20｜”Karate” Studies — Practitioner Writings and Academic Research

📚Scope of this chapter. This chapter organizes the history of writing and research on karate by dividing it into two streams: works authored by practitioners, and studies produced by academic researchers. It then turns to fields that remain under-researched, in order to sketch the overall landscape of karate scholarship.

🗾For newcomers: “practitioner writing” vs. “academic research.” In many martial-arts traditions, almost everything we know was first written down by practitioners themselves — masters recording their own techniques, lineages, and beliefs. Such writing is invaluable, but it is rarely neutral: it is often produced to transmit a technique or to assert the legitimacy of a particular school (ryūha, 流派). Academic research, by contrast, treats those same writings as primary sources to be examined critically, cross-checked against newspapers, school records, photographs, and government documents. Keeping this distinction in mind is the single most useful habit for reading karate history well.

1. Two Kinds of “Karate” Studies

Writing and research on karate can be broadly divided into two kinds.

Writing by practitioners. Material in which people who practice karate record and explain their own techniques, ideals, lineages, and experiences.
Research by academics. Studies carried out within the frameworks of universities, research institutes, and scholarly societies, using methods such as source criticism, social surveys, and comparative analysis.

The two differ in purpose, method, and intended reader. Practitioner writing is often produced in order to transmit technique or to demonstrate the orthodoxy of a school. Academic research treats such accounts as important sources, yet at the same time keeps its distance and tests them.

In karate studies, therefore, it is essential to discern who wrote something, for what purpose, and from what standpoint.

2. A History of Writing by Practitioners

The history of writing by karate practitioners reaches back to records from modern Okinawa and from the period when karate was transplanted to mainland Japan. For karate before the Meiji era (i.e. before 1868), however, systematic contemporaneous documents are scarce, and we cannot treat later reminiscences and oral traditions as straightforward fact.

🗾For newcomers: Okinawa, the Ryukyus, and the “mainland.” Karate was born not in mainland Japan but in the Ryukyu Kingdom (琉球, an independent kingdom centered on present-day Okinawa until it was annexed by Japan in 1879). When this chapter speaks of “transplantation to the mainland,” it means the movement of karate from Okinawa to the main islands of Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, and so on) in the 1920s–30s. “Tōde” (唐手, literally “Tang/Chinese hand”) and “karate” (空手, “empty hand”) are two ways of writing the same word; the shift from the former to the latter is itself a central theme of this series (see Chapter 8).

2.1 Records from Late-Meiji Okinawa

A key document in modern karate history is the “Ten Articles of Tōde” (唐手十箇条) — also called the “Ten Precepts of Tōde” (唐手十訓) — which Itosu Ankō (糸洲安恒) is said to have submitted to the Education Section of Okinawa Prefecture in 1908. This was not a free-standing published book but a written opinion (a kind of policy memorandum) explaining the significance of tōde within school education.

The “Ten Articles” matter because they explain tōde not as a mere technique for private brawling but as a form of physical training that contributes to physical education, schooling, and the formation of citizens. It is one of the basic sources for understanding how tōde was turned into school physical education in modern Okinawa.

At the same time, Itosu himself did not publish a karate book as a stand-alone volume. A citation such as “Itosu Ankō, Kenpō Gaisetsu (拳法概説), 1908″ is therefore inaccurate. Kenpō Gaisetsu should be treated as a 1930 work in the orbit of the Tokyo Imperial University Karate Research Club, by Miki Nisaburō (三木二三郎) and Takada Mizuho (高田瑞穂).

2.2 Records from the Transplantation Period

From the 1920s into the 1930s, tōde / karate was transplanted from Okinawa to the mainland. In this period, karate books by practitioners themselves appeared in quick succession.

