Kanku Sho

観空小

The name Kanku (or 観空 in Japanese) is a contraction of ‘Kun’ ( 観 ), meaning ‘to view’, and ‘Ku’ ( 空 ), meaning ‘sky’. It was formulated on Okinawa by Kanga Sakugawa (1733 – 1815), nicknamed ‘Tode’ (meaning ‘Chinese Hand’), to honor and record what his instructor Kusanku, who lived during the eighteenth century in China, had taught him. This version of the Kanku kata is named ‘Sho’ (or 小 in Japanese), which means ‘small’. In the video embedded below (recorded on 12 June 2023), budoka Johan Oldenkamp, a former national runner-up from the Netherlands, performs this small version of the View the Sky kata of Shotokan ( 松濤館 ) Karatedo ( 空手道 ).