Tatsuo Sensei Kenpo Gokui Kanji

1. Person | Heart | Same | Heaven | Earth

The kanji that is the kenpo gokui is not as explicit or as simple a translation to English as I believe it may seem to the karate-do community. What I mean is that although the concept may be exactly what appears in the first pome of the gokui when you see and translate the kanji it is open to a lot of room for interpretation.

1. A PERSON's HEART is the SAME as HEAVEN and EARTH.

When you review the above English version it seems to fit. We can not be lulled into a false sense of correctness in this regard. Since we didn't originally create the characters we can not know for sure if this is what was meant originally.

We have to consider that the characters do not necessarily mean a literal word such as person. The characters come from the Chinese and they build characters from thoughts or idea's and feelings evoked from the representation of the characters.

The characters may take on different meanings depending on the person who is interpreting them. This is a good point as well when we say "interpret" because the Chinese characters are usually several separate characters representing something quite different when separated but when combined cause other meanings to come up.

A character that means water may be interpreted by one person depending on their education as well as the location where they live to mean a river, stream, or pond while for another it may mean to rain, an ocean, or some other "water" object. Then when combined with other characters bring about meaning of a totally different nature.

Take "path" or "Michi" in Japanese. Depending on its view by the individual it may mean a road or a path which could be the "path of the empty hand" or it could mean the path one takes to the next village. Two totally different meanings provided depending on its usage and those who are either writing it and its context that brought about its writing or those who are interpreting those same characters and its context in the reading.

All we can do is try to understand the characters as they were initially interpreted by Tatsuo Sensei and then with continued study and practice come to our own conclusions and meaning exclusive to us as individuals.

Tatsuo Sensei said that one meaning of the gokui is to learn about others such as their customs and way thus improving upon ourselves. This type of self-improvement changes the core of who we are and what we are with the hopes and aspirations that we become more tuned to ourselves, others, and all our communities.

No mean feat and a noble endeavor!