 The Origin of American Kempo. This topic hits a little close to home for me because this is my art that I've trained in for 25 years. Now, there are many different styles of Kempo out there, each with their own unique characteristics. Established in the 1950s by senior grandmaster Ed Parker, American Kempo is an amalgam of martial arts with roots going back to Japan and China, as well as elements that are custom tailored for American street fighting. In this video, we're going to take a look at where the seeds of inspiration began and how Mr. Parker went about crafting the system that became a science of motion. Kempo Karate has a long history of various Japanese, Okinawan, and Chinese roots. This video is going to explore specifically the type of Kempo that was brought to the United States and developed into Ed Parker's American Kempo system. Ed Parker does touch upon some of Kempo's historical development in his Infinite Insights book series, which can be found in the description below. This story begins with a man named James M. Matosi. James Matosi was born to Japanese parents in Kona, Hawaii in 1916. Just shy of age four, Matosi was taken back to Japan to receive a formal education in upbringing. It was during this time growing up there that he studied and learned the family system of Chuanfa, or Chinese Kempo. Matosi's ancestors had continually modified and grew the system to include a balance of religion and humanities, along with the fighting arts. This family Kempo system is sometimes referred to as Koshoryu, or Old Pine Tree Style. Matosi's style featured strong kicks and linear techniques. In 1936, Matosi returned to Hawaii and began teaching his family Kempo, which he sometimes referred to as Kempo Jujutsu. Ed Parker had once stated that he believed Matosi had modified the name so that the general public understood it was a fighting art, as the name Kempo was not familiar at the time, however Jujutsu was. One of Matosi's most prominent students was a man named William K. S. Chow. Chow had various martial arts training growing up, including the background in boxing, Jujutsu, and karate. He trained under his Chinese-born father and eventually under James Matosi. This is where Ed Parker believed the seeds of the modern system of American Kempo were planted. James Matosi taught linear techniques and takedowns, while Chow's father had taught him many circular movements. Having grown up on the streets of Honolulu and in constant street fights, Chow saw value in merging the two ideals together and into a system designed for American street fighting. He began to modify and grow this art into what he ultimately called Garohou Kempo. Now before going any further, let's talk about the name. There is a lot of confusion regarding the difference between Kenpo and Kempo. Going back to the Chinese root word of Chuanfa, this translates into fist law. When Chuanfa is translated into Japanese, it becomes Kenpo. However, in the rules of Kanji, when a character ends with N, it is pronounced with the N sound. Except when followed by another character that starts with P. In that instance, the N will make an M sound. This would mean that Kempo is technically spelled with an N, but should be pronounced with an M. Through Romanization, it is sometimes spelled Kempo, but we are at the point where translation errors have created two ways to spell and pronounce the same word. Edmund K. Parker was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1931. He started his martial arts training at the age of 12 when he began to study judo, earning his black belt six years later. He also later trained in boxing and was even an amateur boxing champion. But it was at the age of 16 that his martial arts path took its first major turn. At a church function, Parker met a man named Frank Chao, who was telling everyone about a street fight he had just won against a local bully. Frank Chao had a small build and Parker was doubtful of his claims until Chao demonstrated the techniques he had used to defend himself. Parker was impressed and he became a student of Chao. Having been involved in multiple altercations himself growing up, he constantly asked Chao questions and showed a great desire to truly understand the system. One day, Frank Chao told Parker that he had taught him everything that he could and that he should seek out his brother William, who at this point was a top instructor in Honolulu. Parker sought out William Chao and knew immediately he was on the right path. Chao was quick and exhibited an extreme knowledge of human mechanics in motion. This is where Ed Parker began to develop a deep analysis and critical thinking in the martial arts. In 1949, Ed Parker moved to Provo, Utah to attend Brigham Young University. Two years later, the Korean War broke out and Parker found himself drafted into the Coast Guard. Almost as if fate had planned it, he was stationed in Hawaii where he would be able to continue his training with Chao full-time. When the war ended and Parker was to return to the university, he had made plans with Chao to open tempo karate schools in the mainland USA upon his graduation. The two agreed and Parker returned to Brigham Young University. While he was there, he established the Kenpo Karate Club and began teaching. During this experience, Parker took every question, comment and disagreement and began to rework the Kenpo system, implementing key concepts of motion that Chao had taught him. This was the beginning of the living system that would become American Kenpo Karate. Two things, number one, great humor and probably the fastest individual I have ever encountered in front of me. You knew when he was in a room, he was dynamic, he was like a gun exploding. Realizing that modern American fighting needed further development, he began to cultivate the seeds that William Chao had planted. Parker added new concepts, altered existing methods and removed anything he felt was obsolete. He constantly modified his Kenpo and implemented a system of laws and principles that would become the backbone of the art. As his teaching grew in popularity at BYU, the school asked Parker to conduct a basketball