Hello E-Budo !


This’s my first post here, so let me introduce myself, briefly. -
I’m a Swede currently living in China. I used to do Shotokan Karate(JKA), did it for about ten years. Then learning Chinese martial arts began to dominate my practice regime, but I still feel a closeness to Shotokan and ever now and then go through some katas in the midst of exercising my Taiji, Xingyi and Tongbeiquan stuff.
Anyway, here’s something I wonder about. Some days ago I found a video on one of the Chinese tubes, it shows the Kata Empi, and says in the text at the beginning - 1928, and Gichin Funakoshi.
The video is blurry, so the face of the man performing is not clear but he seem to be kind of long limbed, wich I think Gichin Funakoshi wasn’t ?
The Kata is just beautifully done with a nice “flow”and no excessive kime. The big open stances/postures looks clearly Shotokan.
So my two simple questions on this video(if anyone figured out which my poor description try to describe) is firstly - Is it Gichin Funakoshi performing ? And, is it really filmed in 1928 ?
If it’s that old I’m surprised how Shotokan’ish Funakoshi’s Karate looked already back then.
Empi was one of my competition Katas, and when I saw this video it inspired me to pull of a couple of Empis here in my living room, even the jump was manageable




Tryggve Rick