The Tanaka Karate-Do Association has a long history, with solid influences that form the roots of its current identity. It teaches its own style/method, simply named Tanaka Karate-Do, built over more than 60 years from the fusion of three lineages: Okinawan Gōjū-Ryū, full-contact Kyokushin, and humanistically oriented Seidō Juku.
As an autonomous organization, the Tanaka Karate-Do Association is independent, currently unaffiliated with any federation or confederation, despite having been part of the history of entities such as the São Paulo Karate Federation (FPK) and the Brazilian Interstyle Karate Federation (FBKI).
In its regular training, the Tanaka Karate-Do method is organized around the three classic pillars of Karate-dō (Kihon, Kata, and Kumite), guided by the philosophy of “Karate for life” and “education through movement.”
This direct answer covers the essentials. The following topics detail where each of these influences comes from, how the method is structured in practice, and why the founder’s individualized pedagogy, master Tsunioshi Tanaka, continues to shape training to this day.
The technical roots of the Tanaka Karate-Do method
Tanaka Karate-Do was born from direct contact between founder Tsunioshi Tanaka and masters of three different Karate currents. The table below summarizes the period of each affiliation, the reference figure, and what was incorporated into the current method.
| Period | Lineage | Reference master | What was incorporated |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 to 1965 | Gōjū-Ryū, via the Brazilian Karate Association (ABK) | Seiichi “Shikan” Akamine | Okinawan postures, ibuki breathing, close-range self-defense fundamentals, Naha-Te methods |
| 1965 to 1974 | Kyokushin | Masutatsu Oyama | Physical conditioning, full-contact combat (not currently applied), bodily endurance, Shuri-Te lineage methods |
| 1974 to 1994 | First independent phase | Tsunioshi Tanaka | Brazilian Scientific Karate, biomechanical foundation applied to training |
| 1994 to 2014 | Seidō Juku, via the World Seido Karate Organization | Tadashi Nakamura | Inclusive methodology, also derived from Kyokushin, accessible to different profiles and ages |
| 2014 to today | Own, independent system | Tsunioshi Tanaka, Juan Gallardo and the Association’s Administrative Council | Unification of Kihon, Kata with Bunkai, and progressive Kumite under the name Tanaka Karate-Do |
Gōjū-Ryū: the Okinawan foundation inherited from Shikan Akamine
Tanaka’s first contact with Karate happened in 1962, through master Juichi Sagara, who introduced Shotokan in São Paulo. According to Tanaka himself, the encounter happened by chance: he had a small watch repair shop in Vila Prudente, on the same Rua Capitão Pacheco e Chaves where the association is still headquartered today, and Sagara began frequenting the location to sell Japanese goods. Invited to train, Tanaka hesitated at first, worried about hurting the fingers he used to repair watches, but accepted the invitation and, shortly after, helped gather the first people interested in forming a Karate association in the region.
Master Tanaka did not remain under Sagara’s tutelage, but, interested in Karate, sought out another teacher. The real technical structuring came from the Okinawan master Seiichi “Shikan” Akamine (1920 to 1995), founder of the Brazilian Karate Association (ABK) and one of the first to spread Gōjū-Ryū in the country.
Shikan Akamine’s technical authority came from a direct lineage: he learned Gōjū-Ryū from Seiko Higa (one of the three principal disciples of Kanryo Higaonna himself) and from Higa’s student Kanki Izumikawa. He also had contact with techniques from other styles such as Uechi-Ryū and Kishimoto-Di, which made his background more eclectic than that of other Gōjū-Ryū teachers, even though Gōjū-Ryū remained the backbone of his Karate.
Gōjū-Ryū, created in the early 20th century by Chojun Miyagi from Naha-Te, combines hard (go) and soft (ju) techniques, with an emphasis on controlled breathing and economy of movement. Under the supervision of Akamine and teacher Sadao Saito (a student of Akamine), Tanaka led the founding of the São Paulo Karate Association (later the Tanaka Karate-Do Association) in 1963.