halftime karate demo which proved very successful. Soon, Parker was teaching various students including local law enforcement and even part-time at the local gym. In 1956, Ed Parker graduated from Brigham Young with a bachelor's in sociology and he accepted the job at a new gym in Pasadena, California. However, the deal fell through so Parker made the choice to open up his first Kenpo Karate school instead and established the Kenpo Karate Association of America. In 1957, Ed Parker authored the Kenpo Creed, which would be recited at just about every Kenpo school from there on out, including today. We even have our own kids recite this in every class. Things were going as planned for Parker and anxious to fulfill the promise he had made with William Chao, he flew back to Hawaii to bring him to California and continue with their plans to open more Kenpo schools. Chao, however, no longer wished to leave Hawaii and he gave Ed Parker his blessing and told him to go forth and build his new American Kenpo. One of Ed Parker's first moves was to restructure the KKAA and reform it into the International Kenpo Karate Association with the hopes of a global spread of the art. He reworked the emblem and developed what is today the most iconic image of the American Kenpo Karate System, the IKKA Kenpo Karate Crest. This crest, worn over the heart of each practitioner, is infused with symbolism and tributes. However, we will take a closer look at this in the third part of this three episode Kenpo series. Ed Parker drove a hard effort forward to spread the art and it wasn't long until Kenpo was becoming a name of its own. He became known among Hollywood talent and actors teaching at different clubs and holding several demonstrations. It was at one of these demonstrations in 1960 that Ed Parker met a man by the name of Elvis Presley. Elvis had held an affinity for martial arts and from that point on the two of them developed a close friendship. Elvis became a prominent representative and brought even more awareness to Kenpo. Throughout his professional career, Ed Parker instructed and worked with many of the Hollywood elite. In 1964, Ed Parker launched the first Long Beach International Karate Championships, a high-end tournament that still exists today. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Ed Parker toured and spread the art of Kenpo across the United States and even branched out internationally. He released several publications and became one of the most notable martial artists in the country. Described as a living force, Ed Parker touched many lives and created the torch of an art that would be passed down from generation to generation. On December 15, 1990, Grand Master Ed Parker suffered a massive heart attack at the Honolulu Airport after returning home and he passed away. He was 59 years old and the Kenpo community had lost the father. Throughout his life teaching Kenpo, Ed Parker continued to modify and adapt his art. He'd like to take movements apart and put them back together again in different configurations, turning the American Kenpo into an organic and living art. And Ed Parker was always evolving. He would do it spontaneously right there in a class setting. But he was always doing that and he wanted to really get across about tailoring the art to fit the individual. He wanted these to be a template. He didn't want it to be concrete. Quite honestly, I think Ed Parker would only always be changing and always alter. Now he did say follow the general rules and principles. I think when Mr. Parker said that the art should be tailored to the individual and not the other way around, what he was talking about was that rules and principles can be used by an individual differently from other individuals. For instance, you know, I'm five-five. There's people that are six-three, you know, bigger. I'm little. There's things that they can do that I can't do. And just because the technique says, well, it needs to be done this way, that it's teaching you a concept and a rule. While borrowing from various Chinese, Okinawan and Japanese systems, he observed the flow and the patterns of motions and created one of Kempo's most iconic emblems, Universal Pattern. The Universal Pattern is a sophisticated study, as the circles and lines are all intertwined in a way to demonstrate the different paths and methods the human body can move. It may seem simplistic at face value, however, it's easy to see just how volumetric this design is once you realize you're only looking at one plane. In its full form, the Universal Pattern of Motion exists on nine planes, and then you can begin to see just how dynamic it truly is. The Universal Pattern was just no more than to teach geometry movement, the body movement. Like, your body was a marking pen or pencil. And he would use the pattern. He would have it on the uniform. Talk about the salutation all the way up where you want your hands like this and you come up like this. You can see the heart. Well, the upside down of that is Form 6, right? So he would use that so you understood the movement that you're to illustrate like a mime. And he did tell us that it was infinite. In other words, he himself never reached its potential. What makes American Kempo different from other styles of self-defense? The signature difference is the scientific method and academics applied to the art. American Kempo is often called the Science of Motion or the Science of Fighting. It analyzes all of the different ways the human body can move and react, which implies a series of principles or laws of how those movements work and how they can be utilized. For example, one of the primary principles of Kempo is economy of motion. If I had to pick one principle, I would say economy of motion. You know, trying to be as efficient as possible to deliver the effect that you want without wasting energy. Other key principles are point of origin, or being able to execute strikes and movements from your current position without having to load or telegraph movements. There are also power principles that dictate the different ways the body can generate power, as well as the dimensional zone concept