Our Dōjō - Kyōtō ni Dōjō

Welcome to the Kyoto Dōjō website - we are a traditional Shotokan Karate Dōjō situated on the western side of Bristol (Avonmouth, Shirehampton and Lawrence Weston villages) next to the M5 motorway (in fact, our Avonmouth Dōjō overlooks the motorway).

Kyōtō - the club name is not actually named after the Japanese city Kyoto, but comes from the old name of Bristol (Bristow: brycg, meaning "bridge" and stow, meaning "assembly place.").  Kyōtō (pronounced Kyootoo) is written in Japanese Kanji as 橋頭, 橋 (kyō) meaning "bridge" and 頭 (tō) meaning "head", so a literal translation would be "bridgehead" or "vicinity of a bridge".  So Kyōtō ni Dōjō means "Dōjō in the vicinity of a bridge".  The club's name was given by Sensei Dave Kershaw, who was Steve's original Dōjō instructor.

We are proudly affiliated to Shotokan Karate International Federation (SKIF) of Great Britain (SKIF-GB) headed by Hanshi Shiro Asano (9th Dan) - Chief Instructor to Europe and Great Britain.  SKIF is one of the largest single style karate associations in the world - you can read more about them here.

Our aim is to teach traditional Shotokan Karate.

Having celebrated its 25th anniversary, and now heading towards its 30th in 2026, the club was founded by the club's chief instructor Steve Ashby in 1996.  Over those years we have grown considerably and have taught karate to hundreds of students and made many friends around the world.

We run mixed karate classes for men, women and children at Avonmouth Rugby Football Club, Shirehampton and also at St.Bedes Catholic College, Lawrence Weston.

Our pricing policy for the club is to keep the cost to families and individuals as low as possible - we charge just £4.00 per hour for PAYG. Discounts apply for doing double/treble karate classes in an evening and also for families and further discounts for pay-monthly. View our prices here.

We are a non-profit making club, all training money goes into to the club to pay for hall hire, insurance and guest instructors.

Our parent association SKIF-GB hosts several national courses throughout the year with senior instructors from around the world, we ourselves also host regular courses in Bristol with senior Shotokan Instructors, thus making Karate more available to our students in the region - we have had regular courses with Hanshi Shiro Asano (9th Dan), Sensei Paul Mead (8th Dan), Sensei Dave Kershaw (8th Dan), Sensei Ken Davies (7th Dan).

Our Dōjō Kun

The Dōjō Kun (道場訓) of the SKIF-GB and our dōjō is:

Karate-Dō,
Kokoro Tadashiku,
Nichi Nichi No Keiko
Rei To Setsu

A literal translation is:

"We must acknowledge, consider and dedicate ourselves to the true way of Karate, and practice with good heart, mind and spirit on all occasions."

The Dōjō Kun is an oath or 'set of rules', often recited at the end of the class.