Tom Spellman

The Long and Short of Karate’s Evolution

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Summer is upon us. I loved this past winter's kangeiko, barefoot snow practice, but it’s good to be warm again. It’s the time of the year when we spend time outdoors, enjoying the warmth and daylight on our beaches or camping outdoors. 

Historically, Karate or Ti was created in ancient times on the hot, humid island of Okinawa. Okinawa is a tropical island 955 miles southwest of Tokyo, Japan.  Originally, Karate, known as Te (Ti) or hand, was exclusively an art of the aristocratic Okinawa class. It is important to note that it was not a peasant art developed to combat the Japanese Satsuma Clan occupation forces circa 1609-1879, as is often misstated. What we call history is like a multifaceted gem. That is facts mixed with nuance and stories that support a preferred truth by some. In this article, I will illuminate the introduction of Karate from the shadows and how culture and environment played a part in its early public evolution.

There were no public karate schools until approximately 1904, and before this time, instruction was typically passed down from father to son as family traditions. Traditionally, instruction was private in gardens and dedicated clay-floored spaces within the family walled compounds. Occasionally, it occurred in isolated rural locations and was secret. These rural, sometimes jungle, spaces added to the challenging footing of uneven and often root-infested terrain. 

The outdoor training of Okinawa included other challenges, such as the ground surface, which had to be constantly manicured to alleviate tripping hazards that could injure the bare feet of the participants. All this contributed to influencing the arts movements reflecting the conditions of the environment, such as varying stance lengths and heights, and the need for close-distance self-defense-oriented techniques. Also considered was nighttime combat and crouching low to the ground to silhouette one’s opponent by starlight in the absence of other illumination.

The Japan’s Meiji Restoration of 1868 in Japan became a subsequent era of major political, economic, and social change, which included the end of Okinawa’s sovereignty and its annexation as a Japanese prefecture. This led to the Okinawan aristocratic class being dissolved, compromising their exclusivity. Eventually, Ti, later known as Karate or TODE, was introduced into the Okinawan public school system in 1904 by Grandmaster Anko Itosu, and Karate became mainstream. Most depictions of this early training were black and white pictures taken outdoors on large training grounds or smaller school outdoor spaces. 

By the 1920s, Karate was introduced to mainland Japan by GM Itosu’s student, Master Gichin Funakoshi, and adopted into the Japanese collegiate Physical Education system. Eventually, other Okinawan Karate teachers migrated to Japan, exposing the public to this martial art.

The outdoor activity from Okinawa was drawn indoors to college buildings, reenvisioned as a sport program for developing character and discipline, and branded a DO, meaning literally “The Way”. This was in keeping with other traditional feudal martial arts that were changed from combat arts to sports, like sword fighting, Ken Jitsu, and grappling art, Jiu Jitsu, to the sports of Kendo, Judo, and now Karate-Do.

The college introduced Karate to indoor training practices using the gymnasiums heretofore used for the Japanese sport of Kendo, the modern practice of Kenjutsu, the art of combat with the live Samurai sword of feudal Japan.

In turn, the environment and sport reenvisioning of Karate helped to Japanize Karate from its Okinawan/Chinese influenced roots. It is important to realize that the word Karate was originally made up of two characters TODE, meaning Chinese Hand. In the process of popularizing Karate in Japan, the name meaning changed as well. The first character, meaning China, was changed to the character for empty, and its meaning became empty hand instead of China hand. For the Japanese and some Okinawans, this helped to make the term more acceptable. The initial influential sport model for Karate-Do practice was drawn from the sport of Kendo. The explosive back-and-forth, lunge, and retreat motions, and even the two sword engagement distances, were introduced to the practice. With this came lunging Karate basics across the wooden floors to penetrate the opponent's guard to score in competition. For instance, a Karate forward lunging hand attack looked like a Kendo head-level sword attack. The stances became longer, lower, and in some ways less mobile than the shorter Okinawan versions. Early on, this transition to indoor surfaces demonstrated the stability and conformity of the long wooden gym floors over the unpredictable outdoor surfaces for sport competition. The uniform grip on this surface allowed for better footing for explosive motions and supported long-distance penetrating attacks of the fledgling Sport Karate-Do competition.

I hope you found this bit of early Karate history interesting, and I look forward to exploring it further in future articles from Musings of a Seeker.

 Enjoy your Summer. Pax, Tom Spellman

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