Sensei Morio Higaonna was born 25th December 1938, and he began his karate training when he was fourteen years old. He studied Shorin-Ryu with his father. He was also training with a friend, Tsunetaka Shimabukuro, another Shorin-Ryu stylist. At the age of sixteen he began to train the Goju-Ryu style on the recommendation of Shimabukuro Sensei. It was the year of 1955 when the young Higaonna was training in the garden dojo of the late Chojun Miyagi Shihan with his instructor Sensei An´ichi Miyagi.
At that time the training regime was very tough, and Sensei Higaonna would practice countless times kata or kakie training with many different opponents until he could no longer move his arms.
By 1957 the garden dojo moved to a permanent building called the Jundokan, so Sensei Higaonna continued his training there everyday for five hours a day. After his instructor, Sensei An´ichi Miyagi moved away to work on an American oil tanker, Sensei Higaonna gained a place at the Takushoku University in Tokyo. It was also by this time that he was examined to his first official Dan grading.
Sensei Higaonna Sensei continued his hard training over the years and was awarded 3rd Dan in 1960. Later, Sensei Higaonna also taught at the famous Yoyogi Dojo in Tokyo. Many thousands of students passed through this dojo and the legends about Sensei Higaonna abilities began to grow. Don Dreager was a western martial artist who travelled all over Japan documenting Masters for all martial arts styles. He made comments such as ‘There is no one here like Higaonna Sensei and more famously, ‘Sensei Higaonna is the most dangerous man in Japan in a real fight’.
During the late sixties and early seventies Sensei Higaonna began travelling to several countries that were practicing Okinawa Goju-Ryu. He was also invited to perform a demonstration at the World Karate Championships in Paris in 1972 and his reputation as one of the strongest Goju-Ryu practitioners in the world was growing further.
In 1979 in Poole, England with the help of his senior international instructors the IOGKF was formed with the aim to preserve traditional Goju-Ryu Karate as taught by its founders.
Later, Sensei Morio Higaonna spent time living in the United States where he established his headquarters in San Marcos for some time, before eventually returning to Okinawa, Japan where he founded the IOGKF Hunbu Dojo and where he currently resides. Since those times until now Sensei Higaonna has maintained his own strict training regime and continues to research the original kata and training methods of Goju-Ryu.
Master Morio Higaonna led and expanded IOGKF from 1979 over 35 years as the head of the IOGKF and in 2012, Sensei Higaonna took on an advisory role within the Federation and appointed Sensei Tetsuji Nakamura as his successor and chief instructor of IOGKF International.
In 2013 Higaonna Sensei received an award from the Okinawan Government naming him as a living cultural treasure for the Island for his lifetime work to spread Okinawan Goju-Ryu to the world as well as preserving it forever in its homeland.
In 2022, at the age of 84, Master Morio Higaonna ceases his position of supreme master at IOGKF.