“The High Priest of Shorinji Kempo Karate”

Doshin So 1911 – 1980

“The High Priest of Shorinji Kempo Karate”

Doshin So was born Michiomi Nakano in the Okayama Prefecture. He was a Japanese soldier and martial artist. He is most known as the creator and founder of Shorinji Kempo and the doctrine KongoZen.

His father died when he was age 8, and he was sent to Manchuria (then a puppet state of Japan) to live with his paternal grandfather, an employee in a Japanese railroad company and a member of the right-wing Black Dragon Society. His grandfather was also an expert in kendo, sojutsu, and most likely Fusen ryu jujutsu, and often taught young Michiomi. In 1926, his mother died, and Michiomi returned to Japan, where he was taken under the patronage of his grandfather’s friend Mitsuru Toyama.

In 1928 Nakano enlisted in the army and joined the Black Dragon Society, and returned to Manchuria. To facilitate his covert reconnaissance activities, he was posted in a Taoist school headed by Chen Lian, a priest who was also the master of Báilián Quán. This was Nakano’s first experience with Chinese Quan Fa. Nakano carried out his assignment of making military maps and conducting geographic surveys throughout China. Later, Chen would introduce him to Wen Taizong, grandmaster of Yihe Quan. Wen took Nakano as his student, training him for many years.

In the final days of WWII, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. He managed to escape to Japan with the help of his friends in Chinese secret societies. He was repatriated in 1946. So believing that bloodshed should never be used as a means of achieving such trivial goals as greed and national interests, he determined: Hito! Hito! Hito! Subete wa hito no shitsu ni aru – People! People! People! Everything depends upon the goodness of people.

The grim state of affairs in postwar Japan impressed him with the need to restore morality and national pride and to create an entirely new human image. Regarding the Dharma spirit and the practice of Kempo as means to achieve these ends, Sō revised, expanded, and systematized the many forms of Quan Fa he had learned in China, combined it with the Jūjutsu he learned from his grandfather in his youth, and incorporated elements of Buddhism into his lessons in consideration of benefits to all of humanity and the promotion of peace between people, and thus created Shorinji Kempo as it exists today. During this time he changed his surname to Sō and started to use the on'yomi variant of his given name: Dōshin.

In 1979 the Chinese government invited him to reintroduce Quan Fa to the Shaolin temple. He died of heart disease one year later (May 12, 1980) before he could take up this task.

Since being founded in Japan, Shorinji Kempo has spread to 33 different countries with over 1.5 million members and is organized in the World Shorinji Kempo Organization, currently governed by his senior pupils and his daughter Yūki Sō. The legacy of Grandmaster Doshin So lives on in the promoting of peace and understanding through a martial art still firmly rooted in its philosophical and spiritual origins.