Comparison of karate styles Comparison of karate styles The table contains a comparison of karate styles. Some of the distinguishing features are listed, such as lineage, general form of stances, and number of kata. The five earliest karate styles developed in Japan are Shotokan, Wado-ryu, Shito-ryu, and Goju-ryu. The first three styles find their origins in the Shorin-Ryu style from Shuri, Okinawa, while Goju-ryu finds its origins in Naha. Shuri karate is rather different from Naha karate, drawing on different predecessor influences. Shito-ryu can be regarded as a blend of Shuri and Naha traditions as its kata incorporate both Shuri and Naha kata. When
Tachikawa-ryu developed by Kakuban and Dōhan. (Sanford 1991) The two main schools of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism (vajrayana-tantra, Japanese: mikkyo) are Shingon and Tendai. Tachikawa-ryu belonged to the first of these schools. It was injected into Shingon from Tibet via Taoism. First off, Tachikawa-ryu as a school of tantra is first and foremost a system of correspondences between microcosm (male) and macrocosm (female). Thus Tachikawa-ryu, as Shingon and Tendai, can be thought of as a reintegration of the world into the soteriological path, since man and world, man and the universe, are now fundamentally the same. In any case it is important