Around 525A.D. a Buddhist monk called Daruma  traveled to China. His reasoning for going to China dealt with the state of Buddhism in China. The legends state that when Daruma was traveling, he studied the movements of five animals: the snake, leopard, crane, tiger and the mythical dragon.

Upon his arrival in China things were in a sorry state. After the fall of the Han Dynasty, the area was not very friendly and marauding bandits filled the country. The Monk found his refuge at the Shaolin Temple. While teaching the monks there, he found that they kept falling asleep during their meditation, and discovered that they were unhealthy and frail from lack of activity. So, Daruma started to teach them movements. Some say they were the movements of the animals, some say they were movements from an art he had studied in India. What we do know for certain is that these movements evolved into an art which these monks used to defend themselves. Chuan fa or fist law is the chinese term encompassing many of the ancient chinese arts.

The Japanese monk Kosho, found his way to China to study the art of Chuan fa and brought it back to Japan. There he developed his system of Kenpo (the Japanese pronunciation of the characters Chuan fa), Kosho Ryu, old pine tree style. Kosho Ryu was more than a martial art: it encompased art, literature, religion and the wartime art of Kenpo. Kosho's art was passed down through the Mitose family. Early in this century, James Mitose, a Hawaiian Native was sent to his ancestrial home in Japan to study his families art. He brought it back to Hawaii. While teaching in Hawaii he passed the art to another young man named William K.S. Chow. Some say that Professor Chow had learned Hun Gar Kung Fu or some other Kung Fu style from his father; others dispute this. No one questions that Professor Chow was a street fighter and made innovations to the art to better suit it to the rough streets of Hawaii. Professor Chow passed on this tradition of innovation to many of his students, most famous and most important to us is Edmund K. Parker. It is Mr. Parker who brought the art of Kenpo to the mainland United States, and redefined Kenpo into his own system of American Kenpo.

Linage of American Kenpo Karate

James Mitrose
James Masayoshi Mitose was born in Hawaii in 1916. At the age of five, Mitose was sent to Japan to study his ancestors' art of self-defense, Kosho-Ryu Kempo, a direct descendent of the original Chuan Fa. He studied this art for 15 years under his uncle, a Kosho-Ryu master, and returned to Hawaii in 1935 to open the "Official Self-Defense" club in Honolulu, where he eventually promoted six students to black belt. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Mitose had to come to terms with the fact that he was Japanese by birth but American by citizenship, and he began training fellow servicemen and civilians, expounding upon the merits of his Japanese Kosho-Ryu Kenpo. Much of what is now Kenpo came from Mitose's Kosho-Ryu. James Mitose passed away in California in 1981.

William Chow
William Kwai Sun Chow cultivated the seeds of American Kenpo. Primarily a student of his Chinese father, Chow learned the Chinese ancestral art of Five Animal Kung Fu passed down from Bodhidharma. Mr. Chow later studied Kosho-Ryu under James Mitose, and seeing merit in both systems, Chow began to modify Kenpo. He left James Mitose in 1949 to open his own school, and it was Chow who coined the term "Kenpo Karate" to distinguish his system from Mitose's. Mr. Chow's Kenpo was a quick, vicious style developed as a response to the violence that was commonplace in the pre-statehood Hawaii. Chow was a street fighter, and while he learned many circular and flowing movements from his father, he incorporated some of the linear movements and take-downs he learned from Mitose. Some twenty years later, William Chow renamed his system "Chinese Kempo of Kara-Ho Karate." Mr. Chow died in Honolulu in 1987.

  
Ed Parker
Great Grandmaster Edmund K. Parker, 10th degree black belt, is the undisputed Father of American Kenpo Karate. A native of Honolulu, Parker was already a black belt in Judo at age 16, when he began studying Kenpo with Frank Chow in Hawaii. Parker quickly learned everything Frank could teach him, and Frank soon arranged for his brother, William Chow, to help Parker reach a higher level. After only two years of training, Parker earned his brown belt. Like Mr. Chow, Parker was a street fighter and adapted what he learned to fit with the type of fighting he encountered on the streets, and Chow imparted in Parker the necessity for change in the Kenpo system to meet the modern needs of the American people. Parker organized every technique and movement into a format that could be broken down into levels for all students and renamed it "American Kenpo Karate." When Mr. Parker moved to Provo, Utah to attend Brigham Young University, he opened his first studio. After graduating in 1956 with a B.S. in Psychology and Sociology, Parker moved to California, opened his second school and founded the International Kenpo Karate Association. By 1964, when he held his first tournament, Parker had become a household name in Hollywood, teaching his art to the likes of Elvis Presley and Steve McQueen. Mr. Parker passed away in 1990, at the age of 59, in Honolulu.