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I know that a lot of people out there have varying degrees of experience with, or exposure to, different forms of karate (or "karate," as the case may be), but I also know that there are a few of us here on Sherdog who tend to be the ones to defend the art and try to bust myths and correct misconceptions about it. This thread is partially a rant, to that effect, but also an overview of some historical information about karate, and an invitation for people to ask questions about karate, or educate people about it.
Honestly, I don't enjoy having to do things like this, because it means that karate instructors all over the world have failed their students. They have perpetuated exaggerations, myths, and outright lies in the interest of "honoring" their instructors, or making karate seem like some sort of Zen exercise or magical ancient practice. They have taught movements that they understand only from a purely mechanical sense, without any real knowledge of what those movements are for, or how to make them work for karate's intended context. They have adopted kumite (sparring) methods that are largely incompatible with the material the art is meant to teach and, as such, teach it as a completely separate skillset, rather than a training method for getting better at applying karate techniques under pressure. They have clung to the idea of "tradition" so strongly--without even realizing that most of those "ancient traditions" they hold dear are less than a Century old--that they choose to worship the ground upon which the old masters walked, instead of following their path and continuing their journey to develop karate. This is so widespread that the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo will be including karate competition, for the first time, and they chose exactly this type of karate to showcase--it is almost as if that is how people actually WANT karate to be.
These days, karate is derided as an activity only suitable for small children, and pretty much any karate dojo that doesn't teach Kyokushin (or one of its off-shoots) is immediately considered to be a McDojo, until proven otherwise. As much as it pains me to say it, karate has EARNED this terrible reputation, and since the majority of dojo seem to be meeting those expectations, I can't say it isn't a valid stereotype. What I can say, though, is that the karate that is popular, today, that bears this reputation, is not what karate used to be--what it could be, again. The sad part is that most people--even those who are actively practicing karate--have no idea what karate used to be. With that in mind, I would like to clarify a few things about karate, in the hopes that people might see that there is more to it than most realize, and maybe even help people see the value in it.
Where Does It Come From?
Karate originates from Okinawa, which is currently part of Japan, but the Okinawan people and culture are decidedly different from what you will find on mainland Japan, and they do not consider themselves "Japanese." When karate was transplanted from Okinawa to mainland Japan, it went through a lot of changes, although that process started in 1901, when Itosu Anko officially introduced karate into the physical education curriculum of public schools. This means that "Japanese karate" is taught, practiced, and used quite differently than "Okinawan karate," but even on Okinawa, a lot of Japanese methodologies have been adopted, because Japanese karate is more popular.
Chinese Influence?
People like to highlight the Chinese influence on karate, often despite the facts--the Hakutsuru (White Crane) craze in the karate world throughout the 80's and 90's, for example. There were certainly times where Chinese martial arts influenced karate, but karate was also influenced by Siamese (modern-day Thailand) martial arts, and Japanese martial arts, and likely many others. Of course, the Okinawans also had their own native fighting methods, as every culture does. In reality, there are very few styles which can claim to be heavily influenced by Chinese arts, and those are styles that fall into the "Naha-Te" classification, such as Goju-Ryu, Uechi-Ryu, and Ryuei-Ryu.
Who Made It, and Why?
There is a popular myth that karate was developed by farmers and fisherman to fight the invading Satsuma samurai after they had their weapons taken away, so they used farming tools as weapons, and they had to practice in secret because martial arts were banned. While this would make for a very cool underdog movie, it simply isn't true. Karate was developed by nobles and royalty on Okinawa, who practiced it either for their jobs (many nobles held positions as guards, police, or military leaders), or for the enjoyment of it. The only weapons that were ever banned on Okinawa were firearms, although there were restrictions on common folk carrying weapons--as mentioned, though, they didn't develop karate, anyway. The practice of martial arts was never banned, either. The only restriction was that it wasn't to be taught publicly, mostly so that it couldn't be used to build up any sort of revolution, but it could be taught to small groups in private, which is pretty much already how they were doing it, anyway.
What Was Its Purpose?
