According to Sensei Randall Hassell's "Shotokan Karate: It's History and Evolution":
Hoan Kosugi, a famous artist and president of the Tabata Poplar Club, an artist' guild, was a very important figure in the development of Shotokan karate-do in Japan...
As part of his enticement of Funakoshi, Hoan Kosugi told Funakoshi that if he would write a book about karate, Kosugi, would design it and provide a painting for the cover. When Gichin Funakoshi produced the book, Hoan Kosugi produced the now famous Shotokan tiger.
His idea for the tiger came from the expression "Tora no maki." Tora no maki, in Japanese tradition, is the official written document of an art or system, which is used as the definitive reference source for that particular art. Since no books had ever been written about karate, Hoan Kosugi told Funakoshi that his book was the tora no maki of karate, and since "tora" also means "tiger", he designed the tiger as a representation of Funakoshi's art.
The article below is reprinted from the 28th annual East Coast Shotokan Karate Championships Tournament Guide. The East Coast Shotokan Karate organiznation reports to Master Okazaki (JKA/ISKF). As Master Okazaki was at this tournament I would suspect that this could be considered the closest thing to official for JKA/ISKF karate-ka.
The Shotokan Tiger
Master Funakoshi's pen name Shoto, literally means "pine waves", and today is synonymous with the tiger symbol and Shotokan Karate-do. But few people understand the relationship of Shoto to what is commonly known as the Shotokan Tiger.
When Master Funakoshi was a young man, he enjoyed walking in solitude among the pine trees which surrounded his home of Shuri. After a hard day of teaching in the local school and several more hours of strenuous karate practice, he would often walk up Mt. Torao and meditate among the pine trees under the stars and bright moon. Mt. Torao is a very narrow, heavily wooded mountain which, when viewed from a distance, resembles a tiger's tail. The name Torao, in fact, literally means "tiger's tail".
In later life, Master Funakoshi explained that the cool breezes which blew among the pines on Mt. Torao made the trees whisper like waves breaking on the shore. Thus, since he gained his greatest poetic inspirations while walking among the gently blowing pine trees, he chose the pen name of Shoto, "pine waves".
The tiger which is commonly used as the symbol for Shotokan karate is a traditional Chinese design which implies that "the tiger never sleeps". Symbolized in the Shotokan tiger, therefore is the keen alertness of the wakeful tiger and the serenity of the peaceful mind which Master Funakoshi experienced while listening to the pine waves on Tiger's Tail Mountain.
This second story was originally put forth by Sensei Randall Hassell in the first edition of his _Shotokan Karate: Its History and Evolution_ text. Sensei Hassell has since abandoned the second story in favor of the first, which (to him, at least) has more foundation in verifiable historical fact.
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