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…

 

[skribs]

I think there's a few reasons:

1. Karate and Taekwondo are (or at least were) integrated into the schools in Japan and Korea. This was their PE program. Compare this to say wrestling in America which is an elective sport.
2. I'm not aware of sports like Kung Fu, Karate, or Taekwondo that are heavily forms-based outside of the East Asian martial arts. There's a lot of overlap between American kickboxing and French Savate, so why would Savate catch on? But there isn't anything like Karate from America, so it makes sense it would come here.
3. Expanding on points #1 and #2, East Asian arts tend to include a lot of the Do or the Way of Life in addition to the martial training itself. These arts are popular for parents to enroll their children, because the parents want their children to build self-confidence, discipline, respect, and other positive character traits. These are encouraged through other arts, but not to the degree that they are in Karate or Taekwondo.

For what it's worth, I've formally trained Taekwondo, Hapkido, wrestling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai, and MMA. I've coached extensively in TKD, and coached the kids classes in BJJ for over a year now. I've also worked with kids in Muay Thai and taken on the role of the senior student helping the newer students in HKD and MMA.

I've seen the differences in how the Do is applied in traditional arts vs. combat sports. There's a reason I want to open a TKD school instead of a BJJ gym.

 

[Gyakuto]

I think there's a few reasons:

1. Karate and Taekwondo are (or at least were) integrated into the schools in Japan and Korea. This was their PE program. Compare this to say wrestling in America which is an elective sport.

I don’t think Karate was part of the school curriculum in any large part. Kendo, yes, but Karate? Of course that was in Japan not in the West.

1. I'm not aware of sports like Kung Fu, Karate, or Taekwondo that are heavily forms-based outside of the East Asian martial arts. There's a lot of overlap between American kickboxing and French Savate, so why would Savate catch on? But there isn't anything like Karate from America, so it makes sense it would come here.

It seems that Japanese Karate incorporated kicking techniques from Savate

I've seen the differences in how the Do is applied in traditional arts vs. combat sports. There's a reason I want to open a TKD school instead of a BJJ gym.

That’s interesting because I’ve never observed this on a dojo-wide scale. There may be individuals who follow the idea of ‘Do’ but the many Karate dojo I’ve witnessed are about self-defence and sports. In your experience, how does this manifest?

 

[isshinryuronin]

There may be individuals who follow the idea of ‘Do’ but the many Karate dojo I’ve witnessed are about self-defence and sports. In your experience, how does this manifest?

"Do" lays Buddhism and Confucianism as a foundation for the "way." I agree with your observation of Western dojo; they usually do not go out of their way to stress these kinds of teachings. It was more of a Japanese ethos than Okinawan, officially introduced in 1933, I think. This coincided with Japan's growing nationalism and militarism (the teachings of "do" supported this mindset) in the years leading up to WWII. It was not embraced as fully by the Okinawans. Still, the aspects of "do" worked their way into the subtext of how karate is generally seen today.

Few dojo stress and teach "the way" like they do self-defense or kata training, so just by watching a few classes one would not think it's part of the curriculum. And in a sense, it's not. But in many traditional karate dojo the process and methodology of training subtly ingrains this concept over the period of years. How much of this quality is transmitted varies with the school and individual. Karate existed for over 100 years without it. And perhaps it's now fading. Sport fighting arts don't need it as they are result oriented, as many MMA fans here point out. "Do" doesn't directly affect win/loss records or save one from a back street mugging.

But the concept is still alive for anyone to incorporate into their life. We can decide what combination of sport, jutsu and do as we like.

 

[Badhabits]

Wasn't the " do" concept a way for the better educated to instill their own values into the less educated, using karate as the vehicle for this?

 

[Prince_Alarming]

Wasn't the " do" concept a way for the better educated to instill their own values into the less educated, using karate as the vehicle for this?

Oh, it's even worse than that. Gichin Funakoshi's pacifism and gentleness was an artefact of the cultural climate after the war. Before then, karate was a way of instilling specifically Japanese cultural values into filthy gaijin. If you look at his earlier writings there's a distinctly obnoxious strain of racist nationalism in evidence.

 

[isshinryuronin]

Wasn't the " do" concept a way for the better educated to instill their own values into the less educated, using karate as the vehicle for this?

Funakoshi was an educated teacher and given the job to introduce karate to Japan using the public schools as the vehicle. I believe it was oriented to mostly middle and high school children to instill patriotism, courage, discipline and health - values well suited for future citizens (and soldiers) in a growing modern nation. I don't think it was a social class thing.

Gichin Funakoshi's pacifism and gentleness was an artefact of the cultural climate after the war. Before then, karate was a way of instilling specifically Japanese cultural values into filthy gaijin.

Before the war there were hardly any "gaijin," filthy or otherwise, studying karate. Funakoshi's alleged pacifism after the war would be representative of the entire nation's mentality after the horrible defeat they suffered that only in recent years is changing. Funakoshi was basically retired by WWII and had little direct influence on the direction karate took afterwards, the JKA assuming power around 1950.

