📘About this guide. This article is written for researchers and advanced enthusiasts — roughly graduate level and above — who study karate and the Japanese martial arts (budō) outside Japan. It offers a systematic introduction to the most important scholarly articles and books on karate, the martial arts, and adjacent fields published in Japan since the beginning of the Heisei era (1989–2019) and continuing into the Reiwa era (2019–present). It is the companion to Part 1 (the “classical” guide); read together, the two are intended to serve as a working map of the Japanese-language literature that overseas karate researchers ought to know.
Notes for non-Japanese readers. Japanese personal names are given in Japanese order (family name first) and romanized in modified Hepburn, with the original characters supplied at first mention; long vowels are marked with macrons (e.g., Tōru). “Heisei” and “Reiwa” are Japanese imperial era names used here as convenient period markers. Throughout, “Part 1” refers to the earlier “classical” installment in this series. Bibliographic details and affiliations have been checked against available sources; a small number remain subject to final verification, and this guide is updated periodically online.
Introduction — Why the latest Japanese scholarship needs to reach the wider world
Academic research on karate has been transformed, in both quality and quantity, since the turn of the twenty-first century. First, the drive to recognize Okinawan karate as cultural heritage — Okinawa Prefecture’s campaign toward inscription of “Okinawa karate” on UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, and the opening in March 2017 of the Okinawa Karate Kaikan (a prefectural facility in Tomigusuku City) — has drawn public and administrative investment into research. Second, the adoption of karate as an Olympic sport (contested at the Tokyo 2020 Games) greatly energized scientific research on competitive karate. Third, the fields of budō studies, sport history, theories of the body, and Okinawan studies have begun to produce a continuous stream of doctoral dissertations and peer-reviewed papers on karate. Fourth, the build-out of the internet and of electronic journals — J-STAGE, CiNii Research, and university institutional repositories (all explained in the final section) — has opened up Japanese-language scholarship that was once accessible only to specialists.
Even so, for karate research outside Japan, access to the latest Japanese-language work remains far from easy. The greatest barrier is language; the next is the grasp of cultural context; and beyond these lies the absence of a map — of knowing which papers and which scholars one ought to read. The aim of this guide is to provide that map.
The principles guiding the selection are as follows:
- Academic standard. The guide centers on doctoral dissertations, peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals, leading society journals and university bulletins (kiyō), and monographs from university presses and academic publishers. Trade books are included where they meet a research-level standard, but promotional or mystical writing is excluded.
- Period. The focus is on the Heisei era onward, though where necessary the guide reaches back to important studies of the late Shōwa era (the 1980s).
- Cross-disciplinary scope. Centered on the history and thought of karate, the selection also draws on Okinawan studies, budō studies, sport history, theories of the body, philosophy, sport and health science, the history of combat sports, modern Japanese history, and regional cultural studies — wherever the work is judged useful to karate research.
- Accessibility for overseas researchers. Priority is given to work whose abstracts or full texts are available through J-STAGE, CiNii Research, institutional repositories, Google Scholar, and similar platforms.
Editorial conventions
- Bibliographic data are given in the order Author, Title, journal or series, volume/issue (year), pp., or Author, Title, publisher, first edition year.
- For journal articles, J-STAGE or CiNii Research DOIs / article IDs will be added in the final edition where available.
- An author’s affiliation is given as of the time of publication wherever possible.
- Quotations respect the original orthography, though older character forms and historical kana usage may be modernized.
- Romanized forms of school (ryūha) and personal names follow modified Hepburn.
</aside>
Section 1 — The contemporary reconstruction of karate history and the history of karate thought
The single greatest achievement of twenty-first-century karate history is that the scholarly re-reading of prewar and postwar primary sources, using rigorous methodology, has now begun in earnest. Researchers based at Waseda University, Nippon Sport Science University, the International Budo University, the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts, and the University of the Ryukyus have been at the core of this current.
1. Kadekaru Tōru, Sōzō to tenkai: The Creation and Development of Okinawan Karate — Tracing the Changing Terminology (doctoral dissertation, Waseda University, 2017)
About the author
Kadekaru Tōru (嘉手苅徹) is a historian of the martial arts who earned his Ph.D. in Sport Sciences from the Graduate School of Sport Sciences, Waseda University, in July 2017. His doctoral supervisor was Sogawa Tsuneo. He is at once a practitioner and a scholar: an eighth-dan kyōshi of Okinawa Gōjū-ryū, a standing director of the Okinawa Gōjū-ryū Karatedō Association, a councillor of the Japanese Academy of Budo, and a visiting professor at Okinawa University. His sole-authored book Exploring the “Kata” of Okinawan Karate (Okinawa Times, 2022) is also notable. The dissertation is available in full text through Waseda’s repository.