Tominakoshi (Funakoshi) Gichin, Ryūkyū Kenpō: Tōde (富名腰義珍『琉球拳法唐手』, 1922, Bukyōsha). An early, full-scale karate book published on the mainland. The author’s surname is, in keeping with the usage of the time, often given as “Tominakoshi”; the same characters (富名腰／船越) are today usually read “Funakoshi.”
Tominakoshi (Funakoshi) Gichin, Rentan Goshin: Tōde-jutsu (富名腰義珍『錬膽護身唐手術』, 1925). A successor to Ryūkyū Kenpō: Tōde — widely regarded as a revised, retitled re-edition of it — that presented tōde as a means of self-defense and self-cultivation.
Miki Nisaburō and Takada Mizuho, Kenpō Gaisetsu (三木二三郎・高田瑞穂『拳法概説』, 1930, Tokyo Imperial University Karate Research Club). An early karate book by a university karate research club — and not a work by Itosu.
Motobu Chōki, Watashi no Karate-jutsu (“My Art of Karate”) (本部朝基『私の唐手術』, 1932, Tokyo Tōde Dissemination Society / 東京唐手普及會). An important source for grasping Motobu Chōki’s combat-oriented view of sparring and technique. Motobu had also published, earlier, Okinawa Kenpō Tōde-jutsu: Kumite-hen (沖縄拳法唐手術組手編, 1926, Tōde-jutsu Dissemination Society), regarded as the oldest kumite (組手, sparring) manual in karate history.
Funakoshi Gichin, Karate-dō Kyōhan (“The Master Text of Karate-dō”) (船越義珍『空手道教範』, 1935, Ōkura Kōbundō). A representative work showing the process by which Funakoshi reorganized both the notation and the underlying ideals from “tōde” toward “karate-dō.”
Mabuni Kenwa and Nakasone Genwa, Kōbō Kenpō: Karate-dō Nyūmon (“Offense and Defense — An Introduction to Karate-dō”) (摩文仁賢和・仲宗根源和『攻防拳法空手道入門』, 1938). An important early account in the Shitō-ryū lineage.

These works did more than simply record technique. They are sources that document the very process of re-explaining karate from “an Okinawan martial art” into “a Japanese budō” (武道, martial way).

2.3 Postwar Records

After the Second World War, karate expanded enormously across the contexts of schools, dojo (道場, training halls), competitive organizations, full-contact karate, and overseas diffusion. Writing by practitioners increased accordingly.

Funakoshi Gichin, Karate-dō Ichiro (“Karate-dō: My Way of Life”) (船越義珍『空手道一路』, 1956, Sangyō Keizai Shimbunsha). An important text that includes Funakoshi’s own reminiscences. Because it has the character of a memoir, however, it must be read against contemporaneous sources.
Nagamine Shōshin, Okinawa no Karate-dō (“The Karate-dō of Okinawa”) (長嶺将真『沖縄の空手道』, 1975, Shin-Jinbutsu Ōraisha). A representative work in which the founder of Matsubayashi-ryū wrote from the standpoint of Okinawa’s traditional schools.
Ōyama Masutatsu, Hyakuman-nin no Karate (“Karate for the Million”) (大山倍達『100万人の空手』, 1969, Tōto Shobō; a Kōdansha edition appeared in 1975). An important work for thinking about the mass popularization of Kyokushin and full-contact karate. Note that there is a first edition (Tōto Shobō, hardcover) and a later Kōdansha edition (a popular paperback edition), so the edition should be checked when citing.
Official histories, technical manuals, and bulletins of the various styles and organizations. Shōtōkan, Gōjū-ryū, Shitō-ryū, Wadō-ryū, the Kyokushin Kaikan, and others have each recorded their own histories and techniques.

Postwar practitioner writing divides into technical manuals, treatises on spirit and philosophy, organizational histories, autobiographies, and popular primers. In full-contact karate especially, books, magazines, film, and manga became intertwined and played a large part in the popularization of the karate image.

2.4 Okinawan-Tradition Records and Reference Works

For researching Okinawan karate, encyclopedias, chronologies, and biographical dictionaries are important.

Takamiyagi Shigeru, Shinzato Katsuhiko, and Nakamoto Masahiro, Okinawa Karate Kobudō Jiten (“Encyclopedia of Okinawan Karate and Kobudō”) (高宮城繁・新里勝彦・仲本政博『沖縄空手古武道事典』, 2008, Kashiwa Shobō). A basic reference that organizes figures, styles, kata (型, forms), weapons-based kobudō, and chronology.
Holdings of the Okinawa Prefectural Library, the Okinawa Prefectural Archives, and similar institutions. Useful as a point of entry for locating primary sources and related literature.

