The Link Between the Samurai and Karate

[24fightingchickens]

I would like people to explain what the link between the samurai class in Japan and the genesis of karate is.

None until karate arives in Japan in 1922, and in order to get it accepted, the people promoting it begin a marketing campaign aimed at tying it to "bushido" etc.

It's little more than talk, imo. There is no bushido/samurai anything about karate.

[ivette_green]

Jussi and Shogeri thank you for your opposing views. You both had some interesting points.

JimmyNewton you have a sweet set of amour there. How durable is it?

Feels, I didn't know that about kneeling and standing up, I'll have to pay more attention from now on.

Fightingchickens, it seems odd that you say karate was only introduced in 1922. But there would have been other fighting arts introduced at an earlier time than that? Maybe they were not called karate?

[Tommy_P]

Jussi and Shogeri thank you for your opposing views. You both had some interesting points.

JimmyNewton you have a sweet set of amour there. How durable is it?

Feels, I didn't know that about kneeling and standing up, I'll have to pay more attention from now on.

Fightingchickens, it seems odd that you say karate was only introduced in 1922. But there would have been other fighting arts introduced at an earlier time than that? Maybe they were not called karate?

This isn't my area of expertise but from what I know karate was exported from Okinawa to Japan in 1922 By way of a demo. The arts practiced by Japan at the time were Jujitsu, Judo and Kendo.

The Japanese, who didn't favor anything Okinawan believing them to be a lower class of people took a look at karate and saw the potential for a new sport... a combat sport. The Okinawan art of karate contained grappling and weapons but the Japanese looked at it and said, ' we already have a grappling art called Jujitsu and we have Judo". They looked at the weapons practice and said, we have weapons arts and probably a better one in Kendo, get rid of all that nonsense and just teach us that kicky punchy stuff, we'll add the bushido element to it, make it look more like Kendo and use it as a combat sport. Sort of like Judo.

Other Okinawan arts started to follow and then the offshoots and the Japanese offshoots etc. Organized karate as we know it is very new.

Tommy

[feels]

When we sit in seiza, our left knee touches the floor first. And when we rise, our right knee comes up first. Samurai did the same because they carried their swords on their left sides and it allowed them to draw their swords.

What you wrote here is one way, but not the only one.

When I said "we," I didn't mean us.

[ivette_green]

just teach us that kicky punchy stuff

Interesting post, I just had to say that this part made me laugh.

[24fightingchickens]

Fightingchickens, it seems odd that you say karate was only introduced in 1922. But there would have been other fighting arts introduced at an earlier time than that? Maybe they were not called karate?

Karate did not reach Japan until 1922. It was created on the island of Okinawa which was not part of Japan until the mid 1800's. The Japanese, being the inherently ethnocentric culture they were at the time, rejected anything from China and Okinawa utterly. However, as their war in Manchuria continued, they began to reach out for things to adopt that might help them, and they found karate on Okinawa and imported it.

Therefore, karate and the samurai/bushido have nothing to do with each other. The Samurai caste system in Japan was eliminated in 1868 with the onset of the Meiji Restoration, and karate did not arrive in Japan until after that was long after.

However, that doesn't stop thousands of people from claiming that karate contains the Samurai tradition and is based on bushido, even though it is neither.

As for other fighting arts in Japan, you asked this in the karate section, so I assume that is all we are talking about.

[ivette_green]

However, that doesn't stop thousands of people from claiming that karate contains the Samurai tradition and is based on bushido, even though it is neither.

You don't think that karate contains elements that are found also in the Samurai tradition? The whole respect, honour, etc. thing.

[24fightingchickens]

However, that doesn't stop thousands of people from claiming that karate contains the Samurai tradition and is based on bushido, even though it is neither.

You don't think that karate contains elements that are found also in the Samurai tradition? The whole respect, honour, etc. thing.

Not inherently, no.

There are some of the more nationalist karate associations that have slapped such things onto their karate at the end of World War II in order to convince the occupational authorities that their banned activity should be allowed again because it was a cultural thing and not an attempt to militarize the citizens to defend the homeland in a suicidal fashion.

But if you look at it, the code of Bushido, which is a controversial thing itself that many say is largely revisionist history taken from a single book (Hagakure) and then backwardly applied to an entire era of Japan's culture, has little to do with any principles of a karate association or karate practice.

Samurai were expected to live and die at someone else's command. To embrace death and filial loyalty, even because one's master was bored, was the very center of being a Samurai. To not live like this was to be an outlaw. It was the ultimate form of slavery - the hierarchical arrangement of a tiered slave system in which every man was the virtual property of the man above him to the very top, and the top man was a prisoner of his shame.

I see some negative side effects of this history appear in modern karate practice as taught by some Japanese - treating the sensei a little too worshipfully, being overly serious about practice, etc, but these are because Japanese do karate, not inherent in the karate itself.

The "philosophy" of a martial art is not inherent in the art. The art is the moving around technical stuff. The "philosophy" part usually amounts to nothing more than the personal principles (or just preaching) of the organization or person who is writing and speaking about it.

Until karate men start slitting their own bellies in protest of karate tournament results, their will be little similarity between them and the samurai.

[kivikala]

... Until karate men start slitting their own bellies in protest of karate tournament results, their will be little similarity between them and the samurai.

Gee-wiz man, I had to give up my right arm and left leg to pay the entry fees at the last tournament I went to! That ought to count. no?

[Jussi Häkkinen]

You don't think that karate contains elements that are found also in the Samurai tradition? The whole respect, honour, etc. thing.

I wouldn't say that they necessarily come from the samurai tradition. Okinawa has its own culture that differs a bit from the Japanese culture. In Okinawa, the Okinawan etiquette was used. In Japan, new karateka (being Japanese) adopted their own etiquatte in karate dojo. That dojo etiquette was spread to most countries.

Still, in Okinawan styles, the dojo etiquette is Okinawan. However, I don't see the etiquette as an unseparable part of karate - actually, you could follow your own culture's codes in the dojo and it'd still be karate as long as the things you train are karate.

Okinawans trained karate with a karate teacher and educated themselves in other issues elsewhere. We go to school when we're kids (learning the etiquette of our own culture) and then study other things. Karate isn't about learning the etiquette, honour or respect - those should already be natural for us. Karate is karate - it's a way to learn how to fight.

If we're going towards "perfection of character", I think that we should search it from our own cultures. It would just be so much more adaptable.