This kind of path, an Okinawan master settled abroad training the first generation of local practitioners, repeated itself in several countries after World War II. The Okinawan government documents this movement in official material on the international spread of Okinawan Karate, which today is a candidate for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status, precisely because of the number of schools outside Japan, including in South America, that preserve technical elements of that origin.
During his time with the ABK, Tanaka was promoted to shodan (first-degree) black belt and later nidan (second-degree) by Akamine. In 1965, a split occurred within the ABK and Shikan Akamine left the organization, with the São Paulo Karate Association doing the same in solidarity.
Akamine would go on to pursue his own career, founding Ken-Shin-Kan in 1968, which gave rise to organizations present in several South American countries. Either way, the seed of Karate and Akamine’s teachings were already planted in the young Tsunioshi Tanaka, who kept his determination to develop and expand his practice.
Kyokushin: the full-contact phase with Masutatsu Oyama
In 1965, after leaving the ABK and motivated by reading the book This Is Karate, Tanaka sought out Masutatsu “Mas” Oyama, creator of Kyokushin, interested in training in his Karate. As a result, Tsunioshi Tanaka was appointed by Oyama as the official Kyokushin representative in South America, making him the undisputed introducer and first promoter of that style on the continent.
Mas Oyama founded Kyokushin through a dual training background. In the late 1930s, he became a student of Gigō Funakoshi, son of Shotokan’s founder Gichin Funakoshi, and trained for two years directly under Gichin Funakoshi himself. After the war, he devoted himself to Gōjū-Ryū for several years under Nei-Chu So and Gōgen Yamaguchi, one of the biggest names in Gōjū-Ryū in mainland Japan. Kyokushin was therefore born from the fusion of these two technical bases, with an emphasis on full contact and extreme physical training, including the periods of mountain isolation Oyama used to test his own limits.
The partnership between Tanaka and Oyama brought Kyokushin’s intense physical conditioning and combat to the São Paulo Karate Association. To support the style’s development and adaptation, visits by Japanese instructors to Brazil were arranged, such as Shoitiro Ogura in 1968 and Seiji Isobe in 1972, in addition to visits by Mas Oyama himself, remembered by students of the time for his combination of technical demand and personal kindness. Tanaka himself also traveled to Japan in 1970, where he trained for nearly three months.
Isobe’s visit, however, was not without friction: the Association’s board had requested the arrival of a different instructor, Yoshiji Soeno, which was not granted. The instructor sent in his place created a series of disagreements and administrative situations that led to a conflict between the São Paulo Karate Association and Kyokushin headquarters in Japan. These situations led the Brazilian board, headed by Tanaka, to opt for a respectful split in 1974.
First independent phase and Tsunioshi Tanaka’s pedagogical method
Still in 1974, no longer tied to Kyokushin but with the technical foundation developed over 9 years of representing the style, plus the teachings already gained earlier from Shikan Akamine, the São Paulo Karate Association chose to remain an independent Karate school, adopting the new name Tanaka Karate-Do Association.
This period of independence lasted 20 years and cemented one of the traits that most distinguishes Tanaka Karate-Do from other schools of the same lineage: the individualized approach created by the founder himself.
Trained in Physical Education at the Faculdade de São Caetano do Sul, with additional coursework in Sports Science at USP, Tanaka applied concepts of biomechanics and kinesiology to training already in the 1970s and 1980s, a period when this kind of analysis was still uncommon in Brazilian Karate. His standing at the Faculdade de São Caetano do Sul was such that Karate came to be listed as an official extracurricular subject at the school.
This technical background translated into concrete adaptations. During this time, Tanaka founded the Brazilian Scientific Institute of Tanaka Karate-Do to research, together with students, training processes adaptable to each practitioner’s body type, including people with Parkinson’s disease and other physical limitations.
The principle behind these adaptations is simple. Classes are organized according to each practitioner’s profile, assessing physical limitations before setting up the training plan, which allows children as young as five, adults, and seniors to train side by side safely.
With this principle and forward-looking vision, the Tanaka Karate-Do Association went through a highly prosperous period, with dojos and branches spread across Brazil and thousands of enrolled students. It was also during this phase that Tsunioshi Tanaka was invited to teach his Karate in Chile, establishing a connection that turned Tanaka Karate-Do into an international organization, with an official representation of the school present in the country and currently led by Hanshi Juan Gallardo Pardo.