Overview and structure
This dissertation stands as the first full-scale doctoral study to reconstruct, on the basis of primary sources, the modern history of karate as it spread from Okinawa to mainland Japan and then to the world. It examines, empirically, (1) the institutional situation of tōde (Chinese hand) in late-nineteenth-century Okinawa; (2) its incorporation into school physical education in the 1900s; (3) its transplantation to the mainland in the 1920s; (4) its relationship to the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai (the Greater Japan Martial Virtue Society, the prewar national umbrella body for the martial arts); (5) the 1936 conference that standardized the written name; and (6) continuity and rupture across the wartime and postwar periods.
In particular, the dissertation established as scholarship: the reinterpretation of Itosu Ankō’s “Ten Articles of Tōde” (1908) as a manifesto of the move into school physical education; the reconstruction of the proceedings of the 1936 “Karate Round-Table” (hosted by the Ryukyu Shimpō newspaper, at which prefectural officials, military officers, educators, and karate masters deliberated over the shift in terminology from tōde [Chinese hand] to karate [empty hand]); and an organizational analysis of the prewar university tōde research clubs on the mainland.
Value for overseas researchers
First, this is the highest-level Japanese-language scholarship capable of engaging directly with the English-language history of karate (the work of Patrick McCarthy, Andreas Quast, Mark Bishop, Joe Svinth, Raúl Sánchez García, and others). It is no longer academically tenable to discuss the modern history of karate without reference to it.
Second, the dissertation’s extensive bibliography functions, for overseas researchers, as a comprehensive bibliographic source for Japanese-language karate scholarship.
Third, read alongside Sánchez García’s Eliasian sociology of the martial arts (The Historical Sociology of Japanese Martial Arts, Routledge, 2018), Kadekaru’s arguments can serve as a bridgehead linking Japanese empirical research to Western theoretical work.
How to consult it
The full PDF is openly available through the Waseda University repository (WASEDA Research Portal). A DOI will be added in the final edition.
2. Kadekaru Tōru’s related articles (in Budo Studies, Sport History Research, and elsewhere)
Beyond the dissertation, Kadekaru has published steadily in Budo Studies (the journal of the Japanese Academy of Budo), Sport History Research (the journal of the Japan Society for Sport History), and other venues. The following thematic clusters are especially important:
- the process by which tōde was incorporated into school physical education in Okinawa;
- the historical examination of the change in written name from tōde to karate;
- the organizational history of mainland university tōde research clubs;
- Kanō Jigorō and Okinawan tōde — the institutional background of the demonstrations at the Kōdōkan.
A representative peer-reviewed article is Kadekaru Tōru, “A Study of the Creation of Kata in Modern Karatedō (Tōde): Through the ‘Composition of Kata’ in the Writings of Funakoshi Gichin” (Budo Studies, vol. 49, no. 2, 2016, pp. 121–136). Many of these can be read in open access via J-STAGE. Through them, overseas researchers can reinforce the more specialized topics that the dissertation could not fully treat.
3. Kusahara Katsuhide, Karatedō as Martial Culture: Considering the Tradition of Martial Arts and Bushidō and Their Transformation into Sport (Fuyō Shobō Shuppan, 2019), and others
About the author
Kusahara Katsuhide (草原克豪, b. 1941, Hokkaidō) is a former Ministry of Education official. After graduating from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo, he entered the Ministry of Education, serving at UNESCO headquarters and later as a deputy director-general in the Minister’s Secretariat (higher education) and as Director-General of the Lifelong Learning Bureau. From 1997 to 2009 he was a vice-president of Takushoku University and president of Takushoku University Hokkaido Junior College; he is now professor emeritus at Takushoku University. Since 2015 he has served as president of the Japan Karate Association (JKA). He is a rare author who combines the perspective of a practicing karateka with experience in educational administration and university management.
Overview and structure
The book gives a continuous historical account — the question of karate’s origins, its development in the Okinawan period, its transplantation to the mainland (especially the lineage of Funakoshi Gichin and the JKA), its postwar globalization, and its recent adoption as an Olympic sport — and resituates karate within the whole of budō, alongside judo, kendo, aikido, and the rest. Pitched between scholarly research and writing for a general readership, it can also serve overseas readers as an introduction.
