Wado-ryu
Wadō-ryū is a karate style foundered by Hironori Ōtsuka.
The name Wadō-ryū has three parts: Wa, dō, and ryū. Wa means "harmony," dō means "way," and ryū means "style." Harmony should not be interpreted as pacifism; it is simply the acknowledgment that yielding is sometimes more effective than brute strength.
From one point of view, Wadō-ryū might be considered a style of jūjutsu rather than karate. It should be noted that Ōtsuka embraced Shotokan and was its chief instructor for a time. When Hironori Ōtsuka first registered his school with the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai in 1938, the style was called "Shinshu Wadō-ryū Karate-Jūjutsu," a name that reflects its hybrid character. Ōtsuka was a licensed Shindō Yōshin-ryū (a branch of Jujutsu) practitioner and a student of Yōshin-ryū when he first met the Okinawan karate master Gichin Funakoshi. After having learned from Funakoshi, and after their split, with Okinawan masters such as Kenwa Mabuni and Motobu Chōki, Ōtsuka merged Shindō Yōshin-ryū with Okinawan karate. The result of Ōtsuka's efforts is Wadō-ryū Karate rather than Wadō-ryū JuJitsu.
A key principle in Wadō-ryū is that of tai sabaki (often incorrectly referred to as 'evasion'). The Japanese term can be translated as "body-management," and refers to body manipulation so as to move the defender as well as the attacker out of harm's way. The way to achieve this is to 'move along' rather than to 'move against'—or harmony rather than physical strength. Modern karate competition tends to transform Wadō-ryū away from its roots towards a new generic karate that appeals more to the demands of both spectators and competitors.
Wadō-ryū moves from the balls of the foot rather than the heel, which affects the delivery of almost every technique, the stances and the kata. It works well with the jūjutsu applications that Wadō retains and improves the tai sabaki that is a core of Wadō training and application in comparison to the "low stances and long attacks, linear chained techniques" that typify the way Shōtōkan developed after the split.
This is easy to observe in a couple of signature moves. For example, gyaku tsuki. In Shotokan the punch is delivered with the feet remaining in place, driving powerfully forward. In Wado, the front foot actually shifts and the back foot rises up onto the ball of the feet.