About Us
Origin
Budo Jissen Karate was officially founded on the 1st March 2024, a perfect day for an organisation based in Wales; St David’s Day.
The BJK is a Shotokan karate organisation and was formed with the intention of building upon the experiences of the founding members areas of interest and knowledge, with the specific goal of formally reintroducing many of the useful elements that are slowly being forgotten or lost to history.
Where we will differ from other Shotokan-based classes is you will find us still practicing breakfalls, throws, locks, strangles, grappling and many other areas not often associated with karate. Despite this, we still remain a primarily ‘striking’ martial art, we just added some of those missing pieces of the puzzle back.
A desire for practical karate is why we chose a name to reflect this purpose, Budo Jissen Karate, the ‘Martial Way of Applied Karate’.
Our Logo
The origin of our logo deserves a special mention because it was inspired by and created by our members.
It all began after a club meeting to discuss the idea of us going independent. Within a couple of days one of our younger members, Kara, sent through her idea for a logo. What was written on it resonated immediately:
“Cherry blossom trees help symbolize new beginnings and good fortune”
Kirsty went on to make a digital rendition of this design for Kara to see the fruits of her labour.
This inspired Simon, with plenty of confidence and no artistic talent, to throw pen to paper.
Enter Noel, a currently ‘on pause’ member of the club due to work commitments, but nevertheless still a valued member and friend. Fortunately, he is a very talented artist. Taking the ideas so far, he sat down with Japanese brushes and inks and would hand paint our wonderful new logo before digitising it for our use in its current form.
Isn’t it amazing what one single spark of imagination can begin?
