A little martial art history. Many people still believe that Karate is an ancient Japanese fighting art. In fact Karate was developed in Okinawa by Gichin Funakoshi, a school teacher, in the 1920s. Funakoshi had practiced the Okinawan aesthetic ritual of Te for most of his life and believed (rightly so) that its practice would enhance the health of mind and body and help university students improve their grades. Funakoshi believed in Shintoism - in Shinto everything has a god or spirit, called a Kami, there is a Kami in a rock, one in the grass and so on. It was believed that by practicing Te one could enhance ones spirituality and harmonize with the Kami and that made a Te practitioner someone you wouldnt want to mess with. Funakoshi developed a belt ranking system to help mark his students progress and renamed his art the way of achieving spiritual emptiness through the practice of the hand or Kara Te Do - later the character Kara was altered so that it read the way of the empty hand. The ranking system is still used today and has been replicated by many other systems such as Taekwondo. When two of Funakoshis senior students Gogen Yamaguchi and Mas Oyama (Choi, Yong Yi) put forward the notion of using the practice of Karate-do for fighting Funakoshi opposed the idea - both men went their own way and developed their own systems of Goju Ryu (Yamaguchi) and Kyokushinkai-kan (Oyama).
Posted on: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 10:14:13 +0000