Less known facts of Karate (Martial Arts)

Introduction

Etymology: Karate is a Japanese word meaning ‘Empty Hand’. It is a martial art developed in Okinawa islands of Japan. There were times in Okinawa, where government banned use of any martial arts especially any weapons and trainings related to it. This lead to the evolution of new form of martial arts ‘karate’, where the arts is practiced with only hands. Even this hand practice was done is secret.

Why Karate is so famous?

The martial arts movie of 1960s, 1970s and Television played a major role in promoting karate. By then it kind of labeled ‘karate’ for all the striking based martial arts. People started liking the art form and karate schools were spread across the world.

Karate — Unknown origin?

The current form of karate has its roots from Japan’s Okinawa Island. Even though there is no evidence (historical artefact) on the origin of karate. It is widely believed that people of Okinawa had some exposure to Chinese kung-fu martial arts, because of its proximity to China.

We can trace the origin of karate back to 17th century, where a ban on weapons was imposed by the samurai rulers of Japan. The exact evolution of karate history is lost due to the lack of information being written down. What we have as a written evidence of karate in Okinawa was a mention of the word Tode (the Okinawan name for the art) in the late 1700s. This was found in a chinese visitor ‘Kushanku’ note to the island.

Birth of Modern Karate

Until the early 20th century the Okinawan masters trained in secret. Around 1905, Anko Itosu took the art out of secrecy and managed to get the authorities to allow him to start a program of teaching Tode (predecessor to karate) in the local schools. This was one of the most significant acts in the history of karate and brought in new era of growth for the art.

It is Anko Itosu’s student Gichin Funakoshi, who made many modifications to the art to make it more accessible to the Japanese including changing the name to ‘Karate’ around 1922.

Funakoshi effort was key in forming the Japanese Karate Association (JKA), which set about making karate a world martial art by sending out its best instructors to teach it all over the globe.

Karate and Kung-fu — Difference

Even though there karate has lot of influence from Chinese kung fu, over time, the Okinawan’s and Japanese developed their own styles of martial arts.

One can clearly see, Kung fu way of exercises (especially shadow fighting or katas in karate) are often very long and tend to be based on flowing and continuous movement, in which one technique leads directly into another without a pause. However Karate kata often are shorter, and there are distinct pauses between techniques that can give a performance of karate a rigid appearance in comparison with kung fu.

Karate Styles

Today, karate-do is taught all around the world, and though it is often modified and always changing, four distinctive Japanese styles have emerged.

• Shotokan
• Gōju-ryū
• Shitō-ryū
• Wadō-ryū

Most of the styles will have major influence on one of these styles. All major karate tournaments use katas from these styles for evaluation.