The facts do not support the ideas conveyed in the two quotes above.

 

[Gyakuto]

Wasn't the " do" concept a way for the better educated to instill their own values into the less educated, using karate as the vehicle for this?

My impression was Karate was a ‘folk art’ for the uneducated common Okinawan. I don’t think they gave two hoots about Zen/Confucianism if they’d even heard of it. Funakoshi, a school teacher, was educated (a bit) and realised he’d have to make this folk art palatable to a refined Japanese public accustomed to Sado, Noh etc. He changed the name from Chinese hand to empty hand and aligned it with Kendo/Judo by clumsily levering in the Zen aspects to give it credibility.

 

[Badhabits]

Hmmm.... Didn't Itosu introduce karate to the Okinawan school system pre karate being introduced to Japan? I read somewhere that since the upper class who developed karate were already educated in philosophy, ethics etc that they took the opportunity to use karate as a vehicle to "educate" the lower classes in these things.

 

[isshinryuronin]

My impression was Karate was a ‘folk art’ for the uneducated common Okinawan.

This was the story before we knew any better, certainly during the time I began training. The little guy getting empowered was an attractive theme, but incorrect.

the upper class who developed karate

Correct. The early (late 1700's-middle/late 1800's) Okinawan masters were mostly aristocrats from the capital city, Shuri. Many were security agents/bodyguards for the Royal family. Commoners got access to karate post 1900 for the most part.

changed the name from Chinese hand to empty hand and aligned it with Kendo/Judo by clumsily levering in the Zen aspects to give it credibility.

This is mostly correct. The Okinawans were second-class citizens and saw karate as being a means of gaining acceptance via the All Nippon Butokukai (the overseeing TMA arm of the Japanese gov't.) Getting rid of "Chinese hand" for the name of their art was a big step. Don't know if the "do" part was mostly the gov't's doing or Funakoshi's. IMO, the gov't. was the main player in this with Funakoshi's help.

Didn't Itosu introduce karate to the Okinawan school system pre karate being introduced to Japan

Yes. It was taught in Okinawan high schools starting in 1902 or 05, depending on the source. It may have been Itosu Anko (maybe along with Funakoshi as he was more educated and a teacher) who started it, but I'm not sure.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

It could be something to do with both Japan and Britain being essentially island peoples. The dominant thrust in global culture during the industrial revolution just happens to have been British- or rather English- and when Japan opened its borders and the British travelled there, they saw something of themselves in the Japanese. Also, the fact is that Japanese culture developed on a string of small islands with little arable land and few natural resources led to a culture of minimalism, making the most of absolutely everything- as exemplified by the borro textiles that have become popular recently- and these tendencies just happened to make a lot of sense in the world of the machine and later of the computer.

Well don’t forget that both had homogenized racist colonialism at the heart of their cultures. Brothers by separate mothers.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

As I understand it Karate traces its ancestry from Okinawa to China to India (Bodhidharma)?

India/China to Okinawa to Japan

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

yyyyyyeah... but that may well be Bodhibollocks, it's an origin story on a par with the first emperor inventing tea or Dionysus inventing wine.

It is a near certainty that certain aspects of certain Okinawan martial arts came from China.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

yyyyyyeah... but that may well be Bodhibollocks, it's an origin story on a par with the first emperor inventing tea or Dionysus inventing wine.

And immaculate conception?

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

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

When Sifu Woo opened his first school in Los Angeles in the 1960s, no one knew the terms for Chinese martial arts so his sign read Karate Kung fu.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

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.

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…

Tempura came from the Portuguese to Japan. “ Little fish in the garden” is a very early example of cultural appropriation, however odd the context.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

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.

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…

Chinese martial arts is cooler…

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

"Do" lays Buddhism and Confucianism as a foundation for the "way." I agree with your observation of Western dojo; they usually do not go out of their way to stress these kinds of teachings. It was more of a Japanese ethos than Okinawan, officially introduced in 1933, I think. This coincided with Japan's growing nationalism and militarism (the teachings of "do" supported this mindset) in the years leading up to WWII. It was not embraced as fully by the Okinawans. Still, the aspects of "do" worked their way into the subtext of how karate is generally seen today.

Few dojo stress and teach "the way" like they do self-defense or kata training, so just by watching a few classes one would not think it's part of the curriculum. And in a sense, it's not. But in many traditional karate dojo the process and methodology of training subtly ingrains this concept over the period of years. How much of this quality is transmitted varies with the school and individual. Karate existed for over 100 years without it. And perhaps it's now fading. Sport fighting arts don't need it as they are result oriented, as many MMA fans here point out. "Do" doesn't directly affect win/loss records or save one from a back street mugging.

But the concept is still alive for anyone to incorporate into their life. We can decide what combination of sport, jutsu and do as we like.

I believe that, on at least one level you may be confusing, and or conflating Confucianism with Taoism. The Tao is “the way”, which is certainly at odds with Confucian thought in several instances.