As mentioned, many of the nobles who practiced karate held jobs that would require martial arts skills. One of the most famous masters in karate history was "Bushi" Matsumura Sokon, who was the chief bodyguard to the Okinawan King (three of them, technically). Others were police officers, or guarded castles and gardens. With this in mind, you would expect karate to primarily involve methods for quickly disabling attackers, either by rendering them unconscious, unable to function, or restrained. Karate had to be fast and functional, and many of the people responsible for developing karate over time had reputations for testing their skills, either in challenge matches or just by getting into fights. These skills carried over into personal protection, as well, given that nobility would be rich targets for assault and theft.
What Is "Traditional Karate?"
Most of the karate that people call "traditional karate," or sometimes "budo karate," is fairly new, and strongly influenced by the Japanese culture. When karate was brought to Japan, it was stripped of many of its grappling methods, like joint locks and takedowns, because the Japanese already had extensive, popular grappling arts (Judo and Sumo, for example). What the Japanese wanted from karate was a strictly regimented physical education program that was martial in nature to help prepare young people for military service. It didn't have to be functional for fighting--they would teach them proper Japanese arts for that once they joined the military, after all--so that type of material didn't have to be included in the curriculum. The belt system from Judo was borrowed in order to ensure a hierarchical structure, which would also serve participants well once they joined the military.
Once Funakoshi Gigo (son of Shotokan founder, Funakoshi Gichin) gained a position of influence in the Japanese karate community, the art was aimed even more heavily toward physical fitness/challenge, and competition. While the Okinawan people had been experimenting with full-contact bogu kumite (armored sparring), the Japanese simply took the sparring methods of one of their native arts--Kendo--and copied it for use with only the most basic karate techniques. This is how we have ended up with a karate that is long range (like Kendo, but without a sword to make up the distance), focused almost entirely on punches and kicks (the part karate did better than jujutsu), and which borrowed most of its "traditions" from native Japanese arts. Of course, as we all know, competition is how martial arts inevitably spread, and the Japanese did a much better job of developing a competition format for karate than the Okinawans did, so that is the type of karate that took off.
Does Karate Have Grappling?
Karate absolutely includes grappling methods, although most schools have dropped much of that from their curriculum over time, since it doesn't fit into the common forms of karate competition and, thus, is not popular. As mentioned, karate was largely used for law enforcement purposes, so it would make sense for it to include a good number of methods for controlling an opponent, as much as it would include methods for simply striking an opponent. For the most part, these methods are focused on standing grappling, in conjunction with striking--limb control, joint locks, takedowns, etc. There are some groundwork methods within karate, but they are mostly focused on getting back up, kicking away a standing opponent to make space, or taking down a standing opponent to put yourself on an even playing field.
Some people like to retcon more groundwork into karate than it originally had, usually by claiming a kata (Naihanchi) is meant for grappling on your back, because of the similarity of the stance and stepping to the guard position seen in grappling arts, but this retconning is unnecessary. While karate, itself, has a specific context it is intended for, and contains methods for that purpose, karate masters have long advocated cross-training. This advocacy was not limited to striking arts, but also to weapons arts and grappling arts. For example, Okinawa has a native folkstyle submission grappling style, called tegumi, or muto, which was a very popular pastime for Okinawan youth even into the early 20th Century. We have written descriptions of this practice, and it is described as including takedowns, joint locks, chokes, and pins, with the intention of making your opponent tap out. Even to this day, you can find Shima tournaments on Okinawa, which are a form of belt wrestling, focused on throwing the opponent. Many Okinawan masters trained in Sumo, or Judo, to supplement their karate training, and recommended this practice to their students. There is no need to retcon groundwork into karate, because karate practitioners have always just cross-trained in grappling arts that do it.
Why Don't We See This "Old-Style" Karate In MMA?
