karate history

[isshinryu5toforever]

Patrick McCarthy's translation of the Bubishi is well-researched and includes a lot of lineage tracing. You'll realize that lineage is very difficult to trace and becomes futile at a point. He does put together a pretty comprehensive study back to Higashionna and his time as a deshi (student) in China.

[bushido_man96]

Be that as it may, it still does not change the truth, that most modern Korean MAs came out of Japanese styles.

I'm not denying that. I just thought the OP should be aware of the issue. There can be very strong reactions to this topic and that it can easily lead to flame wars should he ask on another forum.

sorry if i have caused any offence by asking this question

No offense is taken here. We are pretty good about keeping away the flame wars.

[isshinryu5toforever]

I still wonder where modern kicks came from in Japanese Karate. Because as far as I know, Okinawans weren't big on kicking, and they had a few basic kicks that all landed below the waist. The modern spinning hook kick is a variation of the wheel kick, but where did that come from?

I've heard a lot of statements about Chinese MAs being a likely source, but what about a Korean game? There is no real evidence for Taekkyon being a combat martial art, but it was definitely a folk game. Not something we'd really consider a game. I mean, you stepped on people's faces and threw them, but a game in context. They had various pushing kicks aimed to the face and head, which would line up with modern kicking strikes to the head, and they had/have spinning kicks, which weren't common in Okinawan Kempo Jutsu. Even if you invade another country, and push your ideals onto them, you're still going to get a little bit of their culture rubbed on you somehow. Evidence has yet to be found, (who says it can be found?) but I'd put up Taekkyon as a deep dark horse candidate as an influence on modern kicking in Taekwondo and Japanese Karate. This is outside of the claims of the Taekwondo founders that they learned Taekkyon, because that's been argued against, and refuted by old Taekkyon masters. The might be impossible to prove though, because who actually picked it up where and how are all going to be up to debate, and most people that could tell you are dead. It may have been an early student of someone with a lot of political influence in early Taekwondo. Who knows.

Still, the high, flashy kicks still aren't present in most (any?) Okinawan Karate syllabi that I know of. They weren't present when Okinawan martial arts moved to Japan with Funakoshi. They have been tacked on as people have come in contact with other martial arts, so they seem like they're part of the syllabus now, but they weren't originally. Only Kyokushin adopted them from the beginning, and then you have the Korean martial arts with their focus on kicks.

[Dobbersky]

Strange really but the opposite is true for Kyokushin in some cases

Mas Oyama Sosai, was a Korean immigrant and Kyokushin includes Garyu Kata which is a form from his home town in Korea. Some of the senior Japanese Shihans try to deny any Korean influences into the "Japanese" art. It its shown that Sosai practices Taekkyon and other Korean Boxing arts before moving to Japan. He studied Goju Ryu and Shotokan with some training in Judo. Plus the added influx of Muay Thai techniques too for the ultimate truth karate.

I'm not bothered myself where the art is from just to the fact they are honest about its roots and that the art itself is effective.

OSU

(Without Kyokushin Karate, Ashihara karate would never have evolved).

[isshinryu5toforever]

Strange really but the opposite is true for Kyokushin in some cases

Mas Oyama Sosai, was a Korean immigrant and Kyokushin includes Garyu Kata which is a form from his home town in Korea. Some of the senior Japanese Shihans try to deny any Korean influences into the "Japanese" art. It its shown that Sosai practices Taekkyon and other Korean Boxing arts before moving to Japan. He studied Goju Ryu and Shotokan with some training in Judo. Plus the added influx of Muay Thai techniques too for the ultimate truth karate.

I'm not bothered myself where the art is from just to the fact they are honest about its roots and that the art itself is effective.

OSU

(Without Kyokushin Karate, Ashihara karate would never have evolved).

I wish they would be more honest about things as well. It would make history a whole lot easier haha. Even the Athenian historians admitted that Athens got spanked by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.

The thing with Oyama is that not a single soul that is alive now knows what he learned in his village in Korea. In fact, Oyama may not have even known for sure what he was learning. Some say it was Taekkyon, but that was a folk game, so he might very well have learned it. Some say it was some form of Chinese Martial Art. I was under the impression that he created Garyu and named it after his village. Maybe I'm mistaken.

