History UsefulNotes / Karate

Although it is considered a quintessential aspect of Japanese culture, karate was actually born in the Ryukyu Kingdom before it was conquered by Japan, and it was shaped by the influence of the more geographically nearby China, with Southern Chinese kungfu being its main inspiration. After weapons were banned by its conquerors, Ryukyu and especially Okinawa developed a series of unarmed fighting styles (as well as some based on makeshift weapons) in order to fight back the invader. Karate remained thus as a very regional characteristic for centuries until an Okinawan scholar by the name of Gichin Funakoshi introduced it to mainland Japan. Soon, other schools both old and new followed, and the sport was established.

** "Karate" itself is a MeaningfulName. As described above, it was originally written as "Chinese hand" to reflect the influence of Chinese martial arts on the style. It was changed to be written as "empty hand" in the early 20th century to avoid [[UsefulNotes/FirstSinoJapaneseWar then-current political connotations of all things connected to China]].

* ''Franchise/TheKarateKid'', [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin of course]]. Nariyoshi Miyagi-''sensei'' is from Okinawa and [[WaxOnWaxOff uses the environment and chores to teach muscle memory]] to his Italian-American protege Daniel [=LaRusso=]. He's also a strong MartialPacifist for whom martial arts is as much about philosophy and self-knowledge as self-defense. Meanwhile the ThugDojo Cobra Kai--the antagonists of the first and third films and the subject of the [[Series/CobraKai self-titled sequel TV series]]--teaches a highly attack-oriented athletic sport form of modern karate, similar in spirit to the ''kyokushin'' school.

* '''Goju-Ryu''': a style with strong Chinese heritage created by Chojun Miyagi. It is mainly based on the kungfu concept of hard/soft duality, and as such it incorporates a balanced and divided moveset, drawing from the alternation between soft circular movements and hard lineal attacks at close range.
* '''Wado-Ryu''': created by former jujutsuka Hironori Otsuka, this karate school stands out for owing to traditional Japanese jujutsu just as much as to karate itself, to the point it initially billed itself as "karate-jujutsu". This can be noted in its fondness for soft, harmonious body shifts and an unique set of paired kata, similar to those found in judo.

As mentioned, karate is divided on schools or styles, most of them diverging a lot in their approaches to things like philosophy and technique. Those are the main ones:

* '''Shotokan''': founded by the aforementioned Gichin Funakoshi, Shotokan was the first modern karate school, and the founders of many other styles actually studied this before establishing their own. Technically speaking, Shotokan emphasizes more on finesse and long range attack, requiring practitioners to be both nimble and well-balanced. Most of its competitions are ruled in points and demonstrations of skill over rough finishes.
* '''Kyokushin''': the hardest style, this school embodies what people tend to believe about karate as crazy men beating down each other and breaking things. Its founder Mas Oyama ''[[BloodKnight loved]]'' to fight, so the school is strongly oriented towards sport fighting and has solid ties to UsefulNotes/{{Kickboxing}} and UsefulNotes/MixedMartialArts. It is characterized by its full contact, knock-down style, meaning the matches are strictly scored on KO's and damage inflicted to the opponent.

* '''Wado-Ryu''': created by Hironori Otsuka, this karate school stands out for owing to traditional Japanese jujutsu just as much as to karate itself. Its founder was a jujutsuka, and it can be noted in its fondness for soft, harmonious body shifts and an unique set of paired kata, similar to those found in judo.

* BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame: In 1964, three karateka from the Kyokushin school (Tadashi Nakamura, Akio Fujihira and Kenji Kurosaki, the last being a last-second replacement for an injured Hirofumi Okada) travelled to Thailand in order to answer to a challenge made by the UsefulNotes/MuayThai community. Pitted in the Lumpinee stadium against three Thai fighters, the Japanese won soundly two of the matches, with the third being a doctor stoppage over Kurosaki that he would call questionable because he was ahead. (It must be mentioned the karate fighters were also judo black belts and did a few judo throws during their matches, but muay thai is hardly alien to sweeps and throws itself.)

* CombatPragmatist: Though karate's modern self-defense applications are a neverending debate, some styles are known for endorsing interestingly violent techniques, among them fish hooks, low blows and eye strikes.

* WarriorPoet: Gichin Funakoshi, who was a writer aside from a karateka.

* BloodKnight: Mas Oyama loved a good fight, and his life story has been unceasingly portrayed in media as a quest to find the strongest fighter. It's reputed that he left both the Shotokan and Goju-Ryu because he felt they weren't tough enough.

* DuelingDojos: Pretty common in ancient times.

