Karate

The World of Martial Arts Karate is my recent book I have read by Jim Ollhoff. A term for all fighting styles is called Martial Arts. There many different fighting styles for Martial Arts and the most popular one is karate. Karate means "empty hand". People who practice karate for a long time over the years are known as karatekas. Karate started about 400 years ago on Okinawa, in the Pacific Ocean of the largest island on Ryukyu chain of islands. The most common styles are shorin-ryu karate, gojo-ryu karate, kenpo karate, and shotokan karate. There is no organization that controls any karate associations. The word that describes karate is power and known for their speed. Karatekas have powerful kicks and punches with their wide stances that help them strike with power. They also practice breaking wooden boards or blocked cements to improve their one-punch knockouts.

The history of karate is hard to know its full story because there many legends about the beginning of karate but few facts. For hundreds of years, karate was to remain a secret because a master taught a few students. They couldn’t practice in public or share any of their techniques they had learned in karate. In the 1800s, the secrecy began to lift at an end, but a lot of the history’s knowledge was lost. In 1904,the secrecy lifted completely, when karate was open to the public schools being taught in Okinawa’s. Legends had sprung up about the lack of knowledge and the origins of karate because sometimes it is difficult to know which legends are right or wrong.

The most often-told legend for karate in Okinawa was the Japanese invading Okinawa in 1609. The legend says that the Japanese forbade anyone who owns a weapon and whoever gets caught was punished. The Okinawans had to learn how to defend themselves with their bare hands and feet. The Okinawan farmers had no weapons; they had to use their farming tools to defend themselves like a seed planter called the sai. The Okinawans already had a primitive martial art called te which means hand. The Okinawan te masters and Chinese kung fu maters combined their skills making a new martial arts called kara-te.

The idea of peace-loving Okinawans learning how to use farming tools has a weapon. The Okinawans were not the first people to invent these kinds of weapons and the Chinese also had been using these types of weapons for hundreds of years. By the late 1800s, karate has become an effective well developed way of fighting styles. During and after the World War II, many U.S. servicemen lived and worked in Okinawan. The servicemen also learned karate while they were there. 1946, in the United States, the first karate school was opened in Phoenix, Arizona, by Robert Trias. By the 1960s, the U.S. karate tournaments became popular even in movies.

All different types of martial arts are being taught all around the world. I never knew karate means empty hand and I wonder what it means. Karate came from the Okinawan te masters and the Chinese kung fu masters who blended their skills together making a new kind of martial arts. I was surprised to the legends about Japanese were forbidden to own any weapons and could not own a sword. They would get punished if they were seen with a weapon. The Okinawans had to defend themselves with karate and back then they must be lucky to learn karate. It was probably difficult to learn all these new different skills for a while but it takes practice to succeed over the years.

It is interesting that there is not an organization for these karate schools and I did not know that any high black belt degree can open their own school or a small class to teach people. I take martial arts and I have notice that my uncle opened his own small class in his garage. All martial arts involve power and good stances. Almost all of the martial arts are similar or have similar techniques to each other.