For a few thousand years, martial arts of some kind or another have been around. As we practice them today, the Asian Fighting Arts can trace their origins back to the Shao-lin Temple in today’s Henan province in China. At around 496 A.D. an Indian Buddhist monk named Bodhidharma arrived at the temple, and finding the other monks not very healthy, taught them yoga breathing and stretching exercises to help them stay awake during meditation. Later the temple was famous for teaching monks and then lay people the martial arts to protect the monks from bandits. Then all kinds of people came to learn how to defend their families and villages, and even some generals would send their solders to learn the Shao-lin fighting style.

   At the temple, fighting monks noticed the way certain animals would defend themselves. With this in mind, they developed the basic five animal forms. Those are: Dragon, Tiger, Leopard, Snake, and Crane. Each animal had different characteristics and ways to fight.

   Because Buddhism spread to Okinawa, Japan, Korea and other Asian lands, so did the Shao-lin fighting styles. The first reference to the word karate was in Okinawa. At the time it meant China (or Cathay = kara, and Hand = te) in the Japanese language, because warriors from Okinawa went to the Shao-lin temple to learn the martial arts, and the Shao-lin monks went to Okinawa to teach. Around the beginning of the 20th century, the meaning of karate was changed to mean “empty hand”. All they did was change the Chinese character to give it a different meaning. In Korean, the martial art of Tang-soo-do also means “China Hand”

   Mostly, the Asian martial art styles were fairly unknown to the West until the start of the 20th century, when Judo was introduced by Jigoro Kano, who also devised the belt ranking system as we know it today. After the second World War, when the west had more contact with Japan, Korea and Okinawa those styles became more popular. The Chinese systems (like Shao-lin, Hung Ga, Choi-Lay-Fut, etc.) were not well known because of our limited familiarity with China. The U.S. never had the same contact with China, and the Communist government was less than friendly to western peoples, let alone their own!

   The martial art known as Kajukenbo was developed in Honolulu Hawaii in 1947. The founder of the style was Adriano Emperado, who was a black belt in Kenpo Karate under William K.S.Chow. He noticed that there were ‘holes’ in his Kenpo and saw other martial arts and decided to join forces with four other black belts to create the ‘ultimate self defense system’. Here is the basic style breakdown of Kajukenbo:

   In the early 1960’s, Kajukenbo would begin coming to the U.S. mainland. One of the pioneers was Charles H. Gaylord. He is now our Great Grandmaster and head of the Kajukenbo Association of America, which he helped to found. His first school was in San Leandro, CA and now has over 600 Black Belts who trace their lineage to him.

   One of Great Grandmaster Gaylord’s top instructors, and the successor is Grandmaster James Juarez. He began his training in San Leandro when he was 16, and is still actively training and teaching. He has great skill not only as a fighter, but also as a teacher. His specialty is the Gung-Fu side of our art, and knows many traditional Chinese ‘dances’, and is proficient in Chinese weaponry. Grandmaster Juarez has been teaching for almost 40 years!