The Story of the Shotokan Tiger

Hoan Kosugi, a famous artist and president of the Tabata Poplar Club, an artist' guild, was a very important figure in the development of Shotokan Karate-do in Japan.

To entice Funakoshi, to write a book about Karate, Hoan Kosugi told Funakoshi that if he would write the book, Kosugi would design it and provide a painting for the cover. When Gichin Funakoshi produced the book, Hoan Kosugi produced the now famous Shotokan tiger.

His idea for the tiger came from the expression "Tora no maki." Tora no maki, in Japanese tradition, is the official written document of an art or system, which is used as the definitive reference source for that particular art. Since no books had ever been written about Karate, Hoan Kosugi told Funakoshi that his book was the tora no maki of Karate, and since "tora" also means "tiger", he designed the tiger as a representation of Funakoshi's art.

The tiger symbolizes the keen alertness of the wakeful tiger and the serenity of the peaceful mind which Master Funakoshi experienced while listening to the pine waves (i.e. shoto in Japanese) on Tiger's Tail Mountain.

From [Hassel, R. G., Shotokan Karate, It's History and Evolution, St. Louis, Missouri: Focus Publications, 1991]