22｜21st-Century KARATE — What It Is Not, What It Is

🌐Scope of this chapter. What is karate (カラテ) in the twenty-first century — what is it not, and what is it? As the penultimate chapter of this series, this essay builds on the history and concepts traced so far and tries to draw the outline of present-day karate from two directions at once: in the negative (what it is not) and in the affirmative (what it is).

1. What Can Be Said in the Negative

There are several things we can say about twenty-first-century karate in the form “it is not X.”

1.1 It Has No Single Origin

Karate has no single point of origin. It is a composite formed where several streams crossed: Okinawan te (手, the indigenous fighting methods of the Ryukyu Islands; also read ti), southern Chinese martial arts, the martial traditions of mainland Japan, modern physical education, and the combat sports of the wider world. We cannot reduce its origin to any one source and say “karate began with X.”

1.2 It Is Not a Continuous Tradition of Many Centuries

Karate is not an unbroken tradition stretching back hundreds of years. Most of today’s kata (型, set forms of movement), styles, and organizations were established or reconstructed between the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Much of what is presented as “ancient tradition” in fact contains elements arranged in the modern era.

1.3 It Has No Single Definition

Karate has no single definition. Is it an unarmed martial art (bujutsu, 武術), a martial way (budo, 武道), a sport, or a combat sport (kakutogi, 格闘技)? Does it center on kata or on sparring (kumite, 組手)? Is it non-contact (“point” karate) or full-contact? There is no single answer to any of these questions.

1.4 It Has No Unifying Organization

Karate has no single governing body for the whole world. Multiple organizations coexist: the WKF (World Karate Federation, the international competition body), the JKF (Japan Karate Federation; in Japanese, Zen Nihon Karate-do Renmei or Zenkūren, 全空連), the IKO (International Karate Organization, a major Kyokushin full-contact body), the various traditional styles, and the full-contact groups. No single authority represents “karate” as a whole.

1.5 It Is Not Purely Japanese Culture

Karate is not purely Japanese culture. It absorbed the influence of the Ryukyuan te and of Chinese martial arts, was reconstructed on the Japanese mainland as a Japanese budo, spread throughout the world, and developed independently in many places. The adjective “Japanese” captures only one facet of karate.

📘For newcomers — the Ryukyu Kingdom. Okinawa was, until the late nineteenth century, the independent Ryukyu Kingdom, a maritime trading state with deep ties to China and Southeast Asia. It was annexed by Japan in 1879. This is why Okinawan culture — including te — is related to, but not simply identical with, “Japanese” culture.

2. What Can Be Said in the Affirmative

On the other hand, there are several things we can affirm in the form “karate is X.”

2.1 It Is an Open Category

Karate is an open category. New styles, new approaches, and new interpretations can always be added. Precisely because the definition of “karate” is loose, a wide diversity of practices can gather under the single label. This is the same structure as the “Japanese food” analogy introduced in Chapter 16 — a category whose boundary is defined less by a fixed essence than by family resemblance and ongoing inclusion.

2.2 It Is a Globally Dispersed Practice

Karate is a practice that has dispersed across the world. From Okinawa and mainland Japan it spread worldwide over the course of the twentieth century, and it is now practiced almost everywhere. “Karate” (空手 / karate) is a word of Japanese origin, yet it no longer belongs to Japanese people alone.

2.3 It Is a Multilayered Category

Karate is a multilayered category. Martial way (budo), martial art (bujutsu), combat sport (kakutogi), sport, education, fitness, self-defense, culture, and entertainment all coexist within it. Depending on which layer one emphasizes, the picture of karate changes.

2.4 It Is a Modern Construction

Karate is a construction of the modern era. Between the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, the categories tode (唐手), karate (空手), and karatedo (空手道) were reorganized. They are continuous with the earlier te (手) and tode (唐手), yet also distinct from them.

2.5 It Is a Dynamic System in Constant Reconstruction

Karate is a dynamic system that is constantly being rebuilt. Rather than a fixed tradition, it has been reinterpreted and reinvested with new meaning in each era and each region. Even now, in the twenty-first century, karate continues to change.

3. Karate After the Olympics

Karate’s appearance at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics was a historic turning point for competitive karate.

It powerfully made visible karate’s standing as an international sport.
It gave athletes from around the world an arena to compete under unified rules.
It greatly increased media exposure.

📘For newcomers — why “2021” for the “2020” Games. The Tokyo Olympics were officially named Tokyo 2020 but, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, were postponed and actually held in 2021. Karate appeared there for the first — and so far only — time.

