influenced development of karate on Okinawa including the Shaolin Kung Fu and Fujian Kung Fu styles.

[@thevoidire]

Can you link the next parts? I cant find them in the playlist

[@pausetape8824]

I wonder how he felt about the video he Ed Parker and Chuck Sullivan did in 1960 -1961 that he took from the first book and I was wondering did grandmaster Tracy go with Grandmaster Woo according to Chuck Sullivan everyone went to San Soo Kung Fu and left Parker?🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

[@LeAnnRathbone]

I have never heard of Tracy going with Woo. Parker and Woo had a Falling out over credit for the book. Woo walked out and went back to SF and later Tracy moved on to San Jose to open his school. I have studied San Soo and I have never seen any of it in the Tracy System.

[@pausetape8824]

@@LeAnnRathbone Will according to Chuck Sullivan all of Ed Parker advanced student except him went with Jimmy Woo he never said if the Tracy brothers went but they where around at that time. However Chuck Sullivan made seem like he was the only one who stayed and yeah I heard that they had a falling out back in they day

[@angelorosini4326]

Jimmy Wing Woo taught Parker and Jimmy H. Woo was San Soo two different masters.

[@LeAnnRathbone]

@@angelorosini4326 Thank you for the clarification

[@VicNorth2023]

@@LeAnnRathbone According to some other sources (students that left Ed Parker) Ed Parker drove Woo into LA and dumped him there.

[@deejin25]

UHHHH, I gotta ask, you spend a considerable amount of time telling us that YOUR main instructor was a fake, why did you spend your LIFE teaching the system?

[@Ricardo18665]

Lo que no entiendo es..si querían tener su propio sistema hubieran trabajado en eso..pero lo único que hicieron fue tener las mismas técnicas que su maestro Ed Parker les enseño y cambiarles el nombre..que por cierto los nombres son más largos que las tecnicas..

[@LeAnnRathbone]

They did not change the names, originally Parkers system did not have names. They are the ones that put names to the techniques then Parker did the same with American Kenpo. Tracy added the techniques from the Katas where American Kenpo did not.

[@Ricardo18665]

@@LeAnnRathbone mmmm..aun asi..hicieron lo mismo...ellos ..los srs Tracy aprendieron de el Maestro Ed Parker..aunque tengan diferentes nombres o les hallan puesto nombre hacen lo mismo

[@gibiore]

Is part 2 available anywhere

[@LeAnnRathbone]

not that I have found. If I do come across it I will post it here