Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 197, Fist of Legend, part four.

On November 10, 1868, only 15 days after the city of Edo was officially renamed Tokyo,

and all of six days after the beleaguered armies of Aizu Domain surrendered their last holdout in Wakamatsu castle,

with Yamakawa Stematsu, among others being taken prisoner,

a boy was born to a family in the capital of the Ryukuing kingdom, Shuri.

The boy was born to the Funakoshi family, a family of what's called Pechin status.

The Pechen were a part of the Okinawan aristocracy, broadly analogous to the Shur scholars of China

or to mid-ranking samurai in Japan.

They formed the backbone of the government administration,

serving in a variety of roles in the bureaucracy. Their status, in turn, enabled Pechen families

to enjoy certain perks, including the right to be weighted on by a servant in public and to be

exempted from certain kind of taxes and punishments.

Unfortunately for this boy, his birth happened to coincide with the end of the traditional

Ryukyuan system, which had privileged his family for centuries.

When he was 11, the Ryukuin kingdom was annexed by Japan, and the Funakoshi family's lives were turned upside down.

The boy's father, Funakoshi Gisu, was a traditionalist who objected fiercely to the new order of things.

As a result, he fought against the change brought by the Japanese, who wanted to both

westernize and Japanese the Okinawan population. So, for example, Gisu insisted that his young

son wear the top-knott hairstyle associated with the Pechen class, which had been banned by the

Japanese. That, in in turn meant that the

young man could not pursue his first dream of attending medical school. A Japanese-run medical school,

after all, literally would not even let him through the front door with his hair styled like that.

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