Thread: Kosho Ryu Kempo?

About the actual art, just a little, but I know a little about its history.

Kosho Ryu Kempo is the art of the late Grandmaster James Masayoshi Mitose, who is pretty much is the guy you can trace nearly every style of Kempo in America back to. Mitose was the teacher of Professor William K.S. "The Thunderbolt" Chow, founder of Kara-Ho Kempo. Professor Chow was in turn was the teacher of Sijo Adriano Emperado, founder of Kajukenbo, and Senior Grand Master Ed Parker, founder of American Kenpo. "Kosho" means "old pine tree," and refers to the founder of the art, who Mitose said was an ancestor of his in ancient Japan. James Mitose was something of a character, in later years he took to wearing priest's robes and carrying Buddhist beads and allegedly saying that Kempo should never be used, even in self defense. Mitose eventually went to prison for murder and extortion and died there, although many of his students still maintain his innocence.

The current Grandmaster of Kosho-Ryu is Thomas Barro Mitose, James Mitose's son. It gets kind of "Star Wars" here; Thomas Mitose was originally a Kajukenbo black belt under Joe Halbuna, but he later learned that he was adopted and James Mitose was his real father.

The art itself, I can't say quite as much, but from what I've read there's a lot of emphasis on spirituality, nutrition, etc. Sijo Emperado said this of training with James Mitose: "His workout was that of traditional Japanese karate. We did makiwara training, some jujitsu takedowns and throws, and worked on developing the one punch kill. We also had one kata; the Naihanchi kata." I don't know how much of that is true of Kosho Ryu schools today, but there you go.