Undoubtedly the most known martial art in modern popular culture, almost to the point of antonomasia, karate has hundreds of millions of practitioners around the world and is mostly governed by the World Karate Federation. The "mostly" part comes from the fact that, unlike other mainstream martial arts, there is no unanimous conception or ruleset about the art: instead, it is composed of a myriad of independent schools and associations around the world and most of them manage their business on their own way, with the WKA being relegated to host unified sport competitions which every school might comply or not to compete. This is due to the traditional and decentralized evolution of karate, which can be traced to its very roots.

Though representatively Japanese today, karate was actually born in the Ryukyu Kingdom before it was conquered by Japan, and it was shaped by the influence of the more geographically nearby China, with Southern Chinese kung fu being the main source. After weapons were banned by the conquerors, Ryukyu and specially Okinawa became a field for the development of unarmed fighting styles (as well as some based on makeshift weapons) in order to fight back the invasor. Karate remained thus as a very regional characteristic for centuries until an Okinawan scholar by the name of Gichin Funakoshi introduced in mainland Japan. Soon, other schools both old and new followed, and the sport was established.

Practitioners of the sport are called ''Karateka''. Equipment consist solely of a white uniform called karategi or keikogi (sometimes abbreviated as "gi"), composed of a loose jacket and pants tied with a belt called obi, which actually comes and was adopted from the judogi used in UsefulNotes/{{Judo}}. The practice of the art itself can be separated in ''kata'' (sets of individual, rehearsed movements designed to build muscle memory), ''bunkai'' (interpretation of ''kata'' to create functional techniques), and ''kumite'' (good ol' sparring, equivalent to ''randori'' in judo and jujutsu).

* '''Shotokan''': founded by the aforementioned Gichin Funakoshi, Shotokan was the first modern karate school, and many other styles's founders actually learned there before setting on their own. Technically speaking, Shotokan does a big emphasis on finesse and long range, being both nimble and well-balanced. Most of its competitions are ruled in points and demonstrations of skill over rough finishes.
* '''Kyokushin''': the hardest style, this school embodies what people tend to believe about karate as crazy men beating down each other and breaking things. Its founder Mas Oyama ''loved'' to fight, so the school is strongly oriented to sport fighting and has solid ties to UsefulNotes/{{Kickboxing}} and UsefulNotes/MixedMartialArts. It is characterized by its full contact, knock-down style, meaning the matches are strictly scored on KO's and damage inflicted to the opponent.
* '''Shito-Ryu''': a traditional yet unifying school founded by Kenwa Mabuni. It contains an incredibly large and complex curriculum of techniques created in an attempt to agglutinate elements of both power and technique, although it values speed and high posture over most other things.
* '''Goju-Ryu''': a style of strong Chinese heritance created by Chojun Miyagi. It is mainly based on the kung fu concept of hard/soft duality, and as such it incorporates a binomially divided moveset, drawing from the alternation between soft circular movements and hard lineal attacks at close range.

* '''Kyokushin''': the hardest style, this school embodies what people tend to believe about karate as crazy men beating down each other and breaking things. Its founder, Mas Oyama, loved to fight, and by that reason the school is strongly oriented to fighting. It is characterized by its full contact, knock-down style, meaning the matches are strictly scored on KO’s and damage inflicted to the opponent.

* BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame: In 1964, three karateka from the Kyokushin school (Tadashi Nakamura, Akio Fujihira and Kenji Kurosaki, the last being a last-second replacement for an injured Hirofumi Okada) travelled to Thailand in order to answer to a challenge made by the UsefulNotes/MuayThai community. Pitted in the Lumpinee stadium against three Thai fighters, the Japanese won soundly two of the matches, with the third being a doctor stoppage over Kurosaki that he would call questionable as he was ahead.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/japanese_karate_4.jpg]]

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/japanese_karate_4.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:Round 1. Fight!]]

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/karate.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:Wax off.]]

* BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame: In 1964, three karateka from the Kyokushin school (Tadashi Nakamura, Akio Fujihira and Kenji Kurosaki, the last being a last-second replacement for an injured Hirofumi Okada) travelled to Thailand in order to answer to a challenge made by the UsefulNotes/MuayThai community. Pitted in the Lumpinee stadium against three Thai fighters, the Japanese won soundly two of the matches, with the third being a doctor stoppage over Kurosaki that he would call questionable as he was ahead. Thai fighters continued sending challenges to schools of Western kickboxing, American karate and taekwondo, but it's said that they never challenged Japanese karate again.

* '''Shito-Ryu''': a traditional yet unifying school founded by Kenwa Mabuni. It contains an incredibly large and complex curriculum of techniques created in an attempt to agglutinate both elements of power and technique, although it actually does more emphasis on speed and high posture than any other thing.

