why Karate (Oriental Martial arts)?

[Xue Sheng]

It seems to me that many countries (ethnicities?) ha a traditional self defense martial art. France has Savate. Here is a link to more List of 180+ Martial Arts Styles - Black Belt Wiki.

It also seems to me that the family of unarmed martial arts that started in India mover to China moved to Okinawa and then Japan and eventually the world which I will collectively refer to as "family of Karate" has spread more widely than most of the others on the above list.

Why has the one group been so successful at expanding world wide, While the others on the list are mostly localized? Or am I way off base on my understanding of the unarmed self defense world?

Thanks.

Not everything you see calling itself Karate, is karate. It is just a label most people understand and gets more people to go to Your school. Same with schools saying kung fu, they all are not King Fu. There is a silat school near me calling itself karate

 

[Same Trick]

I believe that is a big factor in the spread of Asian Martial arts. But we have had troops spread all over the world in many other countries for a long time where other ethnic martial arts exist but has not had the same result.

Jesuit missions to Japan goes back to the 1500’ish, so sure Japan things probably came in fashion early on in Europe
Then also of course came the various european east India companies and made the East even more accessible. So yes plenty of time for the west turning Japanese.
The Karate craze, I believe one big reason was that the JKA early on after the war sending instructors out in the world with mission to set up schools and spread the Karate gospel primarily in Europe but also to the Americas and elsewhere

 

[Gyakuto]

Jesuit missions to Japan goes back to the 1500’ish, so sure Japan things probably came in fashion early on in Europe

That era was more about stealthily bringing back wealth from Japan rather than culture; silk, gold silver, tempura batter and converting the natives to Christianity. I’m reading a great book about this era. It’s very dense with detail but just brilliant; highly recommended. Concurrently I’m reading another book that compliments it perfectly, The Battle of Sekigahara by Chris Glenn. Please do check them out.

The Karate craze, I believe one big reason was that the JKA early on after the war sending instructors out in the world with mission to set up schools and spread the Karate gospel primarily in Europe but also to the Americas and elsewhere

That’s a good point although that was more late 50s/early 60s…quite late.

I know _Simon_ was being humorously flippant with his early comment, but I do wonder if there was a germ of truth in what he said; Karate looked very cool compared to other fighting arts Westerners had come across and that was exotically attractive to them. It took Bruce Lee, well into the latter quarter of the 20th century, to make Chinese arts look even cooler albeit with a hybridisation of many arts including some Western ones.

Just a thought…