Seidō Juku: Tadashi Nakamura’s humanistic integration
Between 1994 and 2014, the association represented the World Seido Karate Organization, founded by Tadashi Nakamura, a colleague of Tanaka’s since their 1970 trip to Japan. Nakamura himself followed an almost identical trajectory to Tanaka’s before founding his own style: he began in Gōjū-Ryū at age 11, in 1953, under Kei Miyagi, son of Chojun Miyagi, the style’s founder, moved to Masutatsu Oyama’s Karate in 1956, and only later developed his own system, based in New York since 1966.
This coincidence between Tanaka’s and Nakamura’s trajectories helps explain why the two masters connected so naturally almost three decades later, and reveals something bigger: through distinct organizational paths, Akamine’s foundation, the Gōjū-Ryū side of Oyama’s own training, and Nakamura’s initial training all trace back to the same Okinawan lineage of Chojun Miyagi, which helps explain why the three influences fit together with such technical coherence within the Tanaka Karate-Do method.
In an interview with Kiai magazine, Nakamura explained that the name Seidō Juku was born from a concrete experience: after being approached by the Japanese embassy in New York to give private lessons to a student with limited movement in his arms and legs, he realized that Kyokushin’s full-contact method did not suit every kind of practitioner. This led him to create a specific program for each type of physical limitation, including blind and deaf students, named with a Japanese word that brings together the concepts of sincerity, love, and work (sei and do, the way) applied within a space of good training (juku).
This same concern with adapting teaching was exactly what Tanaka had already been cultivating, a culture he developed even during his time as Kyokushin’s representative. Because of this synergy, Seidō’s representation in South America was established, led by Tsunioshi Tanaka, reinforcing the focus on human development, before the association resumed full independence in 2014.
An original method rooted in Japanese and Okinawan Karate
Tanaka Karate-Do is not synonymous with Seidō, pure Gōjū-Ryū, or Kyokushin, but it also did not come from nothing. It is the name the association itself gave to the system that resulted from its trajectory, built on technical foundations brought directly from Okinawa and mainland Japan, after going through three distinct affiliations and choosing full autonomy. Today, there are more than six decades of teaching and continuous practice in Brazil.
In practice, this means a student of the association trains a combination of postural and breathing mechanics inherited from Gōjū-Ryū, physical endurance from Kyokushin, and an inclusive approach strengthened by Seidō Juku. None of these three lineages was discarded when the school moved on to the next phase. Each one left a technical layer that added to the previous ones, which makes the current method broader than any single one of the source schools taken in isolation.
This blending of lineages is not a peculiarity unique to the Tanaka Karate-Do Association. A study published by the Brazilian Journal of Physical Education and Sport, from the University of São Paulo, points out that the history of Karate as told in Brazil tends to oversimplify the exchanges between styles, treating each school as a closed block when, in practice, most of them were born from encounters like the ones that shaped the Tanaka method.
This view, incidentally, was held by master Tsunioshi Tanaka himself. For him, Karate was one: each practitioner naturally develops their own way of moving, according to body type and personal preferences, which makes each karateka’s “style,” in a sense, individual. What truly sets one school apart from another, according to this view, is not the style itself but the teaching method applied by it. This is why the association speaks of the Tanaka Karate-Do method: the school’s distinguishing mark lies in how the technical content is transmitted and adapted to each student, not in any supposed exclusivity over Karate.
