1. character
2. sincerity
3. effort
4. etiquette
5. self-control
| Standing bow performed before and after sparring practice |
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Class bow to instructors before and after training session |
2 a short history
Although the basic forms of individual self-defense are probably as old as the human race, the art of karate as it is practiced today can be traced directly to the Okinawan technique called, in Japanese, Okinawa-te (Okinawa hands). This system of self-defense in turn is a descendant of the ancient Chinese art of ch' uan-fa or kempō (fist way).
There is a famous Chinese legend regarding the origin of kempo: The renowned Indian Buddhist monk Daruma Taishi journeyed overland from India to China to instruct the Liang-dynasty monarch on the tenets of Buddhism. To make that long, dangerous journey alone—along a route that is almost impassable even today—is no mean feat and testifies to Daruma's powers of physical and mental endurance. He remained in China at a monastery called Shaolin-szu and taught Buddhism to the Chinese monks there. Tradition relates how the severe discipline Daruma imposed and the pace he set caused all of the student-monks to pass out, one by one, from sheer physical exhaustion. At the next assembly he explained to them that, although the aim of Buddhism is the salvation of the soul, the body and soul are inseparable and in their weakened physical state they could never perform the ascetic practices necessary for the attainment of true enlightenment. To remedy the situation he began to teach them a system of physical and mental discipline embodied in the I-chin sutra. As time went on, the monks at Shaolin-szu won the reputation of being the most formidable fighters in China. In later years, the art which they practiced came to be called Shaolin-szu "fist way" and formed the basis for present-day China's national sport.
Okinawa is the main island of the Ryukyu Island chain, which is scattered like steppingstones southwest from southern Kyushu to Taiwan in the East China Sea. From ancient times, Okinawa was in contact with both China and Japan, and probably kempo was imported along with many other elements of Chinese culture. Around 1600 China replaced its civil envoys to Okinawa with military men, among whom were many noted for their prowess in Chinese kempo. The Okinawans took a keen interest in it and combined it with a native form of hand-to-hand fighting to produce Okinawa-te.
| Funakoshi Gichin : founder of present-day karate |
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Little is known about the historical development of karate in Okinawa, but there is an interesting story told about it. About five hundred years ago, the famous King Hashi of the Okinawan Sho dynasty succeeded in uniting the Ryukyu Islands into one kingdom. To ensure rule by law and to discourage any potential military rivals, he seized all weapons in the kingdom and made the possession of weapons a crime against the state. About two hundred years later, Okinawa became part of the domain of the Satsuma clan of Kyushu, and for a second time all weapons were seized and banned. As a direct result of these successive bans against weapons, it is said that the art of empty-handed self-defense called Okinawa-te underwent tremendous development.
The man most responsible for the systemization of karate as we know it today was Funakoshi Gichin. He was born in Shuri, Okinawa, in 1 869, and when only a boy of eleven began to study karate under the two top masters of the art at that time. In time he became a karate expert in his own right. He is credited with being the first man to introduce karate to Japan proper, when he gave exhibitions in 1917 and again in 1922 at physical-education expositions sponsored by the Ministry of Education. The art soon caught on in Japan, and Funakoshi traveled throughout the country giving lectures and demonstrations. The main universities invited him to help them set up karate teams, and hundreds of persons studied the art under his guidance.
As the study of karate in Japan became increasingly popular, many other experts from Okinawa and China came to give instruction. At the same time, the ancient native Japanese hand-to-hand fighting techniques of jujitsu. and kendō (sword fighting) were being widely practiced, and modern sports imported from the West were rapidly becoming popular. Karate soon took over many elements from both of these, and the basis was laid for the modern Japanese-style karate described in this book.
In 1948 the Japan Karate Association was organized, with Funakoshi as the chief instructor. Because this organization made it possible for the leading karate men to pool their knowledge and ability, from that time onward progress was rapid, leading to the development of the three aspects of present-day karate, i.e., as self-defense, as a physical art, and as a sport.
In April, 1957, Funakoshi, the father of modern karate, passed away at the advanced age of eighty-eight. But tens of thousands of karate men who learned under him remain, insuring that the art which he taught will not die with him. On the contrary, persons in many foreign countries have shown an interest in learning karate, and it is rapidly moving toward becoming a world art.
3 essential principles
The remarkable strength manifested by many individual karate techniques, both offensive and defensive, is not the mysterious, esoteric thing many observers, as well as certain proponents of the art itself, would have you believe. On the contrary, it is the inevitable result of the effective application of certain well-known scientific principles to the movements of the body. Likewise, knowledge of psychological principles, along with constant practice, enable the karate man to find openings and execute the proper techniques at the proper times, no matter how minute the movements of his opponent. At an advanced level, it is even possible for a karate expert to sense the movements of his opponent before they take place.
Before learning the various individual techniques, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the physical, psychological, and combined physical-psychological principles which underlie them all. Of course, it is difficult to interpret complicated physical or psychological processes in terms of a few simple principles. Discussed below are the most important ones.
maximum strength
Any movement of the body depends on muscular expansion and contraction. There are many factors involved in exerting maximum force through control of these expansions and contractions, and only the most basic are listed here.
a. Force is directly proportionate to the degree of muscular expansion and contraction. This is the principle behind, for example, the coil spring—the more the coil is pressed down, the greater the force it exerts when released. Many parts of the human body operate the same way.
b. The striking power of a force is inversely proportionate to the time required for its application. This means that in karate it is not the muscular strength used to lift a heavy object that is required, but the strength manifested in terms of speed of muscular expansion and contraction. In other words, force is accumulated in the form of speed, and at the end of the movement, speed is converted into striking force. In scientific language, force equals mass times the square of