animal roots of Karate?

[Same Trick]

Not at all. The patch was designed by an early US Marine student of Shimabuku, Sensei Advincula, a few years after the style was founded. It was based on a dream Master Shimabuku had. How this dream was transmitted to Advincula, I don't know. There may have been a senior Okinawan student "middleman" involved. It's inconceivable the Master would confide his dreams to a junior blackbelt foreigner. How much the patch accurately portrays the dream and how much was embellished by Advincula (and possibly other students at the time) cannot be known. But the patch was made and endorsed by the Master.

As for the patch's meaning, one would have to be an interpreter of dreams as it was not purposefully designed. A lot of features exist in this complex, colorful and beautiful design which were probably given meaning after the fact IMO. A stormy sea, a calm goddess, a dragon, etc. All of it can be given to various interpretations, some obvious in Oriental culture, some just made up to fill out the story. It all sounds good, but I don't personally put too much importance to the mostly made-up symbolism. To me it simply represents a great traditional Okinawan karate style.

That’s interesting,, that there’s no specific clear symbolism in it, thanks for the explanation.

 

[Same Trick]

An exhaustive list, indeed!

I’m not very familiar with Chinese arts but when I have seen some animal forms being performed, there’s an attempt to mimic the movements of the particular movement; snakes rapid strike and retreat, the monkey’s leaping manner, hands and arms held in a tiger’s claw-like pose. This ‘mimicry’ is completely absent in Karate.

Dragons are, of course, mythological and so their movements can be whatever you want them to be!

Xin/xingyiquan there’s some mimic features in their animal forms but not so obvious as in as what I can imagine is done in southern Chinese styles. Tongbeiquan (a northern Chinese style) is sometimes referred to as a sort of monkey style because of its big swing arm movements that actually doesn’t look any monkey like at all, however in China at a time tongbeiquan was seen as a black people style meaning people into shady businesses favored the style - monkey business