which studies ways to manipulate a person's height, depth and range, along with a zone of obscurity or passive attack outside of an opponent's peripheral vision. Kempo is very heavy on the academics and it takes years to learn and understand it. Many people often criticize it for being bloated and extraneous. However, if you can dedicate the time to understanding the science behind the art, then you can mold the art in many different effective ways. In the words of Mr. Parker, Another heavily stressed aspect of American Kempo is the encouragement of students to ask questions. In many traditional forms of martial arts, it is considered disrespectful to question an instructor on their teaching. As if asking the question why is an insult. William Chow and Ed Parker firmly believe that in order to understand the how, it was important to know the why. Kempo students are encouraged to ask why a technique is done a certain way or to compare it with an alternative method. A Kempo instructor should be able to answer these questions and give reasons, given they understand the principles that are put into place. I've done other arts and I feel like Kempo is a science-based art. You know, you're studying motion. It's not just, hey, do this because I'm doing it. And you're actually allowed to question your instructor and go, well, why would I do that instead of this? Like, you know, I like the rules and principles behind it. Kempo also breaks away from other karate systems and drops the traditional Japanese words and commands and replace them with new English terms. Ed Parker utilized these new terms as memorization tools for self-defense techniques. For example, maces fist, kimono is shirt grab, talon is a wrist grab, wing is an elbow strike, and much, much more. These terms were often used to describe the essence of a technique. For example, crossing talon means a crossed wrist grab. Loan kimono is someone grabbing your shirt with one hand, or twin kimono is a technique based off a double hand grab. The Kempo syllabus is robust, containing much more curriculum than most other systems. For each bout level, students must learn a set of basics, a list of self-defense techniques, and a kata or form. Basics include strikes, blocks, stances, parries, and foot maneuvers. Katas are separated into two categories, forms and sets. Sets are individual katas that focus on an isolated concept such as blocking or stances. Forms are much more dynamic in that they demonstrate many of Kempo's principles in motion, highlighting and teaching key concepts, and showing how movement and ideas can flow smoothly from one technique to another. American Kempo's self-defense curriculum is one of the system's signature features, and yet also one that receives the most criticism. Each bout level has a series of pre-choreographed scenarios in which a partner comes in with a single attack and a defender executes a sequence of defensive moves and follows it with a series of rapid strikes to vital target areas. These strikes are designed to incapacitate the attacker so that the defender can escape. Many tournaments, demonstrations, and schools will hold a technique line drill in which students line up and take turns performing these techniques on each other. The line drill serves a couple of different purposes. First, it teaches the student how to apply the technique on a human body and understanding how the body will react to certain strikes. It also teaches spontaneous thinking when a person may not react exactly as expected, or a particular move didn't work so that the student has to adjust their strategy on the fly. Additionally, it's a major conditioning drill. Those who have trained at a serious Kempo school, especially from a parker disciple, know that it is not light contact. By taking the hits as well as giving them, the Kempo student becomes conditioned and is less shocked later when actually hit. In the classes I studied in, our concept was we wanted to get hit harder in class than we would on the street, so that way it would take away the surprise element of getting hit. Now, this is where the controversy begins. The two most common criticisms are you can't choreograph a fight and no one is going to just stand there while you hit them 20 times. The answer to that is absolutely 100% correct. A fight will never go as choreographed and no one is just going to stand there and let you tap dance all over them. However, the Kempo techniques are not actually meant to be performed exactly as they are written. I think when people say Kempo is choreographed, they don't realize or they don't understand that the techniques are not designed to be followed as a recipe, but they're designed as teaching tools to teach you the moves and basics and the rules and principles of Kempo. So, yes, I agree, you're not going to be able to do a seven move technique on one person, but you definitely will be able to do pieces of those moves in a circumstance when you need it. It's too choreographed, so it's going to school learning how to write. Everything is systematic, got to learn the alphabet. So Ed Parker did it in the martial arts, got to learn the alphabet of motion. You know, what's funny too is in boxing they do a thing called shadow boxing to warm up, yes? Nobody ever critiques that, but a Kempo guy or a martial artist on social media does their form. Boy, everybody comes out of the world work on how they're the best. Not realizing forms and kata is the same as shadow boxing in boxing. You're just doing solo training without a partner. Just giving you the memory of sequence. Each technique sequence is designed to teach specific principles or ideas. One technique will introduce an attack while another might demonstrate how a power principle can be used. Another may highlight the concept of point of origin while yet another shows new stance changes. Each self-defense technique teaches negative information that are embedded in a sample sequence to show how they can be used. In reality, none of those sequences are meant to work exactly as they are written. There are actually three phases of Kempo self-defense. The ideal phase, the what-if