Even reference works, however, are not perfectly neutral. One must use them with attention to which items are included, to the balance of power among schools, and to the standpoint of the compilers.

3. The Distinctive Character of Practitioner Writing

Writing by practitioners has the following distinctive features.

A record of technical transmission. It contains information that is hard for a non-practitioner to record: kata, basics (kihon), sparring, and training methods.
The insider’s experience. Life in the dojo, the master–disciple relationship, attitudes toward training, and bodily sensation are set down.
A statement of ideals. The author’s own thinking about “what karate is” and “what budō is” is presented.
An assertion of legitimacy. It often contains narratives meant to establish the lineage or superiority of the author’s own school or organization.
Value as a contemporaneous source. It becomes an important clue to the view of karate, of technique, and of social position held at the moment of publication.

There are also cautions, however. In a master’s recollections, a school’s oral tradition, tales of martial prowess, and organizational histories, fact, memory, ideal, and publicity are easily intermixed. Practitioner writing is thus a “precious source,” but it should not be treated as “objective fact as it stands.”

In karate studies, an indispensable stance is to respect the insider’s account while cross-checking it against multiple sources.

4. A History of Academic Research

Academic research on karate has accumulated mainly since the second half of the twentieth century. As fields, it spans the history of physical education, the history of budō, sociology, cultural anthropology, sports science, competition studies, and media studies.

4.1 History of Physical Education and of Budō

At the foundation of karate studies lies research in the modern history of physical education and of budō. This is because karate changed within the contexts of modern school education, physical training, the budō system, university athletic clubs, and postwar “sportification.”

Research in modern physical-education history — such as Kimura Kichiji, Nihon Kindai Taiiku Shisō no Keisei (“The Formation of Modern Japanese Physical-Education Thought”) (木村吉次『日本近代体育思想の形成』, Kyōrin Shoin) — is useful for understanding the institutional background in which karate was placed, even when it does not take karate itself as its subject.

Likewise, research on Japanese budō theory and the conceptual history of budō offers clues for thinking about how karate was reconstituted as “karate-dō” while referring to the prior modern budō models of judo and kendo.

4.2 Research on the History of Okinawan Karate

In the history of Okinawan karate, the doctoral dissertation of Kadekaru Tōru, Okinawa Karate no Sōzō to Tenkai: Koshō no Hensen wo Tegakari ni shite (“The Creation and Development of Okinawan Karate: Tracing the Changes in Its Names”) (嘉手苅徹『沖縄空手の創造と展開：呼称の変遷を手がかりにして』, 2017, Waseda University) is important. Rather than accepting at face value the conventional narrative of “a karate continuous since ancient times,” it re-grasps Okinawan karate through changes in nomenclature, institutions, school education, and local society.

Kinjō Hiroshi, Tōde kara Karate e (“From Tōde to Karate”) (金城裕『唐手から空手へ』, 2011, Nippon Budōkan) is likewise an important work for considering the change in name and ideals from tōde to karate.

In this field, the challenge lies in how one combines and reads Okinawan newspapers, school histories, organizational histories, masters’ writings, and administrative materials.

4.3 Sociology and Cultural Studies

Sociology and cultural studies grasp karate not as a mere technical system but as a social and cultural practice.

In the English-speaking world, G. Krug’s “At the Feet of the Master: Three Stages in the Appropriation of Okinawan Karate Into Anglo-American Culture” (2001) discusses how Okinawan karate was received and reinterpreted in the Anglophone world.

K. S. Y. Tan’s “Constructing a Martial Tradition: Rethinking a Popular History of Karate-Dou” (2004) is important for considering how a karate history regarded as “tradition” is in fact constructed.

Research of this kind reads karate not only as “technique” but through the contexts of national culture, the image of “the Orient,” the master–disciple relationship, masculinity, consumer culture, and film, manga, and games.

📘Glossary: “the invention of tradition.” A concept popularized by the historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (The Invention of Tradition, 1983). It points out that customs felt to be “ancient” are often in fact rituals and narratives newly formed in the modern era. In karate studies it serves as a key tool for critically re-examining the claim of “a centuries-old tradition.”

