This page is designed to allow anyone to contribute to a karate family tree or "genealogy" chart using a wiki collaborative tool. We decided to create some very simple rules to make debates over hierarchy, styles etc. simple and create a focus on the most likely nature of an instructor's approach to the art by classifying via what the majority of their training to date has been - rather than focusing solely on styles or most recent rank issued. Six sub-pages with charts exist to attempt to cover most of the major straeams of karate.

Rules that classify someone's chart position: - adhere to these when posting/editing a name into a chart:

1. They must hold at least the rank of shodan, over 16yrs old, and

2. They must be placed underneath the person who appears most often on their assorted Dan rank certificates, and

3. They must be placed underneath someone they spent more than 1 year training with directly or on a regular basis - face-to-face

The aim is to represent the primary influence on an instructors lifetime of karate study, not to record recent shifts in organizational reporting or necessarily the last rank issued. Once someone has had a majority of their ranks issued to them by a given individual it is assumed that best represents their primary lineage, and hence their position in the chart. While not a perfect system, trying to show everyone's broad experiences and belt rank connections together in one chart is a task that is not really feasible given the diversity of travels and exposure senior karate-ka generally have.

Keep it simple - name and style only - the chart is about one's position in a lineage not about age, other people they trained with or how long they trained.

Other karate lineages.

Born before 1900 chart Shotokan lineage chart Kyokushin lineage chart Shito-ryu

Goju lineage chart Other Styles lineage chart Uechi lineages

At the bottom of this page is the link to edit the chart - it simply requires you understand basic spreadsheet function and follow a few simple rules which are posted in the linked spreadsheet (or ask someone you know who can do it). The charts are backed up monthly in case users spam it, or corrupt it. If you see a corrupt chart please contact us and we will flip it back to the version from the prior month.

If you do not see the below image switch to using Google Chrome browser, only some versions of Internet Explorer & Safari will show the image & scroll bars

Note: At present Google's charting function for organizational trees (family trees) is currently not function. We still have the spreadsheet data available for people to continue adding names/editing until Google fixes this problem.

To access the spreadsheet data to add names (please stay with rules so charts will work when re-vitaized) click below:

Shorin lineage data...