phase, and the formulation phase. So the differences between the ideal is when everything goes according to the way the technique is written, the attack is perfect, your defense was perfect, the timing is executed perfectly, so it's ideal. You get the response that you wanted. The what-if is, you know, somewhere along that something changed. They maybe threw in, or they moved their hand to a different position. Now you have to alter or change the technique. And then formulation or the freestyle is when you don't know what's coming and then you just have to react and shift from one technique to another. The ideal is to teach them, this is the threat, this is what we do. Because in the educational world, this is the word, this is how you pronounce it. Now let's give you a couple more words. Add them to this. You have it now with a sentence. Once you get into the tune of I've never been in that position before and you start to build up a sense of bravery, it's no longer foreign to you. But if we give you this punch, that punch, this kick, this attack, it's no longer foreign to you. So we teach you all these possible positions in the ideal. Then what if I go to do an elbow and they block me? Well what if we teach you that you find your own solution. And we may fix and give that to you too, hence extensions. And a lot of the extensions are just more additional information to complete categories. If you can do it with your right hand, let's teach you with the left hand for the classroom setting. This is our laboratory by the way. Out in the street, it's on you. There's where the last stage comes in. Grafting, formulation, spontaneous, just go through it. If I threw this punch, you've seen that before. If I've done that grab, you've seen it before. If I put you in a reverse arm bar, you've seen that before. If I threw a combination, you've seen it before. For most people who don't study Kempo, only usually ever see the ideal phase and judge the system on misplaced choreography without understanding that there is a lot more to it than is not seen at demos or tournaments. Traditionally, karate blackbells are called Dan's and are named by their translation of first Dan, second Dan, and so on. In American Kempo, the word degree is used and each degree actually has a title. Mr. Parker liked to view Kempo as an educational and academic system so blackbell ranks started with junior instructor and worked their way up the senior master. Depending on which curriculum you followed, by the time you reach third to fifth degree, you've been through the entire written curriculum and have completed all of the official testing. From that point on, a person moves up the blackbell ranks by teaching, analyzing and implementing new concepts, and by contributing back to the art of Kempo. American Kempo karate can be an amazing system to study. However, it also has one of the most polarized communities. When Mr. Parker passed away unexpectedly, he left a major gap in leadership. He had not appointed a successor and in his absence, many chiefs stepped up to lead the tribe. However, due to Kempo's ever-changing nature and from constant modifications Mr. Parker implemented, each generation of his blackbells had a different version of Kempo than the next. This led to some nasty politics in the system and brought on a lot of, my version is better, sentiments. The politics in American Kempo unfortunately are just like the real world. Everyone has their own opinion and if you don't agree with them, then you're not doing Kempo. Politics will always be. If it bothers you, it will. If it don't, that's why they have a delete button on your keyboard. So that reminds me of a joke about how many Kempoists does it take to change a light bulb? A hundred. Want to do it? Ninety-nine to tell them that's not how Mr. Parker taught them. This is really unfortunate because the system can be incredibly flexible as long as you still adhere to the mechanics and principles in the foundation of the art. There are many Kempoists that recognize this and embrace the difference and share different tactics with other practitioners. And in that respect, Kempo has a fantastic sense of brotherhood and camaraderie. But others lose sight of that and when that clash happens, the politics get ugly and at times become toxic to the Kempo community. American Kempo Karate. It's heavy in curriculum. There is a lot to learn and it takes a while to become good at it. But if you find a school that can teach you the science and principles behind it, along with critical thinking and application, then it can be a highly effective art. I would only encourage anybody listening. Go to anyone you can that's considered part of that generation that is from the 60s, 70s, 80s and up to 90 that I was a part of. Get them now because they're getting up to the point we're losing them, either by bad health or just because they're older or they're retiring. So they may not be around. But we do have a responsibility to groom the next generation correctly. I'd rather have the ability to congratulate a new white belt or a new yellow belt versus someone doing a self-promotion. It's like birth, right? Congratulations on your new baby. We need some more birth. And that's the brief origin of American Kempo Karate. There are so many pieces of this art that it takes years to learn how they fit together cohesively. So for those of you who want to learn more about the system, below are several resources including Mr. Parker's Infinite Insights book series that can give you a much deeper breakdown of the art. After Mr. Parker passed away in 1990, the system splintered off into different branches and this divide between versions is something of an interesting study in itself. One that I have had firsthand experience with. So in the next video, we're actually going to continue this discussion with the evolution of American Kempo. Thank you so much for watching. If you have studied American Kempo, I would love to hear your experience. And like I mentioned before, the politics in this art are strong, so I do ask that discussions be kept civil. Please share and subscribe and thank you all for watching.