Value for overseas researchers
First, Kusahara’s vantage point as a narrator who understands the lineage of the Takushoku University tōde research club from within makes the book an important testimony to the history of mainland university karate.
Second, his perspective — grounded in hands-on experience of educational administration and international exchange — is useful, both practically and theoretically, for thinking about karate as soft power and about its international expansion.
4. Hokama Tetsuhiro, Chronological History of Karatedō (published by Okinawa Tosho Center, distributed by MT Shuppan, March 2001), and others
About the author
Hokama Tetsuhiro (外間哲弘, b. 1944) is a karate researcher, practitioner, Ryukyuan historian, and calligrapher (art name: Shungan). He holds the rank of tenth-dan hanshi in Okinawan Gōjū-ryū karatedō, is the sōke and headquarters head of the Okinawa Gōjū-ryū Kenshikai, and is director of the Okinawa Prefectural Karate Museum (founded 1987). A student of Higa Seikō and Matayoshi Shinpō, he has pursued patient research into the biographical history and lineages of Okinawan karate alongside his practice of Gōjū-ryū and Ryukyuan kobudō.
Overview and structure
As the title indicates, this is a reference work organized chiefly as a chronology of karate history. It arranges Okinawa’s major masters, dōjō, schools, and events in time order, with cross-references to related literature and figures. Used together with the encyclopedias, it is extremely useful as a starting point for research.
Value for overseas researchers
First, it is a chronology written from the Okinawan vantage point, offering a reference point that relativizes mainland-centered narratives (the Funakoshi-Gichin-centered story).
Second, the chronological format itself makes temporal cross-referencing easy for overseas researchers, and is especially helpful for checking Okinawan dialect terms and the rendering of personal names.
5. Takamiyagi Shigeru, Shinzato Katsuhiko, and Nakamoto Masahiro, Encyclopedia of Okinawan Karate and Kobudō (Kashiwa Shobō, 2008)
About the authors
All three editors are Okinawa-born researchers and practitioners of karate and kobudō. The volume was published as the fruit of many years of collaborative research within Okinawa Prefecture.
Overview and structure
This is the most comprehensive encyclopedia of karate and kobudō currently available in Japanese. It covers entries on people, schools, kata, dōjō, terminology, and literature, with key references appended to each entry.
Value for overseas researchers
First, it is the definitive reference for verifying Okinawan regional vocabulary, personal names, and the relationships among schools. For the Okinawan-dialect terms (names of kata, of techniques, of people) that overseas researchers often find difficult, it provides reliable readings and explanations.
Second, as a work jointly edited by three Okinawan scholars, it offsets mainland-centered narratives; the regional Okinawan perspective runs through its choice of entries and its descriptive approach.
Third, the references at the end of each entry serve as departure points for deeper investigation of a given topic.
Section 2 — The contemporary development of Okinawan studies and Okinawan karate research
Research on Okinawan karate entered a phase of organized, institutional investigation in the Heisei era, led by public bodies such as Okinawa Prefecture, the City of Naha, and the (prefectural) Okinawa Karate Kaikan. These survey reports are scarcely cited in the English-speaking world, yet they are extremely important — both as primary sources and as contemporary research.
6. Survey reports by the Okinawa Prefectural Board of Education and the Prefecture’s Department of Culture, Tourism and Sports
Principal reports
- Okinawa Prefectural Board of Education, ed., Basic Survey Report on Karatedō and Kobudō (March 1994), with a sequel (1997, Shureidō, Okinawa Prefecture Cultural Property Survey Report no. 117)
- Okinawa Prefecture Tourism and Resort Bureau, ed., Report on the Okinawa Karate Exchange Promotion Project (2005)
- Okinawa Prefecture Department of Culture, Tourism and Sports, ed., Report on the Okinawa Karate Field Survey (Reiwa-era issues)
- Okinawa Karate UNESCO Inscription Promotion Council, ed., Survey Report on “Okinawa Karate” as Living Culture (Reiwa years 4–6)
Overview
Beginning with the 1994 basic survey, these reports are the output of a project to institutionally record the oral traditions of a vanishing Okinawan karate — through interviews with dōjō and masters across Okinawa, the excavation of documentary materials, and the collection of photographic and film records. Since 2018 in particular, the academic liaison meetings of the Okinawa Karate UNESCO Inscription Promotion Council have functioned as a venue for collaboration between government and researchers.