* ArtisticLicenseMartialArts: Despite its omnipresence in media, karate used to receive (and still receives) a variety of misrepresented portrayals, often showing it as composed of only spectacular flying kicks and supposedly lethal but otherwise robotic-looking chops. Also, odds are that, every time a character is shown kicking butt with karate, a DivingKick will be his first choice of attack. Actually, karate uses very few spinning kicks and even less aerial attacks, if any (those are actually ''UsefulNotes/{{Taekwondo}}'''s field of expertise). Also, the classic karate chop is just one of the many hand strikes that are taught, and is actually one of the rarest to see in competition.
** It's common in fiction for fighters to use the "karate chop" as a straightforward strike like a punch or kick, often chopping their opponents on the top of their head, or swinging wildly at a moving target. This is extremely unrealistic, as that would do very little if any damage to the opponent and be quite painful for the chopper's hand. The knifehand strike is intended for precise blows to vulnerable areas, like the back of the neck or inside of joints, as the focused wedge of force is more effective on soft or fragile targets than hard surfaces. This misconception may come from misunderstanding the purpose of breaking exercises, where karateka chop wooden boards or even stones in half to prove conditioning, precision and focus.

* SadistTeacher: Karate in Japan (well, everything in Japan) has a long tradition of having sadistic bastards in charge of teaching.

* InvulnerableKnuckles: As full contact karate is traditionally fought barehanded, many old school karateka train to strengthen their hand bones by striking stones and logs. The continuous micro-breaking and healing of the bones makes them stronger (see [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolff%27s_law Wolff's Law]]), but it is a long and grueling process. Other people, more GenreSavvy, prefer to use open palm strikes, which are less damaging for the hands than traditional punches, rather than undergoing this method.

Practitioners of the sport are called ''Karateka''. Equipment consist solely of a white uniform called karategi or keikogi (sometimes abbreviated as "gi"), composed of a loose jacket and pants tied with a belt called obi, which actually comes and was adopted from the judogi used in UsefulNotes/{{Judo}}. The practice of the art itself can be separated in ''kata'' (sets of individual, rehearsed movements designed to build muscle memory) and ''kumite'' (good ol' sparring, equivalent to ''randori'' in judo and jujutsu).

* ArtisticLicenseMartialArts: Despite its omnipresence in media, karate used to receive (and still receives) a variety of misrepresented portrayals, often showing it as composed of only spectacular flying kicks and supposedly lethal but otherwise robotic-looking chops. Also, odds are that, every time a character is shown kicking butt with karate, a DivingKick will be his first choice of attack. Actually, karate uses very few spinning kicks and even less aerial attacks, if any (those are actually ''UsefulNotes/{{Taekwondo}}'''s field of expertise). Also, the classic karate chop is just one of the many hand strikes which are taught, and is actually one of the rarest to see in competition.

* OneHitKill: The concept of ''Ikken Hissatsu'' is used in karate to mean a philosophy in which the fighter should hit every strike looking to finish the opponent with it. Naturally, only great masters of the style can boast of having downed dudes with a single strike, though there are real cases.

* SadistTeacher: Karate in Japan (well, everything in Japan) has a long tradition of sadistic bastards being in charge of teaching.

With no doubt the most known martial art in modern popular culture, almost to the point of antonomasia, karate has hundreds of millions of practitioners around the world, and is mostly governed by the World Karate Federation. The "mostly" part comes from the fact that, unlike other mainstream martial arts, there is no unanimous conception or ruleset about the art: instead, it is composed of a myriad of independent schools and associations around the world, and most of them manage their business on their own way, with the WKA being relegated to host unified sport competitions. This is due to the traditional and decentralized evolution of karate, which can be traced to its very roots.

Practitioners of the sport are called ''Karateka''. Equipment consist solely of a white uniform called karategi or keikogi (sometimes abbreviated as "gi"), composed of a loose jacket and pants tied with a belt called obi, which actually comes and was adopted from the judogi used in UsefulNotes/{{Judo}}. The practice of the art itself can be separated in ''kata'' (sets of individual, rehearsed movements designed to build muscle memory) and ''kumite'' (good ol' sparring).

