At Northern Lakes Martial Arts we have called our karate, Australian Shotokan Karate-Jutsu. The reasons were varied but a primary reason was to attempt to reach back into time and to recreate what was the original purpose of karate viz, a last resort self-defense, rather than focusing entirely on a sport approach. It appears well documented that the sport approach saw a watering down of the effective in close and grappling technique, typical of a violent encounter. Rather than up close and personal encounters, sport karate favours along to mid-range contest and generally relies on speed using a small group of generally linear techniques.

Holding is discouraged and throws, locks, chokes etc are barred. Kata practice is entirely focused on performance for a grading or a trophy which is ok if that is all you want from your karate study. In most cases the meaning behind the moves are not studied or acceptance of frankly ridiculous explanations is the norm. Our style name reflects our roots which is Shotokan Karate and the jutsu aspect meaning science or technique sees us reversing the current focus on form not function for performance reward to a focus on function without losing form. Emphasis is given to utilising kata practice as a method of learning up close self-defence applications. Gichin Funakoshi (often said to be founder of Shotokan) actually called what he taught "Rentan Goshin Karate Jutsu" or "Ryukyu Kempo Tode" the former basically meaning "self defence Karate" and the latter meaning "Okinawan method of Chinese Boxing" Similarly Choki Motobu called his art "Okinawa Kempo Karate Jutsu" We do know that the old masters met to discuss the adaption of the Japanese Budo concept and so generally Karate adopted Karate-Do as a suffix and dropped the Jutsu aspect.

In 1936 meeting Okinawan masters including Chotoku Kyan, Kentsu Yabu, Hanashiro Chomo & Chojun Miyagi, discussing the change in terminology.

We use the name Australian Shotokan Karate-Jutsu to describe our system and after all it is just a name.