Kihon, Kata, and Kumite: the technical structure of training
Regardless of the historical phase, the association’s training has always revolved around the traditional tripod of Karate-Dō. Each technical dimension has its own biomechanical focus and a defined practical goal, as shown in the table below.
| Technical dimension | Biomechanical focus | Practical goal |
|---|---|---|
| Kihon (fundamentals) | Repetition of stances, blocks, linear and circular strikes | Stabilizing the center of gravity and generating force through hip rotation |
| Kata (forms) | Individual or group execution of attack-and-defense sequences | Cardiovascular conditioning, motor memory, and functional analysis (Bunkai) |
| Kumite (sparring) | Guided combinations (Yakusoku) up to free sparring (Jiyū Kumite) | Distance control, reaction time, and stress management |
In Kihon, instruction prioritizes postural alignment and economy of movement. Katas function as a repository of combat strategies: their frequent practice develops balance, breathing, and motor memory, while Bunkai (the detailed analysis of each form) reveals evasions, throws, and strikes that aren’t obvious at first glance. Kumite, in turn, follows a gradual progression and a sense of collaboration and study among practitioners. Classes start with Yakusoku Kumite, with pre-arranged attacks and defenses, and only move on to spontaneous Jiyū Kumite once the student has consolidated the basic repertoire and the necessary emotional control.
The philosophy of “Karate for life”
Unlike schools in the Kyokushin lineage that keep full contact at the center of practice, Tanaka Karate-Do focuses training on katas, kihon, and paired exercises, with sparring done under control. This choice reflects the principle of “Karate for life”: the conviction that the purpose of martial practice is the improvement of character and physical well-being, not showing dominance over one’s training partner.
Master Tsunioshi Tanaka also believed in the principle of education through movement: since practice leads to skill, Karate should be learned through training, through observing examples, and through the correct assimilation of techniques via conscious repetition. The first benefit for anyone starting Karate is movement itself, and through it, with instructors’ supervision, correction, and modeling, technique develops naturally.
As a Physical Education teacher, Tsunioshi Tanaka emphasized Karate as a vehicle for health and longevity, being a complete, dynamic physical activity that can be practiced anywhere. This view makes Karate a factor of personal change and balance, as it fosters a fuller and more productive way of living.
Master Tsunioshi Tanaka also valued the moral aspect of Karate. Practitioners of the Tanaka Karate-Do Association must always strive for an ideal of sincere, loyal, and respectful conduct. Master Tanaka valued “sincerity of heart (kokoro)”: an honesty of purpose both in one’s actions and in dealing with the people around oneself. This kind of attitude contributes positively to society, since it is applied in daily life in accordance with what is expected of a principled citizen.
Who preserves the method today
Tsunioshi Tanaka passed away on January 18, 2017, at age 82, from complications of an infection. Since then, the continuity of the method has been in the hands of an Administrative Council made up of black belts trained by the school itself: Augusto Sanches, Bruno Chagas, Felipe Alexandrino, and Fabio de Freitas. The headquarters remains at Rua Capitão Pacheco e Chaves, 1,063, in Vila Prudente, São Paulo, the same address where the school was founded in the 1960s.
Throughout its history, the Tanaka Karate-Do Association has had branches in neighborhoods such as Sacomã, Pinheiros, São Mateus, Penha, Ipiranga, and Vila Diva, as well as in the cities of Campinas, Porto Alegre, Manaus, and Eunápolis. More than 11,700 students have passed through the school, and the method’s international reach remains active through Hanshi Juan Gallardo Pardo (8th Dan), the school’s official representative in Chile, and through Augusto Sanches, based in the United States.
Frequently asked questions about the Tanaka Karate-Do style
No. Since 2014, the Tanaka Karate-Do Association has been an independent school, with no ties to national or international sports federations. This autonomy is the result of a deliberate decision by the board, made after the end of Seidō Juku’s representation in Brazil, in order to maintain full control over the technical and pedagogical content taught in the dojos.
No. Kyokushin was one of the three influences that shaped the method, between 1965 and 1974, and left visible marks on its physical conditioning and curriculum. But Karate-Do Tanaka does not adopt full contact in its practice, prioritizes katas, kihon, and controlled kumite, and incorporates elements of Gōjū-Ryū and Seidō Juku that Kyokushin on its own does not have.
Yes. The individualized methodology created by Tsunioshi Tanaka was designed precisely to adapt training to different profiles, assessing physical limitations before defining each student’s exercises. That’s why the school welcomes classes of children from age five, adults, and seniors, with intensity progression adjusted to each case. Details on classes, schedules, and dojo etiquette are on the association’s enrollment page.