Kyokushin history: what is documented, and what is legend

Five guides

The history of a full-contact style is partly a rule book, partly a founder's legend, and partly a family tree of organisations that no longer speak with one voice. These pages take the three apart.

• What is the 100-man kumite?One hundred continuous rounds against fresh opponents, 2.5 to 4 hours, at least half of them won: the test as documented, the four names attached to it, and why it counts.
• How legitimate is the 100-man kumite?The test exists and has named completers; Oyama's own performances are repudiated by his former students, and so is the bull. What the conditions guarantee and what nobody can verify.
• What happened to grappling in Kyokushin?Under WKO rules grabbing, holding and throwing are fouls but a punch after a sweep scores; the Daitō-ryū strand was never graded; Kudo and Budokai reopened the door.
• What are the differences between Kyokushin organisations?The 1994 split over succession, the bodies that resulted, four separate World Opens, where the rule books diverge, and what an affiliation does and does not tell you about a dojo.
• Kyokushin and Kyokushin Budokai: what is the difference?Who Jon Bluming was, what is documented about Budokai and what is not, and why the added word signals a different competitive aim.

None of these pages needs the legend to be true for the training to be worth doing. The rule books are public, the organisations are known, and the rest is a matter of reading carefully.