Value for overseas researchers
First, the fact that the lineages of Okinawa’s minor schools and local dōjō are systematically recorded is extremely valuable. One can grasp the realities of the smaller lineages (Kobayashi-ryū, Matsubayashi-ryū, Shōrin-ryū, Okinawan offshoots of the Shōtōkan line, Uechi-ryū, and the various branches of Okinawa Gōjū-ryū) that drop out of mainland-centered accounts of the schools.
Second, the interviews preserve the oral history of surviving elderly masters — itself a vanishing primary source.
Third, the reports can be consulted at the Okinawa Prefectural Library and the Okinawa Karate Kaikan, making them essential reading for overseas researchers visiting Okinawa.
7. Publications of the Okinawa Karate Kaikan and the Okinawa Karate Information Center (OKIC)
About the institution
The Okinawa Karate Kaikan (854-1 Aza Tomigusuku, Tomigusuku City, within the former Tomigusuku Castle Park) is a prefectural facility established by Okinawa Prefecture to project “Okinawa, the birthplace of karate” at home and abroad and to preserve, transmit, and develop traditional Okinawan karate and kobudō as a distinctive cultural heritage. It opened on 4 March 2017 (note that it is not a national institution). Within it sits the Okinawa Karate Information Center (OKIC), which serves as a hub for research, outreach, and international exchange.
Principal publications and outputs
- Exhibition materials, survey materials, and various pamphlets produced by the Kaikan and OKIC
- Joint publications with the Prefecture, the Okinawa Traditional Karatedō Promotion Association, and the Okinawa Karate UNESCO Inscription Promotion Council
- Records of the International Okinawa Karate Tournament, the Okinawa Karate World Tournament, and similar events
Value for overseas researchers
First, the Kaikan is a public hub jointly promoted by the Prefecture and the four bodies of the Okinawan karate world (the Okinawa Traditional Karatedō Promotion Association); its publications and exhibitions reflect the current state of the art in Okinawan karate research.
Second, OKIC disseminates in both Japanese and English, making access comparatively easy for overseas researchers.
Third, its in-house archive and reading rooms are an essential reference point for overseas researchers visiting Okinawa.
8. Individual Okinawan-karate studies by Nakamoto Masahiro, Shinzato Katsuhiko, Higaonna Morio, and others
The practitioner-scholars of Okinawan karate, including the editors of the encyclopedia above, have each published their own monographs and articles — for example:
- Gōjū-ryū studies and instructional manuals by Higaonna Morio (founder of the International Okinawan Gōjū-ryū Karate-dō Federation, IOGKF);
- Nakamoto Masahiro’s lineage research on Matsubayashi-ryū and Kobayashi-ryū;
- Shinzato Katsuhiko’s essays on the postwar history of Okinawan karate.
These belong to the lineage of postwar Okinawan self-narration — which includes Nagamine Shōshin’s Okinawan Karatedō: Preserving Historical Fact and Tradition (1975), cited in Part 1 (the classical guide) — and provide an important reference point for relativizing mainland-centered histories of karate.
Section 3 — Locating karate within budō studies and the history of budō
Karate research gains scholarly depth only when it is set within the broader context of budō studies and the history of the martial arts. Since the Heisei era, led by the Japanese Academy of Budo, research on the history, thought, education, and social position of the martial arts as a whole has greatly advanced.
9. Kasao Kyōji, A Grand Survey of the History of Chinese Martial Arts (Fukushōdō, 1994; revised and enlarged edition, Kokusho Kankōkai, 2019)
About the author
Kasao Kyōji (笠尾恭二) is a researcher and practitioner of martial-arts history — a rare scholar who takes both Chinese martial arts and Japanese budō as his subject. He is also the author of The Secret Essence of Swordsmanship and Saber Arts — A Dialogue (Fukushōdō), among others.
Overview and structure
A Grand Survey of the History of Chinese Martial Arts (July 1994, Fukushōdō, 702 pp.) is the most systematic general history of Chinese martial arts written in Japanese. It covers the Shaolin lineages, the Wudang lineages, the internal-family styles (neijia), the southern fist styles, the northern schools, modern martial arts (the Republican period), and the postwar transformation of Chinese martial arts into sport. Long out of print, it became more accessible in 2019, when Kokusho Kankōkai issued a revised and enlarged edition as A Grand Survey of the History of Chinese Martial Arts, Revised and Enlarged.
