Gigō Funakoshi

Yoshitaka Funakoshi 船越義豪 Funakoshi Yoshitaka
Yoshitaka Funakoshi
Born	1906 Okinawa, Ryukyu Kingdom
Died	24 November 1945 (aged 39) Tokyo, Japan Tuberculosis
Native name	船越義豪 Funakoshi Yoshitaka
Other names	Gigo, waka sensei
Style	Shotokai, kendo, Iaido
Teacher(s)	Gichin Funakoshi (his father), Takeshi Shimoda
Rank	10th dan, successor waka (後継者) sensei to his father
Notable students	Mitsusuke Harada, Taiji Kase, Won Kuk Lee, Tomosaburo Okano, Shigeru Egami, Genshin Hironishi, Masatoshi Nakayama, Motokuni Sugiura, Hidetaka Nishiyama, Tadao Okuyama

Gigō Funakoshi (船越義豪, Funakoshi Gigō, Funakoshi Yoshitaka in Japanese^?) (1906–1945) was the third son of Gichin Funakoshi (船越 義珍) (the founder of Shōtōkan 松濤館流 karate) and is widely credited with developing the foundation of the modern karate Shotokan style.

Gigo Funakoshi was born in Okinawa and diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of seven. He was sickly as a child and began the formal study of karate-do at the age of twelve as a means to improve his health. In the early years, Gichin Funakoshi often took Gigo with him to his trainings with Yasutsune Itosu. Gigo moved from Okinawa to Tokyo with his father when he was 17, and later became a radiographer of the Section of Physical and Medical Consultation of the Ministry of Education.

When his father's Shihan (senior assistant instructor) Takeshi Shimoda died, Gigo assumed his position within the Shotokan organization teaching in various universities. Gichin Funakoshi transformed karate from a purely self-defense fighting technique to a philosophical martial Dō (way of life), or gendai budo, but his son Gigō began to develop a karate technique that definitively separated Japanese karate-do from the local Okinawan arts. Between 1936 and 1945, Gigo gave it a completely different and powerful Japanese flavor based on his study of modern kendo (the way of the japanese sword), and Iaido (the way of drawing the japanese sword) under sensei Nakayama Hakudō. Gigo's work on japanese Karate development was primarily popularized by masters Shigeru Egami and Genshin Hironishi, who later formed the shotokai karate style