The developments after the Olympics, however, are complex.

Karate was an additional sport selected by the host city for the Tokyo 2020 Games alone; it was not retained as an additional sport in the competition program of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Nor was karate adopted as an additional sport for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
The WKF continues to hold international competitions.
The full-contact schools continue to develop along a path separate from the Olympics.
The traditional schools likewise continue their own activities.

Olympic karate is only one facet of karate. Olympic adoption does not determine the direction of karate as a whole.

4. Karate in the Digital Age

Another major change of the twenty-first century is digitalization.

Online training. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, remote practice over tools such as Zoom has spread.
YouTube. Explanations of kata, analyses of sparring, and comparisons between styles are watched around the world.
Social media. Communities of karateka now form across national borders.
Apps. Applications for training logs, technical instruction, and workout management have appeared.
VR / AR. Experimental attempts, such as sparring simulations in virtual space, can also be seen.

Digitalization is transforming how karate is transmitted. Alongside the traditional mode of “training in the presence of a teacher,” a new mode of “learning through a screen” now coexists.

That said, what can be learned through video and what is difficult to convey without in-person training are not the same. Distance (maai, 間合い — the spacing between opponents), pressure, the sense of contact, the teacher–student relationship, and the atmosphere of the dojo (道場, training hall) cannot be fully replaced by going online.

5. Karate Amid Globalization

The globalization of karate accelerated from the latter half of the twentieth century into the twenty-first.

Return to Okinawa. A “reverse flow” in which karateka from abroad visit Okinawa’s traditional schools.
Styles born overseas. Cases in which styles developed in the United States or Europe come to influence the Japanese side in turn.
Multicultural interpretation. Distinctive local readings of karate in the Islamic, Christian, Hindu, and other cultural spheres.
The entry of women. In Japan and abroad alike, the activity of female karateka has become increasingly visible.
Para-karate. Competition categories for practitioners with disabilities, such as the WKF’s Para-Karate, are developing.

Karate is increasingly no longer “a Japanese thing” alone but “a thing of the world.” At the same time, it retains its identity as “a Japanese budo” and “a martial art originating in Okinawa.” This double character is a defining feature of karate in the age of globalization.

6. The Reappraisal of “Okinawan Karate”

From the end of the twentieth century into the twenty-first, a reappraisal of “Okinawan karate” relative to mainland karate has been underway.

On 29 March 2005, the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly passed a “Resolution Declaring Karate Day” (Karate no Hi), designating 25 October as “Karate Day.”
The Okinawa Karate Kaikan (Okinawa Karate Hall) opened on 4 March 2017.
A campaign is also under way to register Okinawan karate as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Karateka from abroad come to Okinawa to learn Okinawan karate as the “source.”

📘For newcomers — why 25 October? The date commemorates a round-table discussion of leading masters held in Naha on 25 October 1936, at which the written form of the name was standardized as 空手 (“empty hand,” karate), replacing the older 唐手 (“Tang/Chinese hand,” tode / karate). The renaming is the subject of Chapter 8.

This reappraisal is also a “questioning of legitimacy” directed at mainland karate. The claim that “real karate is in Okinawa” has grown stronger both inside and outside Japan. Yet that claim, too, carries the danger of mythologizing Okinawan karate as a fixed, ancient form. Okinawan karate is likewise a historical practice that has been institutionalized and reconstructed since the modern era.

7. Challenges and the Future

Twenty-first-century karate faces several challenges.

7.1 Balancing Unity and Diversity

To develop as an international sport, karate needs unified rules and organization. But karate’s diversity is also the source of its richness. How to strike a balance between the two is an ongoing challenge.

7.2 Balancing Tradition and Innovation

How to preserve the Okinawan tradition while meeting the needs of contemporary practitioners; how to design the coexistence of the traditional schools, the full-contact schools, and the sport schools — this, too, is a continuing challenge.

7.3 The Safety of Children

Corporal punishment in children’s karate, excessive competition, and physical and mental strain — these problems have, in recent years, begun to be discussed in the karate world as well. How to design training that is safe for children and at the same time meaningful is a pressing question.

7.4 Commercialization and Essence

The growth of commercial dojos supported the spread of karate, but it has also drawn the criticism that “commercialization erodes the essence.” How to balance commercial viability against authenticity is an open question.

7.5 Gender

How will a karate tradition that was male-centered adapt to an age of gender equality? The cultivation of female instructors, the development of programs for women, and measures against harassment all become tasks.