Value for overseas researchers
First, it is the most reliable general history from the Chinese-martial-arts side for examining, historically, the thesis of karate’s transmission from China (especially its relationship to the martial arts of Fujian).
Second, Kasao consciously pursues comparison between Chinese martial arts and Japanese budō, offering karate research a methodological model for comparative martial-arts history.
10. The studies in the intellectual history of budō by Uozumi Takashi
About the author
Uozumi Takashi (魚住孝至, b. 1953) graduated from the Department of Ethics, Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo, and completed the doctoral coursework (withdrawing after fulfilling the credit requirements) at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Humanities; he holds a doctorate in literature. After serving as a professor at the International Budo University, he is now a specially appointed professor at the Open University of Japan. He is known as an authority on Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings (Gorin no sho).
Principal works
- The Definitive Book of Five Rings (Shin-Jinbutsu-Ōraisha, 2005)
- Miyamoto Musashi: The Way of a Japanese (Pelican-sha, 2002)
- Miyamoto Musashi: Living the “Way of Strategy” (Iwanami Shinsho, 2008)
- Budō (“Traditional Japanese Culture” series, vol. 6, Yamakawa Shuppansha)
- Mastering the Way: A History of the Japanese Heart/Mind (Open University of Japan Education Promotion Association)
- NHK “100 Pun de Meicho” Books: Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings (NHK Publishing)
Overview and structure
Uozumi’s writings take as their theme the philosophical and intellectual-historical examination of the very concept of “budō.” Using individual disciplines — swordsmanship, jūjutsu, archery, karate — as material, they bring to light the intellectual history of the “Way” (dō) that runs through them all.
Value for overseas researchers
First, they provide an intellectual-historical framework for situating karate within the category of “budō.” They are also useful for a critical re-examination of Donn F. Draeger’s three-stage model (bujutsu / budō / modern budō).
Second, Uozumi’s research on Musashi’s Book of Five Rings is essential reading when considering the relationship between karate thought and early-modern Japanese treatises on the martial arts.
11. Nakajima Tetsuya, The Discourse on Budō in Modern Japan: The Birth of the “Sportification of Budō” Problem (Kokusho Kankōkai, 2017)
About the author
Nakajima Tetsuya (中嶋哲也, b. 1983) is a researcher in the modern history of Japanese budō and in sport history. After serving as an assistant professor at Waseda University’s Faculty of Sport Sciences, he now pursues his research at the College of Education, Ibaraki University.
Overview and structure
This book (608 pp. plus xi pp. in roman numerals; ISBN 9784336061584) reconstructs, from the standpoint of modern history, the persistent controversy in modern Japanese budō over the “sportification of budō.” It traces the Meiji-era emergence of the idea of moving from “technique” (jutsu) to “Way” (dō), the Taishō-era appearance of the discourse of “sportification,” and even the “discovery” of the classical martial arts. Centering on judo, it depicts empirically how budō came to be positioned as a bearer of the “Japanese spirit,” and how it experienced both resistance and adaptation to becoming a competitive sport.
Value for overseas researchers
First, it provides a framework for modern Japanese budō as a whole that is needed to understand the sportification of karate (especially the tension between the WKF system and the Kyokushin lineage, and the controversy surrounding the 2020 Olympic adoption).
Second, it is contemporary Japanese-side research that can engage directly with the English-translated judo history of Inoue Shun (in Brownell and Vlastos, eds., Mirror of Modernity) and with the sociology of budō by Andreas Niehaus, Maxime Polleri, Alexander Bennett, and others.
12. Nagaki Kōsuke, The Inheritance and Transformation of Kanō’s Judo Thought (Kazama Shobō, 2008)
About the author
Nagaki Kōsuke (永木耕介, b. 1958) is a researcher in judo history, the intellectual history of budō, and sport pedagogy. He earned a doctorate in physical education from the University of Tsukuba’s Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences; after serving as a graduate professor at the Hyogo University of Teacher Education and as principal of its attached junior high school (2012–2014), he is now a professor in the Faculty of Sports and Health Studies at Hosei University.
Overview and structure
The book traces, empirically, how Kanō Jigorō’s judo thought — seiryoku zen’yō (maximum efficient use of energy) and jita kyōei (mutual welfare and benefit); judo as budō; judo as education — was inherited and transformed across the prewar, wartime, and postwar periods.
