Kyokushin Population

[Lucy]

This is a query as im becoming increasingly aware that kyokushin is a pretty big organisation.... forgive me, i live on a tiny island compared to some of you guys ! This forum has really opened my eyes to the world around me! But im just sooooo curious to know what is the estimated population who train kyokushin, all organizations, all styles developed from kyokushin and splinter groups?

My partner and i have many arguements because he does TKD and hes always gloating about the size of TKD and considers kyokushin (or karate in general) as i mere dot compared to TKD... you can imagine how infuriating this is!

I would just really love some knowledge on this so i can voice a fair arguement

[Kurisu]

I think before the big split, the official word was that there were 12 million people worldwide in the IKO. Not sure if that was a cumulative total which included non-practicing members.

I'm sure if you included all the Kyokushin off-shoots, the different IKOs there are still several million people practicing. I suppose it is nearly impossible for us to know for sure.

[sonofkanga]

going on the size of kyokushin before the big splintering and the current size of all splinter groupes and offshoots here in Israel alone.
I would have to state that today kyokushin ,including all that still use Kyokushin in there lineage,must be much bigger than the magical 12 million members.
If in Sosai`s lifetime we were 1000.now we have trippled that number.

[Martin H]

The largest figure Ive seen was 20 million on a IKO1 webpage. But how they got to that number, if it included all kyokushin or just their organization (all the factions seems to inherit the old 12 million number), or if it was the total sum of people joining kyokushin since 1964 (as a lifetime member -even if they quit the day after), I have no idea.

Personaly I think that those numbers seem to be very made up.
But I am sure that there are a lot of us :-)

I have never seen any reliable numbers of current/active members from any organization.

[ksan]

Originally Posted by Lucy

This is a query as im becoming increasingly aware that kyokushin is a pretty big organisation.... forgive me, i live on a tiny island compared to some of you guys ! This forum has really opened my eyes to the world around me! But im just sooooo curious to know what is the estimated population who train kyokushin, all organizations, all styles developed from kyokushin and splinter groups?

My partner and i have many arguements because he does TKD and hes always gloating about the size of TKD and considers kyokushin (or karate in general) as i mere dot compared to TKD... you can imagine how infuriating this is!

I would just really love some knowledge on this so i can voice a fair arguement

The BKK is a pretty big kyokushin organisation if we speak of national organisations...

[Sonik]

i think 20 millions is pretty exgerated to say the least. But we're planty. I'd say around 100.000 people in Kyokushin (IKO-1)

[Sonik]

sorry 12 million not 20 million but still pretty exagerated