We do, in a way--it just isn't being done by people who practice karate. The human body can only be manipulated in so many ways, so there is a lot of crossover between martial arts, and there are plenty of fighters out there using techniques that are present in karate, even if they have never practiced karate before. So, if that's the case, why don't we see more karateka in MMA doing it? To be perfectly honest, it goes back to the lack of a good karate-centric competition format to build skilled fighters with. The karate we see in MMA, today, is the long range, striking-only type of karate, because that is what was made popular by competitions. As it stands, the best competition format to include both the striking methods and grappling methods of karate is MMA, but it is hard to get karateka to compete in MMA, to begin with, because they are taught to feel that MMA is almost the antithesis of karate and "traditional martial arts." On top of that, because of karate's reputation as a "safe" activity, most of the people who seek out karate instruction aren't really looking to fight.
What we would need, in my opinion, to start bringing the older, practical methods to the forefront, is a good competition circuit that is specifically designed and intended for "traditional" karateka to compete in, but which forces them to incorporate the limb control techniques, joint locks, chokes, and takedowns of the art in conjunction with the striking. As it stands, all we really have are long range point fighting competitions, mid-to-close range knockdown fighting where grappling is prohibited, and the occasional full-contact circuit that allows some sort of grappling here and there, but usually just ends up being sloppy point fighting or MMA in a gi, without any real focus on including techniques from old-style karate.
To the surprise of most people, karate actually used to have a method of pressure testing and fighting using those old-style methods. It's called "kakedameshi" (literally, "hooked testing," although it could more accurately be called "hooked hands testing"), and has been described as something like a "very aggressive version of Chinese push-hands," where participants strike each other, joint lock each other, choke each other, or throw each other down, all in an attempt to get the other person to submit. A key point to this is that kakedameshi is entirely done at close range, with the arms "hooked" onto each other in some fashion. It actually looks somewhat like the clinch sparring of Muay Thai, although Muay Thai generally doesn't include the joint locks, chokes, or some of the throws, that karate would. Of course, since this is a very specific range of fighting, it is incomplete, but I think it would be an excellent start.
Personally, I would love to set up a competition circuit focused on developing this type of fighting, because if it took off, we would actually get to see old-style karate practitioner improve their combative skills on a wide scale. As it stands, most people training in this type of karate only get to engage in that type of sparring within their dojo, or maybe a few like-minded people here and there, and that is just too small of a scale to really spread. Unfortunately--and this may just be my jaded outlook--I don't expect that to become terribly popular in the face of the more well-established karate competition formats, especially in the face of Olympic participation.
Honestly, I don't enjoy having to do things like this, because it means that karate instructors all over the world have failed their students. They have perpetuated exaggerations, myths, and outright lies in the interest of "honoring" their instructors, or making karate seem like some sort of Zen exercise or magical ancient practice. They have taught movements that they understand only from a purely mechanical sense, without any real knowledge of what those movements are for, or how to make them work for karate's intended context. They have adopted kumite (sparring) methods that are largely incompatible with the material the art is meant to teach and, as such, teach it as a completely separate skillset, rather than a training method for getting better at applying karate techniques under pressure. They have clung to the idea of "tradition" so strongly--without even realizing that most of those "ancient traditions" they hold dear are less than a Century old--that they choose to worship the ground upon which the old masters walked, instead of following their path and continuing their journey to develop karate. This is so widespread that the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo will be including karate competition, for the first time, and they chose exactly this type of karate to showcase--it is almost as if that is how people actually WANT karate to be.
These days, karate is derided as an activity only suitable for small children, and pretty much any karate dojo that doesn't teach Kyokushin (or one of its off-shoots) is immediately considered to be a McDojo, until proven otherwise. As much as it pains me to say it, karate has EARNED this terrible reputation, and since the majority of dojo seem to be meeting those expectations, I can't say it isn't a valid stereotype. What I can say, though, is that the karate that is popular, today, that bears this reputation, is not what karate used to be--what it could be, again. The sad part is that most people--even those who are actively practicing karate--have no idea what karate used to be. With that in mind, I would like to clarify a few things about karate, in the hopes that people might see that there is more to it than most realize, and maybe even help people see the value in it.
Where Does It Come From?