4.4 Sports Science and Competition Studies

In recent years, sports-science research on competitive karate has also increased — for example, motion analysis of punches and kicks, reaction time, competition rules, refereeing, training effects, and psychological effects on young people.

Research in this field, unlike historical study, uses experiments, statistics, competition data, and psychological scales. It is therefore positioned not as “research that clarifies the history of karate” but as “research that uses karate to test physical abilities and psychological effects.”

4.5 Media Studies and Popular-Culture Studies

Karate has formed its popular image through film, manga, television, magazines, and games. Karate Baka Ichidai (空手バカ一代, a hugely influential manga loosely based on Ōyama Masutatsu), the Bruce Lee films, The Karate Kid, K-1, and fighting video games have all shaped a sense of “karate-ness” quite apart from actual dojo culture.

This field can hardly be said to have been systematically researched yet. Still, in any understanding of karate from the late twentieth century onward, media representation cannot be ignored.

5. Cautions in Research

In karate studies, attention must be paid to the following points.

5.1 Separate Tradition from Historical Fact

Narratives such as “it was always so,” “I heard it from my master,” and “this is how it is transmitted in our school” are important. But they are not historical fact as such; they must be treated as tradition.

Tradition is a source for understanding practitioners’ self-understanding. To treat it as historical fact requires cross-checking against contemporaneous literature, newspapers, school materials, published books, photographs, and administrative documents.

5.2 Do Not Adopt Tales of Prowess at Face Value

Karate history abounds in narratives of matches, brawls, cross-style fights, duels with bulls, secret kata, and secret transmissions. These matter for understanding karate culture, but in many cases the facts are hard to confirm.

A tale of prowess is material showing “how karate has been talked about”; it is not necessarily material showing “what actually happened.”

5.3 Style Histories Carry Partisanship

Histories of styles and organizations bear on the authority of a founder, the legitimacy of a breakaway faction, and the inheritance of ranks and organizational position. For that reason, the same event can be explained differently by different organizations.

Research must compare multiple materials, not rely on the official history of a single organization.

5.4 “Older” Does Not Always Mean “More Correct”

Old sources are important, but being old does not make them invariably correct. Old sources, too, contain misprints, exaggerations, and authorial intentions.

Conversely, even later research can be highly reliable if its source criticism is careful. What matters is not date alone but the character of the source and the method of verification.

6. Fields Still Thinly Researched

Karate studies still has fields that have not been sufficiently cultivated.

The business history of the dojo. Tuition, the branch system, franchising, instructor training, and the role of the dojo in local society.
The history of magazines and publishing. The lineage of Gekkan Karate-dō (“Karate-dō Monthly”), Kyokushin-affiliated bulletins, technical manuals, photo collections, and mook (magazine-books).
Women and karate. Female practitioners, women’s competition, self-defense, fitness adaptation, and gender representation.
Karate as a children’s lesson. Discipline, etiquette, the education industry, and parental expectations.
The history of full-contact karate. The Kyokushin Kaikan, the Seidōkaikan, the Ashihara Kaikan, the Shidōkan, the Daidōjuku, and their relation to K-1.
The history of overseas diffusion. Reception and transformation in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and South America.
Media representation. The “karate” image created by film, manga, television, and games.
Karate in the digital age. YouTube, online training, social media, video instruction, and AI analysis.

Many of these fields contain material that should be recorded before practitioners’ memories are lost. The history of magazines, tournaments, and dojo from the postwar years through the 1990s, in particular, will become an important foundation for future karate studies.

7. Conclusion

Karate studies needs both practitioner writing and academic research.

Without practitioner writing, technique, bodily sensation, dojo culture, and the master–disciple relationship go unrecorded. Without academic research, on the other hand, it is hard to verify traditions, tales of prowess, and style histories, and to place them back into their social and historical context.

Karate is not a mere technical system. It is a composite culture formed by the overlapping of Okinawa, the mainland, the school, the university, the dojo, film, manga, competition, overseas diffusion, and consumer society.

