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► About Karate
What is Karate?
- The following text is not meant to be a complete account of the history of karate. It is merely an attempt to place some of the aspects of modern day karate into a historical context. -
Karate is a martial art that originates from Okinawa, an island south of Japan. The Japanese kanji for "kara te" are most commonly translated as empty hand, although its original meaning was "Chinese hand", pointing towards the roots of the art on the Asian continent.
The training of karate in the 19th century Okinawa must have been very different from what is practised in our day. In those times, martial arts was commonly practised in secrecy, and a master would only teach a small number of hand-picked students quite often only consisting of members of his own clan. There were no sports clubs advertising for members, no white pyjamas and no national championships.
This picture changed at the beginning of the 20th century, when karate was introduced in Okinawan public schools. Necessarily, the form of teaching was altered as the instructors had to train a class full of school children instead of a few private students. In this form, the practice of karate was used as fitness training rather than a form of self-defence.
This trend became more pronounced when karate was introduced in mainland Japan. Following the example of judo, popular then and now, karate started to become a competition sport. Part of this development was the introduction of the famous white uniforms (dogi) and the coloured belts.
After the Second World War, karate became known in the western world or what had become of karate: by then, the original martial art had been turned into a combat sport for fit young people, with spectacular high-flying kicks to the opponent's head, with tournaments, medals and referees. Many of the original applications of the katas (forms) had been forgotten, and in lack of better knowledge people made up unrealistic and even dangerous applications, e.g. the use of gedan barai as a block against a kick.
When Hollywood discovered karate, the image of an oriental guy in white pyjamas, taking out half a dozen opponents with incredible, spinning kicks whilst producing high-pitched bird noises, became stereotypes of karate.
It was only during the last twenty years or so that much of what had been lost was rediscovered, thanks to the efforts of people like Patrick McCarthy, George Dillman, Vince Morris (and certainly many others whose names are unknown to the author), who dedicated a great part of their lives to studying the origins of karate techniques.
Many aspects of the martial art, like grappling, joint manipulation and pressure points, have come back to life within the context of karate. It is now once more possible to train in karate as an applicable form of self-defence.