 What is karate? What seems like an easy answer actually has a rather deep and detailed background. But before we get into that, let's first establish what karate is not. Karate is not a single style or individual art. This might seem like a common fact among many of you out there, but I do get comments on the occasion that refer to karate as a single art. In particular, the what kind of karate is in Korpokai episode, I have a few comments that correct me to say I should name the video what kind of martial art is in Korpokai because the building says karate so the art is karate. It also doesn't help that in the 70s and 80s the word karate was often used as a blanket word for most martial arts, especially in American media. Additionally, as I mentioned in the previous episode, we are going to be adding a lot of more art-based content into our episodes of various styles and cultures. This video will serve as an overview intro video to the Karate series playlist, which already includes our three-part episode on Kyogushin. As we go forward developing this channel, we will continue to add to the series with documentaries on individual arts and techniques. So for those of you who ask me if I will ever do a video on Kojuru, Chittoru, Shotokan and so on, the answer is yes and they will be a part of this growing series. So with that being said, let's take a few minutes to answer the question of what is karate? Now to give a quick answer, karate is a classification of martial arts that predominantly uses a balanced regimen of punches, kicks, elbows, knees, and a variety of open-handed techniques. Beginning in Okinawa and eventually spreading to Japan, karate is more than just a list of different styles, that's rather an interesting study of multiple disciplines that have intertwined and branched off of each other. Now the study of karate and its origin can be an academic commitment, so we're only going to take a brief introductory look today and kind of check out the history of how it began. To find the beginning of what we know as karate, we first need to look at its Okinawan roots, specifically the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was around from roughly 1429 to 1879. The Ryukyu Kingdom is a chain of islands in the Pacific, just south of Japan. Even though this kingdom was small, its location gave it an advantage in maritime trade. The kings of Ryukyu decided to unify on the island of Okinawa and three principalities were established, the northern mountains, the central mountains, and the southern mountains. These would be known as the three kingdoms or the three mountains. The early roots of karate began to emerge as locally developed fighting systems called te, or hand. The Ryukyu Kingdom had established a strong trade relationship with the Ming dynasty in China and as a result, many Chinese fighting arts were also introduced to the islands of Okinawa. Over the course of many years between Chinese families moving to Okinawa and upper-class Okinawans sent to China to study abroad, elements of Chinese fighting, particularly Fujian-Wai Crane from the Fujian province, began to influence many of the local Okinawan styles. Now, study of the fighting arts was not always allowed in the kingdom and in 1477, King Shoshin banned the study of martial arts, but despite the ban, many of them were still taught in secret. Now, over its lifetime, the Ryukyu system went through different reigns, starting as tributary states of the Ming and Qing dynasty and then later taken under Japanese command. In 1609, the Satsuma domain of Japan invaded Okinawa into control and the ban of martial arts remained in place. It is believed that this was the beginning of taking farm tools and implementing them into secret weapons practice. The practitioners in Okinawa began to combine many different fighting styles together, locally, taking much of the Chinese influence along with other local disciplines and they formed tote, which means Chinese hand or tang hand. Now, this was also referred to as Okinawante. After a while, three main styles of te had begun to develop and their designation came from their cities of origin. Those cities were the capital city of Shuri, the city of Naha, which eventually took over Shuri when the Ryukyu Kingdom fell and Okinawa became a prefecture of Japan, and also the port city of Tomari. These three main styles became respectively known as Shuri Te, Naha Te and Tomari Te. Now, there is a long list of practitioners who had great influence on the evolution of karate and they would each be a great deeper study on their own. In this video today, however, I'm only going to touch on a few, just in order to illustrate how karate began to spread and develop. We have a man by the name of Kanbun Uechi, who took kata that he learned when he went to China and combined it with his own fighting style and he created the art of Okinawan Uechi Ru. We also have the prominent figure of Chojin Miyagi, who combined his training in Naha Te and other Chinese arts such as Fuzhan White Crane and established the very well-known art of Gojuru. Sakukawa Kanga began teaching in art in the city of Shuri that he called Tuti Sakukawa or Sakukawa Chinese Hand. His most prominent student Matsumura Sokan took on his teachings, combined Shuri Te with Tomari Te, added in some Shaolin influences and created the art of Shoren Ru, which would later become the foundation of Shodokan. His student, a man named Itosu Anko, adapted the art, created new standardized kates and made a rather impressive push to implement karate into public schools, teaching students at a young age and his additions to the art have remained with his kates appearing across multiple styles of karate and he is sometimes referred to as the grandfather of modern karate. So we could spend a lot of time going into more lineage, but I hope that that at least gives you a good idea of where the roots were planted and how it began to branch off as the early karate practitioners or Karateka made the arts their own. Gijin Funakoshi is largely credited with having a large influence on the spread of Tang Han into Japan. He was invited to teach in a public demonstration in Tokyo in 1917 and again in 1922. Funakoshi's teachings provided to be popular in Japan and started to become standard training in schools. Now at this time Japan was also in the process of invading China, so Funakoshi felt that it might be better