Asai karate is fundamentally based on Funakoshi/Nakayama standard Shotokan karate or JKA Shotokan. What is different is that our style has the added techniques and kata developed by Master Tetsuhiko Asai. JKA karate is typically a long-distance fighting method and it de-emphasizes the techniques from a short distance fighting method.

Asai karate supplements that short fall with the techniques from White Crane Kung fu. Master Asai trained this Chinese martial art while he lived in Taiwan in the seventies. Most of those kung fu techniques are not new or unknown to Shotokan karate. They are simply not taught much in their regular training. Thus, they may seem foreign to many of the Shotokan practitioners. Such techniques involving the elbow and knee, short stances such as neko ashi and sanchin, open hand (whip arm and leg) techniques, tenshin (body rotation) techniques and many more.