AMERICAN KENPO

The modern history of American Kenpo began in the 1940s, when Great Grandmaster James M. Mitose (1916-1981) started teaching his ancestral Japanese martial art, Kosho-Ryu Kenpo, in Hawaii. Mitose's art, later called Kenpo Jiu-Jitsu, emphasizes punching, striking, kicking, locking, and throwing. Mitose's art was very linear, lacking the circular motions in American Kenpo.

William K. S. Chow studied Kenpo under James Mitose, eventually earning a first-degree black belt. Chow began teaching an art, which he called Kenpo Karate, that blended the circular movements he had learned from his father with the system he had learned from Mitose. Chow experimented and modified his art, adapting it to meet the needs of American students.

Ed Parker learned Kenpo Karate from William Chow,and according to Al Tracy, eventually earning a sandan (3rd-degree black belt) in December 1961.

The system known as American Kenpo was developed by Ed Parker as a successor to Chow's art. Parker revised older methods to work in modern day fighting scenarios. He heavily restructured American Kenpo's forms and techniques during this period. He moved away from methods that were recognizably descended from other arts and established a more definitive relationship between forms and the self-defense technique curriculum of American Kenpo.

Parker began codifiying his early understandings of Chinese Kenpo into a distinct and evolving personal interpretation of the art. Here he dropped all Asian language elements and many traditions in favor of American English. During this period, he de-emphasized techniques and principles organized in the same manner as in Chinese and Japanese arts in favor of his own curriculum of forms and techniques. Parker took his art through continual changes. Parker always suggested that once a student learns the lesson embodied in the "ideal phase" of the technique he should search for some aspect that can be tailored to his own personal needs and strengths. Furthermore, Parker's students learned a different curriculum depending on when they studied with him. Some students preferred older material to newer material, wanted to maintain older material that Parker intended to replace, or wanted to supplement the kenpo they learned from a particular period with other martial arts training.

One of the best-known students of Ed Parker is Elvis Presley.

Within American Kenpo there is a basic belt system consisting of White, Yellow, Orange, Purple, Blue, Green, Third Brown, Second Brown, First Brown, and First through Tenth Black. Different organizations have different belt systems, for example the WKKA (World Kempo Karate Association) includes an "advanced" rank for each belt signified by a stripe of the next full belt's color worn on one end of the belt. and also includes a 3 degree Red belt prior to first degree black. The black belt ranks are indicated by half-inch red 'strips' up to the 4th degree, then a 5 inch 'block' is for 5th. Thereafter, additional half-inch stripes are added up to the 9th degree. For 10th degree black belt, two 5 inch 'blocks' separated by a half-inch space are used.