A Short History of Karate ______

A SHORT HISTORY OF KARATE _______ Michael Cowie Robert Dyson KENKYO-HA GOJU KARATE KEMPO KAI © 2016 Kenkyo-ha Goju Karate Kempo Kai First edition published 2012 www.kenkyoha.com [email protected] IN MEMORY OF JOHN O’BRIEN 1949–2015 FRIEND AND FELLOW MARTIAL ARTIST CONTENTS Preface vii 1 Okinawan Beginnings 1 2 The Modern Karate Schools 19 3 Offspring and Cousins 76 4 Karate in the Modern World: a Critical Overview 105 Further Reading 139 Index 142 PREFACE This short history of karate makes no claim to completeness. A great deal has been omitted; some of what is included is open to debate and would benefit from more discussion. The only pur- pose of these pages is to give the karateka a broad idea of the origins of his or her art. The final chapter – intentionally controversial – is intended to stimulate thought and reflection on what modern karate is, can be and should be. Anyone who disagrees with us or wishes to correct or discuss anything is more than welcome to get in touch with us. We will do our best to reply to polite communications fully and promptly. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright owners of the photographs reproduced here. Where no acknowledgement is given, we believe that the photographs are in the public domain. If we have inadvertently printed images without proper acknow- ledgment, we will rectify the situation at once if the copyright owner contacts us. In this Second Edition we have added a small amount of new material and corrected a few errors that have been pointed out by readers. Our thanks are especially due to Omoto Kazunori for numerous corrections and observations. Responsibility for the opinions expressed in these pages lies with the authors alone. MC RD A SHORT HISTORY OF KARATE 1 OKINAWAN BEGINNINGS N MOST PEOPLE’S minds, the expression “martial arts” pro- duces an image of the fighting arts of East Asia; but all I cultures and societies have their martial arts. No doubt it is part of the nature of human creatures to fight, if only to defend themselves and their resources against aggressors. To this extent, it is pointless to try to carry the search for the origins of any fighting art too far into the past, because there probably never were human beings not possessed of a repertoire of aggressive and defensive techniques, practised at various levels of sophis- tication. In the final analysis, the martial arts are only the natural movements of the human body trained and ordered to the specific purposes of attack and defence.1 The popular perception of karate usually includes the assump- tion that it is a Japanese art. It is often, though incorrectly, called a Samurai art. In fact its origins lie somewhat to the south-west of mainland Japan, in the Ryukyu Islands (琉球諸島, Ryukyu shoto). These islands comprise an archipelago of small inhabited and uninhabited land masses extending between the Japanese mainland and Taiwan. It is on the largest of them, Okinawa Island (沖縄本島, 1 The term Martial Arts was used in relation to the combat systems of Europe as early as the 1550s; an English fencing manual of 1639 used it in reference to the "Science and Art" of swordplay. See, e.g., John Clements, “A Short Introduction to Historical European Martial Arts,”.Meibukan Magazine (January, 2006), pp. 2–4. 2 A Short History of Karate Okinawa honto, or 沖縄島, Okinawa jima), that the history of karate begins. Since 1879 the word Okinawa has been used to denote the modern prefecture of Japan that includes the entire Ryukyu archipelago; but, for the purposes of karate history, Okinawa usually means Okinawa Island, with the centres of population in the south of the island being of special importance. A map showing the size and location of the Ryukyu Islands in relation to Japan During the fourteenth century,1 as a result of conquest, allian- ces and commercial expediency, the numerous tribal fiefdoms that had long existed on Okinawa Island coalesced into three small kingdoms or principalities: Hokuzan (北山, “Northern Mount- ain”), Chuzan (中山, “Central Mountain”) and Nanzan (南山, “Southern Mountain”). The period between 1322 and 1429 is known to historians as the Sanzan (三山, “Three Mountains”) era of Okinawan history, but relations between the three principalities 1 For the reader’s convenience we shall almost always use “European” dates. A Short History of Karate 3 were unstable and never entirely peaceful. Hokuzan, in the northern part of the island, was the largest in terms of territory and population; Nanzan, the smallest, occupied the extreme southern tip; Chuzan between the two had the advantage of commanding the major trading port of Naha. Thanks mainly to this advan- tageous position, Chuzan had by the beginning of the fifteenth century achieved a position of military and economic dominance over the other two kingdoms. Sho Hashi, (1371–1439), prince of Chuzan, conquered