On the 15th and 22nd of October 2022, Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karate Namibia (OGKN) hosted their annual 100 kata challenge events in celebration of Okinawan Karate Day.

Karate Day originally started in Naha, Okinawa and takes place annually on the 25th of October, and is hosted in order to celebrate the beauty and grace of Okinawa’s iconic martial art. The event features thousands of karateka of all ages who gather together to perform Kata, a choreographed sequence of individual techniques that is used as one of the fundamental training techniques in traditional Okinawan karate. In 2016, Naha’s Karate Day celebrations were featured in the Guinness World Records for the most people (3973) performing a kata.

Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karate Namibia has been actively participating in Okinawan Karate Day since 2014. This year’s events took place on the 15th of October in Walvis Bay and on the 22nd of October in Windhoek and were attended by more than 130 karateka collectively across all the dojos.

This year’s event also served as the annual fundraising event for OGKN. Funds raised will be used to both provide financial support to local instructors/sensei’s as well as to bring senior level international instructors to Namibia in 2023, thereby promoting the continued development of Traditional Okinawan Karate in the country.