Funakoshi Timeline

Mat Manual companion guide to "Gichin Funakoshi and the Founding of Shotokan." Print it. The article tells the founder's story and takes the federation map past his death, as dated fact. This book is the dated reference: a wall-chart timeline of the life, the books, the naming, and the organisations, with every entry marked as documented, tradition, or disputed on the entry itself.

Name: ______________________________ Dojo: ______________________________ Current grade: ______________ Organisation (if any): ______________________________

BEFORE ANYTHING: THE READING RULES FOR THIS BOOK ☐ Every dated entry in this book carries a mark. [Documented] means the date rests on records, publications, or institutional chronologies a reader can check. [Tradition] means the story is carried by Funakoshi's own later writing, his students, or his art's retelling, without a surviving record that settles it. [Disputed] means respectable sources give different dates or versions, and this book prints the disagreement rather than choosing silently. ☐ A tradition entry is not a false entry. Founding stories carried by the people who were there are evidence of a kind. The mark tells you which kind, so you can repeat the story at the level of confidence it has earned. ☐ No organisation's legitimacy is adjudicated anywhere in this book. Federation entries are dates and foundings only. If your organisation's own history differs on a date, write its version in the margin and keep both. ☐ No dialogue is invented in this book. Where Funakoshi's words appear, they are his published principles or the precepts traditionally credited to him, marked as such. ☐ This is a history reference, not a training book. It carries no partner work and no safety gates beyond these reading rules, because it asks nothing of your body. It asks a good deal of your accuracy when you retell it.

Part 1: How the Marks Work, With Examples

How to use the marks when you teach: say the date, then say the mark, in one breath. "The hall opened in the late 1930s; the exact year is disputed between 1936 and 1939." Six extra words, and no student who repeats it states a guess as a fact.