and annexed Hokuzan in 1419 and Nanzan in 1429, thereby creating a unified Ryukyu kingdom. The capital of the kingdom was established at Shuri, within easy reach of the maritime facilities of Naha. 1 The art that we now know as karate originated among the Pechin class of Okinawa as a method of empty-handed fighting called te (手) or Okinawa te (沖縄手).2 Mainland Japanese, accus- tomed to take a lofty attitude towards their Okinawan cousins, tended in the early part of the twentieth century to regard Okinawa te as a peasant art, not to be mentioned in the same breath as the koryu (古流) – old school – arts of the Japanese gentleman. Strictly speaking, however, it was not practised by the ordinary people of Okinawa. The Pechin (親雲上) class comprised a feudal cadre of officials and warriors, divided into several levels of seniority or importance and located near the top of the Ryukyu kingdom’s complex social hierarchy. The class equivalent to the Samurai of Japan, whom they tended in later years to imitate, their main traditional functions were to enforce the law and provide military service when necessary. It is said that Pechin families were careful to keep their fighting techniques away from the eyes of outsiders, and transmitted them as secret family arts from father to eldest son. This fact, if it is a fact, suggests that, originally, there would have been a number of variant family styles or methods of te, just as we 1 For a detailed social and political history of Okinawa see George Kerr, Okinawa: The History of an Island People (Tuttle, 1958; revised edition 2000). 2 “Te” = “hand” or “technique.” 4 A Short History of Karate find different family styles in the Chinese martial arts, but we have no information about what these might have been. During the nineteenth century it became customary to refer only to three, named after the places with which they were most associated: Shuri te, Naha te and Tomari te (these places were originally separate, but are now part of the same conurbation at the southern end of Okinawa Island.1 Okinawa Island, showing the locations of Shuri, Naha and Tomari We have made some mention of the political history of Okinawa because political events in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have a significant bearing on the early development of karate. The word “kingdom” does not really give a clear impression of the kind of polity over which Sho Hashi presided. Even after the unification of the three principalities, the tiny 1 To give an idea of scale, “[t]he whole Shuri/Naha/Tomari triangle is about the same size as Golden Gate Park in San Francisco or Central Park in New York City” (Bruce D. Clayton, Shotokan's Secret: The Hidden Truth Behind Karate's Fighting Origins; Black Belt Comm- unications, 2005, p.5). A Short History of Karate 5 Ryukyu kingdom was hardly a major power. To all intents and purposes it was a tributary state of China, dependent on China for both trade and political support and with a large floating Chinese population. It was the recognition and material support extended to Sho Hashi by China in 1421 that enabled him to achieve and consolidate his position at the head of a unified kingdom, and, in response, he greatly expanded the island’s trade and diplomatic links with China. He did not inaugurate those links, however. They had been in place in some form for more than half a century. No doubt Okinawa te began as an indigenous method of fighting or self-defence, but Chinese influences had begun to make themselves felt as long ago as 1372, when commercial relations with the Chinese Ming dynasty were established by Prince Satto of Chuzan. During the late fourteenth century visitors from China – especially from Fujian province in the south – began to arrive in Okinawa in significant numbers. In 1392 or thereabouts a contingent of Chinese families – traditional sources say thirty-six – migrated to Okinawa from Fujian province for the purposes of cultural and commercial exchange. Especially significant is the fact that these families established an enclave of scholars, bureaucrats and craftsmen – one visualises it as a sort of sophisticated Chinatown – in the Kumemura district of Naha City. 1 This enclave, which remained in existence until Japan’s annexation of Okinawa in 1879, became a thriving centre of Chinese culture and learning. From it, either intentionally or by the usual processes of social osmosis, knowledge of many Chinese arts and sciences was transmitted to the host culture – including knowledge of the Chinese fighting arts collectively known as quanfa.2 The fighting arts that diffused into Okinawa consisted mainly, though by no means exclusively, of the 1 The “thirty-six families of Kume” (久米三十六姓) may be an explan- atory myth simplifying a much more complex and prolonged process of migration from southern China.

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