Kiai
short yell uttered by martial artists, commonly rendered in forms such as "Hi-yah!"
In Japanese martial arts a kiai (Japanese: 気合; ) is a short shout uttered when performing an assault.
Traditional Japanese dojo generally uses single syllables beginning with a vowel. The practice has become a part of Asian martial arts in popular culture, especially in martial arts films, in writing often rendered in variants such as Hi-yah!, Aiyah!, Eeee-yah! or Hyah!. A kiai is usually not the word "kiai" itself.
Etymology
The term is a compound of ki (Japanese: 気), meaning "energy" or "mood" and a(u) (Japanese: 合, infinitive ai), an emphatic marker. The same concept is known as kihap in many Korean martial arts, such as taekwondo and Tang Soo Do, ki being the energy and hap meaning to join, to harmonize or to amplify, based on the Korean reading of the same characters; its Hangul spelling is 기합.
In the board game Go, the term describes fighting spirit.
Use in martial arts
Students of Japanese martial arts such as aikido, karate, kobudo, kendo, taido or judo (or related arts such as taiko drumming) use kiai to startle an opponent, intimidate, express confidence or express victory. In kendo, for example, a point is only given by the Shinpan (referees) if the hit is accompanied by a strong, convincing kiai.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q589009. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kiai” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.