Karate originates from Okinawa, which is currently part of Japan, but the Okinawan people and culture are decidedly different from what you will find on mainland Japan, and they do not consider themselves "Japanese." When karate was transplanted from Okinawa to mainland Japan, it went through a lot of changes, although that process started in 1901, when Itosu Anko officially introduced karate into the physical education curriculum of public schools. This means that "Japanese karate" is taught, practiced, and used quite differently than "Okinawan karate," but even on Okinawa, a lot of Japanese methodologies have been adopted, because Japanese karate is more popular.
Chinese Influence?
People like to highlight the Chinese influence on karate, often despite the facts--the Hakutsuru (White Crane) craze in the karate world throughout the 80's and 90's, for example. There were certainly times where Chinese martial arts influenced karate, but karate was also influenced by Siamese (modern-day Thailand) martial arts, and Japanese martial arts, and likely many others. Of course, the Okinawans also had their own native fighting methods, as every culture does. In reality, there are very few styles which can claim to be heavily influenced by Chinese arts, and those are styles that fall into the "Naha-Te" classification, such as Goju-Ryu, Uechi-Ryu, and Ryuei-Ryu.
Who Made It, and Why?
There is a popular myth that karate was developed by farmers and fisherman to fight the invading Satsuma samurai after they had their weapons taken away, so they used farming tools as weapons, and they had to practice in secret because martial arts were banned. While this would make for a very cool underdog movie, it simply isn't true. Karate was developed by nobles and royalty on Okinawa, who practiced it either for their jobs (many nobles held positions as guards, police, or military leaders), or for the enjoyment of it. The only weapons that were ever banned on Okinawa were firearms, although there were restrictions on common folk carrying weapons--as mentioned, though, they didn't develop karate, anyway. The practice of martial arts was never banned, either. The only restriction was that it wasn't to be taught publicly, mostly so that it couldn't be used to build up any sort of revolution, but it could be taught to small groups in private, which is pretty much already how they were doing it, anyway.
What Was Its Purpose?
As mentioned, many of the nobles who practiced karate held jobs that would require martial arts skills. One of the most famous masters in karate history was "Bushi" Matsumura Sokon, who was the chief bodyguard to the Okinawan King (three of them, technically). Others were police officers, or guarded castles and gardens. With this in mind, you would expect karate to primarily involve methods for quickly disabling attackers, either by rendering them unconscious, unable to function, or restrained. Karate had to be fast and functional, and many of the people responsible for developing karate over time had reputations for testing their skills, either in challenge matches or just by getting into fights. These skills carried over into personal protection, as well, given that nobility would be rich targets for assault and theft.
What Is "Traditional Karate?"
Most of the karate that people call "traditional karate," or sometimes "budo karate," is fairly new, and strongly influenced by the Japanese culture. When karate was brought to Japan, it was stripped of many of its grappling methods, like joint locks and takedowns, because the Japanese already had extensive, popular grappling arts (Judo and Sumo, for example). What the Japanese wanted from karate was a strictly regimented physical education program that was martial in nature to help prepare young people for military service. It didn't have to be functional for fighting--they would teach them proper Japanese arts for that once they joined the military, after all--so that type of material didn't have to be included in the curriculum. The belt system from Judo was borrowed in order to ensure a hierarchical structure, which would also serve participants well once they joined the military.
Once Funakoshi Gigo (son of Shotokan founder, Funakoshi Gichin) gained a position of influence in the Japanese karate community, the art was aimed even more heavily toward physical fitness/challenge, and competition. While the Okinawan people had been experimenting with full-contact bogu kumite (armored sparring), the Japanese simply took the sparring methods of one of their native arts--Kendo--and copied it for use with only the most basic karate techniques. This is how we have ended up with a karate that is long range (like Kendo, but without a sword to make up the distance), focused almost entirely on punches and kicks (the part karate did better than jujutsu), and which borrowed most of its "traditions" from native Japanese arts. Of course, as we all know, competition is how martial arts inevitably spread, and the Japanese did a much better job of developing a competition format for karate than the Okinawans did, so that is the type of karate that took off.
Does Karate Have Grappling?