For precisely that reason, karate studies demands both a stance that respects the experience of practitioners and a stance that reads sources critically.

Principal References

Primary Sources and Practitioner Writings

Itosu Ankō (1908), “Ten Articles of Tōde” / “Ten Precepts of Tōde” (糸洲安恒「唐手十箇条／唐手十訓」).
Tominakoshi (Funakoshi) Gichin (1922), Ryūkyū Kenpō: Tōde (富名腰義珍『琉球拳法唐手』), Bukyōsha.
Tominakoshi (Funakoshi) Gichin (1925), Rentan Goshin: Tōde-jutsu (富名腰義珍『錬膽護身唐手術』).
Miki Nisaburō and Takada Mizuho (1930), Kenpō Gaisetsu (三木二三郎・高田瑞穂『拳法概説』), Tokyo Imperial University Karate Research Club.
Motobu Chōki (1932), Watashi no Karate-jutsu (本部朝基『私の唐手術』), Tokyo Tōde Dissemination Society (東京唐手普及會).
Funakoshi Gichin (1935), Karate-dō Kyōhan (船越義珍『空手道教範』), Ōkura Kōbundō.
Mabuni Kenwa and Nakasone Genwa (1938), Kōbō Kenpō: Karate-dō Nyūmon (摩文仁賢和・仲宗根源和『攻防拳法空手道入門』).
Funakoshi Gichin (1956), Karate-dō Ichiro (船越義珍『空手道一路』), Sangyō Keizai Shimbunsha.
Ōyama Masutatsu (1969), Hyakuman-nin no Karate (大山倍達『100万人の空手』), Tōto Shobō (Kōdansha edition 1975).
Nagamine Shōshin (1975), Okinawa no Karate-dō (長嶺将真『沖縄の空手道』), Shin-Jinbutsu Ōraisha.
Takamiyagi Shigeru, Shinzato Katsuhiko, and Nakamoto Masahiro (2008), Okinawa Karate Kobudō Jiten (高宮城繁・新里勝彦・仲本政博『沖縄空手古武道事典』), Kashiwa Shobō.

Academic Research and Secondary Literature

Kadekaru Tōru (2017), Okinawa Karate no Sōzō to Tenkai: Koshō no Hensen wo Tegakari ni shite (嘉手苅徹『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), Tōde kara Karate e (金城裕『唐手から空手へ』), Nippon Budōkan.
Kimura Kichiji (1975), Nihon Kindai Taiiku Shisō no Keisei (木村吉次『日本近代体育思想の形成』), Kyōrin Shoin.
Nakajima Tetsuya (2017), Kindai Nihon no Budō-ron (“Theories of Budō in Modern Japan”) (中嶋哲也『近代日本の武道論』), Kokusho Kankōkai.
Tōdō Yoshiaki (2007), Jūdō no Rekishi to Bunka (“The History and Culture of Judo”) (藤堂良明『柔道の歴史と文化』), Fumaidō Shuppan.
Krug, G. (2001) “At the Feet of the Master: Three Stages in the Appropriation of Okinawan Karate Into Anglo-American Culture.” Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 1(4).
Tan, K. S. Y. (2004) “Constructing a Martial Tradition: Rethinking a Popular History of Karate-Dou.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 28(2).
Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. eds. (1983) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press.

Reference URLs

National Diet Library Digital Collections, Ryūkyū Kenpō: Tōde: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/971654/
Collaborative Reference Database, “Looking for a karate book written by Itosu Ankō”: https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/entry/index.php?id=1000085503&page=ref_view
NDL Search, Okinawa Karate no Sōzō to Tenkai: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000039-I11095295
Waseda University Repository, full-text PDF of Okinawa Karate no Sōzō to Tenkai: https://waseda.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/40324/files/Honbun-7673.pdf
NDL Search, Tōde kara Karate e: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I023159720
Kashiwa Shobō, Okinawa Karate Kobudō Jiten: https://www.kashiwashobo.co.jp/book/9784760133697
Okinawa Prefectural Library, “Ten Books for Knowing Karate” PDF: https://www.library.pref.okinawa.jp/about-okinawa/docs/(700)booklist-karate.pdf

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