Can you say that japanese Karate came from Chinese Kung Fu?

[1kickKO]

I don't think it has much to do with chinese martial arts, but I do believe some influcence rubbed off when chinese and japanese traders met.

[Shorin Ryuu]

I don't think it has much to do with chinese martial arts, but I do believe some influcence rubbed off when chinese and japanese traders met.

 

Wait. Forgive me if I misunderstand, but are you saying karate was only influenced by the meeting of Japanese and Chinese traders or other such random encounters? If so, (I don't mean this to insult you, but I'm just being blunt) you are really uninformed about the history of karate. I don't mean just common myths or legends, but historical fact. Certainly random encounters like this did occur (replace the word "Japanese" with "Okinawan" though) and there were some influences this way, but it was much, much more than that. See my posts above and others for more detalied references. I hate to sound arrogant or narrow minded in this, but I wasn't really posting my opinion on this, but fact.

 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not angry at you for presenting a countering view or anything like that. I'm just being very blunt.

[1kickKO]

No that's not at all what I meant..lol, sorry I came across the wrong way.

[Shorin Ryuu]

Oh. I see you meant "It may not have much to do with martial arts, but..." Sorry for misunderstanding.

 

In your defense (and partially mine), there have been Okinawan merchants and Chinese merchants that have exchanged martial arts knowledge such as Gokenki, a Chinese tea merchant who was influential in transmitting a lot of White Crane techniques to many Okinawans. Not the only one, but a prominent example.

[1kickKO]

No problem, yeah basically I meant Okinawans picked up "some" techniques from China and took some back and formed their own systems like karate etc..

[pineapple]

I'm just posting what I've always read, seen on videos, and on tv.

 

The Chinese taught martial arts to the Okinawans who developed their own style of karate. Gichin Funakoshi introduced karate from Okinawa to Japan who developed their own style.

 

The original meaning of karate was "Chinese hands" which was later changed to "Empty hands".

[Shorin Ryuu]

Without going too much into the details (I could fill a post just on the last sentence alone), that's pretty much accurate, pineapple.

[ovine king]

so the very short version (ignoring non-karate japanese styles) would be:

 

okinawa had its own fighting system.

 

china had its own fighting system.

 

china gave some fighting systems/techniques/training to okinawa.

 

okinawa mixed some chinese styles with their own to form ONE basis of what is to become karate.

 

karate moves to japan.

 

japanese karate develops independentally of okinawan karate.

[Shorin Ryuu]

Yes, that's pretty accurate. I wouldn't say Japanese karate developed entirely independently fom Okinawan karate, but it took a drastic deviation in my opinion.

[pineapple]

I trained in two different Japanese karate schools (Wado Ryu and Shotokan). I recently watched a Shorin Ryu class after being invited by "Shorin Ryuu"'s friend and it is drastically different.