Karate absolutely includes grappling methods, although most schools have dropped much of that from their curriculum over time, since it doesn't fit into the common forms of karate competition and, thus, is not popular. As mentioned, karate was largely used for law enforcement purposes, so it would make sense for it to include a good number of methods for controlling an opponent, as much as it would include methods for simply striking an opponent. For the most part, these methods are focused on standing grappling, in conjunction with striking--limb control, joint locks, takedowns, etc. There are some groundwork methods within karate, but they are mostly focused on getting back up, kicking away a standing opponent to make space, or taking down a standing opponent to put yourself on an even playing field.
Some people like to retcon more groundwork into karate than it originally had, usually by claiming a kata (Naihanchi) is meant for grappling on your back, because of the similarity of the stance and stepping to the guard position seen in grappling arts, but this retconning is unnecessary. While karate, itself, has a specific context it is intended for, and contains methods for that purpose, karate masters have long advocated cross-training. This advocacy was not limited to striking arts, but also to weapons arts and grappling arts. For example, Okinawa has a native folkstyle submission grappling style, called tegumi, or muto, which was a very popular pastime for Okinawan youth even into the early 20th Century. We have written descriptions of this practice, and it is described as including takedowns, joint locks, chokes, and pins, with the intention of making your opponent tap out. Even to this day, you can find Shima tournaments on Okinawa, which are a form of belt wrestling, focused on throwing the opponent. Many Okinawan masters trained in Sumo, or Judo, to supplement their karate training, and recommended this practice to their students. There is no need to retcon groundwork into karate, because karate practitioners have always just cross-trained in grappling arts that do it.
Why Don't We See This "Old-Style" Karate In MMA?
We do, in a way--it just isn't being done by people who practice karate. The human body can only be manipulated in so many ways, so there is a lot of crossover between martial arts, and there are plenty of fighters out there using techniques that are present in karate, even if they have never practiced karate before. So, if that's the case, why don't we see more karateka in MMA doing it? To be perfectly honest, it goes back to the lack of a good karate-centric competition format to build skilled fighters with. The karate we see in MMA, today, is the long range, striking-only type of karate, because that is what was made popular by competitions. As it stands, the best competition format to include both the striking methods and grappling methods of karate is MMA, but it is hard to get karateka to compete in MMA, to begin with, because they are taught to feel that MMA is almost the antithesis of karate and "traditional martial arts." On top of that, because of karate's reputation as a "safe" activity, most of the people who seek out karate instruction aren't really looking to fight.
What we would need, in my opinion, to start bringing the older, practical methods to the forefront, is a good competition circuit that is specifically designed and intended for "traditional" karateka to compete in, but which forces them to incorporate the limb control techniques, joint locks, chokes, and takedowns of the art in conjunction with the striking. As it stands, all we really have are long range point fighting competitions, mid-to-close range knockdown fighting where grappling is prohibited, and the occasional full-contact circuit that allows some sort of grappling here and there, but usually just ends up being sloppy point fighting or MMA in a gi, without any real focus on including techniques from old-style karate.
To the surprise of most people, karate actually used to have a method of pressure testing and fighting using those old-style methods. It's called "kakedameshi" (literally, "hooked testing," although it could more accurately be called "hooked hands testing"), and has been described as something like a "very aggressive version of Chinese push-hands," where participants strike each other, joint lock each other, choke each other, or throw each other down, all in an attempt to get the other person to submit. A key point to this is that kakedameshi is entirely done at close range, with the arms "hooked" onto each other in some fashion. It actually looks somewhat like the clinch sparring of Muay Thai, although Muay Thai generally doesn't include the joint locks, chokes, or some of the throws, that karate would. Of course, since this is a very specific range of fighting, it is incomplete, but I think it would be an excellent start.
Personally, I would love to set up a competition circuit focused on developing this type of fighting, because if it took off, we would actually get to see old-style karate practitioner improve their combative skills on a wide scale. As it stands, most people training in this type of karate only get to engage in that type of sparring within their dojo, or maybe a few like-minded people here and there, and that is just too small of a scale to really spread. Unfortunately--and this may just be my jaded outlook--I don't expect that to become terribly popular in the face of the more well-established karate competition formats, especially in the face of Olympic participation.
LoL you guys crack me up, forget it, put me on the ignore list, I will sit in the corner for time-out!