8. Forecasting Karate’s Future

This essay is not in the business of prediction. But from present trends we can sketch a few directions.

Ever greater multiplication of layers. Rather than a single karate, a state in which multiple karates coexist will advance further.
A blend of digital and in-person. Hybrids of online and dojo training will spread.
The coexistence of global and local. The aspect of a shared global sport and the aspect of a region-specific culture will exist side by side.
Return to Okinawa. Interest in Okinawan karate as the “source” will continue to rise.
The advance of scholarly research. Studies of karate’s effects, of its techniques, and of its sociology will deepen further.

How these directions develop rests on the choices of the practitioners, researchers, and enthusiasts of the years to come.

9. Even Karateka Do Not Know “What Karate Is”

We return to the proposition raised at the very opening of this series: “What karate is, probably not even karateka know.”

This is not meant negatively. On the contrary, it is a proposition to be received affirmatively. That even karateka do not know means that karate is an open practice, not one that any single person can define and own.

The karateka is one who lives karate “from the inside.” But karate is a social, historical, and cultural phenomenon that exceeds any individual karateka. No single practitioner can survey the whole of it.

The question “What is karate?” is not a question to which an answer should be produced. It is, rather, a question to keep thinking about. The very act of continuing to think is itself one way of being involved with karate.

10. Conclusion: Karate as an Open Question

This essay has portrayed twenty-first-century karate from two sides — what it is not, and what it is. Let me state just one conclusion.

Karate exists not as a practice with a settled definition but as an open question. “What is karate?” is not a question that seeks an answer; it is a question to be thought through again and again. Each practitioner, each researcher, and each enthusiast engages with the question in their own way, and offers their own provisional answer.

This very provisionality is karate’s mode of existence. There is no fixed answer, yet the question is endlessly raised anew. Karate exists as the place where that question is raised.

Twenty-first-century karate is at once an inheritance handed down from the past and a question opening toward the future. We inherit that legacy while continuing to ask that question.

📝Supplementary note for newcomers. Questions such as “What is a Japanese person?” or “What is culture?” likewise have no clear answer. Yet the absence of an answer does not mean that “Japanese people” or “culture” do not exist. Rather, their reality resides precisely in their being questioned without end as questions that have no fixed answer. Karate is the same. That the question “What is karate?” has no clear answer is itself an indication of karate’s mode of existence.

Principal References

Kadekaru, Tōru (2017) The Creation and Development of Okinawan Karate: Tracing the Changes in Nomenclature (沖縄空手の創造と展開：呼称の変遷を手がかりにして). Doctoral dissertation, Waseda University.
Kinjō, Hiroshi (2011) From Tode to Karate (唐手から空手へ). Tokyo: Nihon Budōkan.
Zen Nihon Karate-dō Renmei (Japan Karate Federation), ed. (2008) Fifty-Year History of Karate-dō (空手道五十年史). Japan Karate Federation.
Nakajima, Tetsuya (2017) Theories of Martial Arts in Modern Japan (近代日本の武道論). Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai.
Ōboki, Teruo (2010) The Budō of Japan (日本の武道). Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan.
Okinawa Prefectural Board of Education, ed. (2017) The Path of Okinawan Karate (沖縄空手のあゆみ). Okinawa Prefecture.
McMahon, F. (2018) Karate-do: A Sociological Study. Routledge.
Tan, K. S. Y. (2004) “Constructing a Martial Tradition: Rethinking a Popular History of Karate-Dou.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 28(2).
Bennett, A. (2017) Japan: The Ultimate Samurai Guide. Tuttle.

Reference URLs

Okinawa Prefectural Archives, “25 October, Karate Day”: https://www.archives.pref.okinawa.jp/news/that_day/14555
Japan Karate Federation, “The Okinawa Karate Kaikan Opens”: https://www.jkf.ne.jp/info/other/20170306/9794
Council for the UNESCO Registration of Okinawan Karate: https://okinawakarate-unesco.jp/
WKF, “Para-Karate”: https://www.wkf.net/para-karate
Japan Karate Federation, “In Response to the Announcement of Additional Sports for the 2024 Paris Olympics”: https://www.jkf.ne.jp/info/international/20190226/12896
Reuters, “Olympics: Karate, dropped for Paris, faces an uncertain future”: https://jp.reuters.com/article/life/sports/-idUSKBN2FA06M/
National Diet Library Search, The Creation and Development of Okinawan Karate: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000039-I11095295
National Diet Library Search, From Tode to Karate: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I023159720

“What Is Karate?” — A Multidimensional Inquiry Through Thought, History, and Sociology