* '''Shotokan''': founded by the aforementioned Gichin Funakoshi, this was the first modern karate school, and many other styles's founders actually learned there before setting on their own. Technically speaking, Shotokan does a big emphasis on finesse and long range, being both light and well-balanced. Most of its competitions are ruled in points and demonstrations of skill over rough finishes.
* '''Kyokushin''': this school embodies what people tend to believe about karate as crazy men beating down each other and breaking things. Its founder, Mas Oyama, loved to fight, and thus the school is strongly oriented to fighting. It is characterized by its full contact, knock-down style, meaning the matches are strictly scored on KO’s and damage inflicted to the opponent. You could call it the hardest style.
* '''Shito-Ryu''': a traditional yet unifying school founded by Kenwa Mabuni. It contains an incredibly large and complex curriculum of techniques in an attempt to agglutinate both elements of power and technique, but actually does a characteristic emphasis on speed and high posture.

* '''Wado-Ryu''': created by Hironori Otsuka, this karate school stands out for owing to traditional Japanese jujutsu as much to karate itself. Its founder was a jujutsuka, and it can be noted in its fondness for soft, harmonious body shifts and an unique set of paired kata, similar to those found in Judo.

* ArtisticLicenseMartialArts: Despite its omnipresence in media, karate used to get (and still gets) quite misrepresented portrayals, often showing it as composed by pretty much only spectacular flying kicks and supposedly lethal but otherwise robotic-looking chops; also, probabilities are that, every time a character is shown kicking butt with karate, a DivingKick will be his first choice of attack. Actually, karate uses very few spinning kicks, if any, and much less aerial attacks (which would be actually ''UsefulNotes/{{Taekwondo}}'''s field of expertise), while the classic karate chop is actually one of the many hand strikes which are taught, and one of the rarest to see in competition among them.
* BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame: In 1964, three karateka from the Kyokushin school (Tadashi Nakamura, Akio Fujihira and Kenji Kurosaki, the last being a last-second replacement for an injured Hirofumi Okada) travelled to Thailand in order to answer to a challenge made by the UsefulNotes/MuayThai community. They were pitted in the Lumpinee stadium against three Thai fighters, and the Japanese won soundly two of the matches, with the third being a doctor stoppage over Kurosaki which he would call questionable as he was ahead. Thai fighters continued sending challenges to schools of Western kickboxing, American karate and taekwondo, but it’s said that they never challenged Japanese karate again.

* BoringButPractical: Most of karate striking can be described this way, as it usually features very lineal and simple attacks, yet also precise and potentially powerful.
* CombatPragmatist: Though karate's modern self-defense applications are a neverending debates, some styles are known for endorsing interestingly violent techniques, among them fish hooks, low blows and eye strikes.
* DontThinkFeel: ''Mushin'' is a karate concept (not limited to karate, actually, but to most martial arts) which means a state of no-mindness in which the fighter reacts not with what they would think is the best reaction, but the reaction has been instigated on them through training; thus, feeling intuitively as opposed to thinking, in order to avoid possible distractions as fear, anger or confusion.

* InvulnerableKnuckles: As full contact karate is traditionally fought barehanded, many old school karateka trained to strengthen their hand bones by striking stones and logs. The continuous micro-breaking and healing of the bones made them stronger (see [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolff%27s_law Wolff's Law]]), but it was a long and grueling process. Other people, more GenreSavvy, preferred to use open palm strikes rather than undergoing this method.
* KungFuClairvoyance: Another philosophical concept in karate, the ''zanshin'', enforces a continuous state of relaxed alertness and awareness of one’s surrounding and enemies, while being prepared to react.
* MeaningfulName: Schools often have fancy names which refer to some element of their foundation.

** "Goju-Ryu" means the oxymoronic "Hard Soft Style," reflecting its characteristics.

* OneHitKill: The concept of ''Ikken Hissatsu'' is used in karate to refer a philosophy in which the fighter should hit every strike looking to finish the opponent with it. Naturally, only great masters of the style can boast of having downed dudes with a single strike, though there are real cases.

* SadistTeacher: Karate in Japan has a long tradition of sadistic bastards being in charge of teaching.

* BadassGrandpa: Many old karate masters aren't any less fearsome for being old.

* BloodKnight: Mas Oyama loved a good fight, and its life story has been unceasingly portrayed in media as a quest to find the strongest fighter. It's reputed that he left both the Shotokan and Goju-Ryu because he felt they weren't tough enough.

* ArtisticLicenseMartialArts: Despite its omnipresence in media, karate used to get (and still gets) quite misrepresented portrayals, often showing it as composed by pretty much only spectacular flying kicks and supposedly lethal but otherwise robotic-looking chops; also, probabilities are that, every time a character is shown kicking butt with karate, a DivingKick will be his first choice of attack. Actually, karate uses very few spinning kicks, if any, and much less aerial attacks (which would be actually ''taekwondo'''s field of expertise), while the classic karate chop is actually one of the many hand strikes which are taught, and one of the rarest to see in competition among them.