In any case, I guess we should worry more about our own training methods these days if we can't even verify history from less than 80 years ago.

[GOM]

How old was Oyama when he moved to Japan? I thought he was only a chld? And even then I believe he moved to China for a period before moving back to Korea and then on to Japan? I am not sure.

Off Topic - But there is a Korean movie called 'Fighter in the wind' about a comic book based very loosely on Oyama -

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416499/

As for the modern kicks in Japanese karate - I would say the higher the kicks, the more interesting and appealing karate became to the public masses, and especially children. Controlled kicks to the body and head are a lot safer for children to practise as well.

As for all the flashy kicks....I am not sure. Possibly Taekkyon, but then again there are a lot of dance moves that also look 'martial arty'.

[isshinryu5toforever]

Oyama was 14. Not really a child, not a full grown man either. He wanted to be a fighter pilot, so he enlisted in the Japanese Imperial Army. The movie Fighter in the Wind is a great piece of fiction entertainment, but not even close to being biographical. About the only things they got right were that a man named Mas Oyama existed, and he lived in Japan doing Karate.

[phoenixfire]

We have traced our roots to approximatley 417 A.D when Taisha Daruma, a Zen Buddhist Monk from India traveled to China with the intention of teaching the emperor the art of sanscrit. While traveling in China a civil war blocked his path and he settled for the time being at a Shaolin monastery. There he taught the monks a form of exercise and physical defense that was developed into Kung-Fu. The art then spread through China, developing different style. It finally made its way to Okinawa and was then combined with the existing fighting system called Okinawa-te. It was then called karate, the symbol for Kara meant Chinese hand. From there it continued to develop until in 1917 Ginchin Funakoshi introduced it to Japan. He changed the character for kara to mean "empty hand". He is now know as the father of Japanese Karate. From there it spread through Europe and the U.S. from service men stationed in Japan and Okinawa in WWII.

There is a bit more detail and lineage that is more direct to our school and system, but that is what we have so far.

[isshinryu5toforever]

That's never been historically verified. The story exists just about everywhere. We had it in our manual for a while, but it can't be verified. It's a lot of guesses and grasping for links. Modern Okinawan Goju-ryu can be definitively traced back to Kanryu Higashionna, who learned from Ryu Ryu Ko, but also had another teacher or two. No one is positive. If you accept Ryu Ryu Ko as his only teacher, which is unlikely, no one is sure who he learned from. Saying that modern martial arts were transmitted from China to Korea and Okinawa, to Japan from Okinawa, and then back to Korea via Japan is about as far as you can go.

The story about a monk going to China from India is a story, but has never been proven. Another proposed theory is that the "fighting monks" were former, likely defeated, soldiers who had taken refuge at the monasteries. When a monastery came under attack, the former soldiers would use what they knew to defend the monastery. Eventually, it was transmitted to someone, or some of the monks took interest in the martial arts.

This is all really saying that true, verifiable history that isn't just a bunch of guessing is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to put together and have undeniably verified by anyone in the history community.

[Kuma]

Mas Oyama Sosai, was a Korean immigrant and Kyokushin includes Garyu Kata which is a form from his home town in Korea. Some of the senior Japanese Shihans try to deny any Korean influences into the "Japanese" art. It its shown that Sosai practices Taekkyon and other Korean Boxing arts before moving to Japan. He studied Goju Ryu and Shotokan with some training in Judo. Plus the added influx of Muay Thai techniques too for the ultimate truth karate.

Actually Oyama only claimed to have studied Chinese Kempo when he was living in Korea from his family's Chinese servant starting when he was 9 and leaving Korea when he was 14.

During the time he lived in Korea (1923-1938) Korea was underneath Japanese rule and any Korean cultural practices (including Taekkyon and other Korean MAs) were forbidden. Taekkyon was virtually wiped out during that time, so the chances that Oyama actually studied it were pretty slim. I don't think anywhere has Oyama ever claimed to study Taekkyon.