in their interest to make some name changes. So he ended up changing many of the kata names and techniques at the Japanese words and he even decided that maybe we should change the word from Tang or Chinese hand into Empty Hand or Karate. Now Funakoshi taught a mixture of the Okinawan arts of Shorinru and Shoreru along with Kendo that he learned in Japan and he simply referred to his art as Karate, not given it in the official name. He also adopted the use of the karate gi and belt ranking system established by judo founder Jigoro Kano. Now we talked about that in great length in the previous video how many belts are in karate so I recommend you check that out. So if Funakoshi did not give his art a name then where did the term shorokan come from? Well Funakoshi was also a poet and he wrote under the pen name of shoto which means pine waves as in pine trees waving in the wind. So when he established his own dojo in 1936 it was called the shorokan. Kan means hall or house so the name literally translates to the house of pine wave. It was simply meant to be the name of the training hall but as time went on it stuck and eventually became referred to as name of the art. People went to go train at the shorokan so people trained shorokan. Today shorokan is one of the largest and influential styles of karate. Now from there different branches of karate began to splinter merge and evolve into various disciplines. Shorinru and Shoreru formed the base of shorokan. Shorokan is a foundational art in the Korean style of Tangsudo. Sosai Masutatsu Oyama took shorokan and the Okinawan art of Gojiru and formed a very powerful and popular art of Kyokushin which still retains a set of katas from both arts. Now Kyokushin itself continues to branch off into other offshoots such as Kudo which is the art of Kyokushin now infused with a strong grappling curriculum and it doesn't stop there. Today we have the art of Gosokuru which is derived from shorokan and Gojiru. We have Ishinru derived from Gojiru, Shorinru and Kabudo. Then there is Shitoru, the art practiced by legendary karate master Fumio Demura which is derived from Shirite and Nahate. And we also have Tangsudo, a Korean art that is sometimes referred to as Korean karate. Now there's a little bit of a gray area here some people consider the form of karate and some don't. It's kind of up in the air. It didn't originate in Japan or Okinawa however it does have a lot of similar influences as well as having shorokan as its strong base. Plus the name itself literally translates to Way of the Tang Hand which is pretty much the same as karate or or karate-do way of the empty hand. So as you can see this is a rather easy rabbit hole to go down and we could spend hours examining all of it. Just a really fascinating study of history really. Now before we close out this episode there's one other aspect I'd like to touch upon the term karate-do. Do means path or way. So to say that you study karate-do it means that you follow the path of the empty hand. It's a philosophical reference and it denotes a particular mindset and lifestyle of the practitioner. Now this is in contrast to the term karate jutsu which in which jutsu means method or technique. And in this context it usually refers to the context of combat. So in a very very simplified way you can say that one is a mindset of state of being and the other is a method of fighting. And it's not just a distinction of karate-do and karate-jutsu. You can find similar relationships between Aikido, Aikijutsu, Judo, Jujutsu, Kendo, Kenjutsu, and so on. Now there is a major divide in the martial arts community. Many martial arts today feel that the only point of the art is to fight and that only the basics and simple combat elements are relevant. I mean how many times have you heard the phrase or somebody referred to karate saying that it's totally useless, katas are garbage and it should be completely thrown away. I don't know about you but I hear it on almost a daily basis. But I also hear from people that find great value in kata and find the introspective part of the art really handy and valuable. So what it really comes down to is why you train. Some people want the martial arts to be a way of life, a method of psychological balance, health, focus, strength. Others want to engage in sport or competition therefore focusing on the tactical and combat side of the arts. But there is also another way to look at it, a philosophy that I like very much. In simple terms, pure karate do is about strengthening your character. The focus is not on fighting but rather finding your weaknesses, strengthening your focus and finding peace in conflict resolution. Pure karate jitsu is all about the ability to fight, pure skill and combat. But the truth is can you really have one without the other and still be a fully balanced martial artist? If you only focus on the philosophy well then how can you better your character or find your weaknesses without that pressure testing of the intensity in real life situations? And vice versa, if all you learn is punching and kicking, if all you care about is the fighting aspect then what keeps your character in check? Sure, you can fight but do you grow as a person? Without the introspective part of the training, what do you have? So I feel there's definitely a balance to find and it really comes down to again what you yourself are personally looking for in the martial arts. So you've got two sides of the coin that work well together. There is a quote that was written by Funukoshi that I really like. It reads, One who's spirit and mental strength have been strengthened by sparring with a never say die attitude should find no challenge too great to handle. One who has undergone long years of physical pain and mental agony to learn one punch one kick should be able to face any task no matter how difficult and carry it through to the end. A person like this can truly be said to have learned karate. Thank you for watching. I really hope that you enjoyed this episode as an introduction to what we will continue to grow as our karate series. I would love to hear from any of you out there who practice any of these arts and also to vote on which arts you'd like to see covered first. So if you've got any recommendations please send them our way. Also please subscribe share join us on patreon so that we can keep making more art history documentaries. Thank you.