Value for overseas researchers
First, because the transplantation of karate to the mainland is unthinkable without Kanō Jigorō’s institutional support, a deep understanding of Kanō’s thought and organizational strategy is indispensable for karate history as well.
Second, Nagaki’s work offers a methodological model that treats the thought of budō not as mere “beautiful words” but as discursive practice bound up with institutional, organizational, and educational history.
13. Sogawa Tsuneo, Japanese Budō and Eastern Thought (Heibonsha, 2014), and others
About the author
Sogawa Tsuneo (寒川恒夫, b. 1947) is a leading authority on the anthropology of sport and the study of physical culture. He completed the doctoral program at the University of Tsukuba and holds a doctorate in academic studies. After serving as a professor in Waseda University’s Faculty of Sport Sciences, he is now professor emeritus there. He contributed greatly to the growth of the Japan Society of Sport Anthropology and twice received the Japan Society of Physical Education’s Society Prize (1999 and 2016). As noted above, he was also the doctoral supervisor of Kadekaru Tōru.
Overview and structure
The book is an attempt to resituate Japanese budō (kendo, judo, kyūdō, aikido, karate, and so on) in relation to Eastern thought (Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Shinto). Drawing on the methods of sport anthropology, it analyzes the bodily techniques, theories of self-cultivation, and rituals of budō in cultural-anthropological terms.
Value for overseas researchers
First, it explicitly sets out a methodology that treats budō as an object of cultural-anthropological research — Japanese theoretical work that can connect directly with Western sport sociology and anthropology.
Second, it contains chapters that finely analyze the semantic positioning of ki, breathing, and kata in karate within the context of the intellectual history of Eastern thought — an indispensable reference point for research on the bodily techniques of karate.
14. Studies in the history of early-modern and modern martial arts by Irie Kōhei and others
Irie Kōhei (入江康平, b. 1939, Tokushima Prefecture) completed the advanced course in physical education at Tokyo University of Education; after serving as a professor at the University of Tsukuba, he is now professor emeritus there. An adviser to the Japanese Academy of Budo and a kyōshi of kyūdō, he is one of the founders of the study of densho transmission documents (a methodology for reading the oral teachings and written transmissions of the martial arts as historical sources). He edited the ten-volume Compendium of Japanese Budō, the seventeen-volume Collection of Archery Materials, and the ten-volume Collected Martial-Arts Transmission Documents, among others.
For overseas researchers, studying Irie’s densho research provides a methodological model for treating the oral teachings, kata, and transmission documents of karate as historical sources.
15. The Japanese-language works and articles of Alexander Bennett
About the author
Alexander Bennett (b. 1970, Christchurch, New Zealand) is a budō scholar and kendo practitioner. He holds a Ph.D. from Kyoto University (Human and Environmental Studies, 2001) and a Ph.D. from the University of Canterbury (Japanese cultural studies, 2012). After serving as a research assistant at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies and as a lecturer at Teikyo University, he became a professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Kansai University in 2009, and since 2023 has also served as director of the Institute of Budo and Sport Science attached to the International Budo University. He holds seventh-dan kyōshi in kendo, sixth-dan renshi in iaidō, and fifth dan in naginata, among other ranks. He is a director of the Japanese Academy of Budo, vice-president of the International Naginata Federation, and a member of the international committee of the All Japan Kendo Federation, and is known as the publisher of Kendo World, the world’s first English-language kendo magazine.
Principal Japanese-language works and translations
- Translation and commentary on Nitobe Inazō’s Bushido: The Soul of Japan and related volumes
- Numerous English works, including Bushido and the Art of Living (Japan Library, 2017)
- Articles in Budo Studies
Value for overseas researchers
Bennett occupies a rare position across budō research as a whole, including karate, as a translator and mediator who researches Japanese budō in Japanese and communicates it to the English-speaking world. His activities, based at the Nippon Budokan, the International Budo University, and Kansai University, are a treasure trove of methodological and networking resources for overseas researchers.
Bennett’s Japanese-language work mediates between “the view of Japanese budō from outside” and “the discourse internal to Japanese budō,” and is useful material for overseas researchers thinking about how to position themselves within the field of Japanese budō studies.
Section 4 — Approaches from theories of the body, philosophy, and intellectual history
Karate is not merely a system of techniques; it is a cultural practice deeply intertwined with theories of the body, Eastern philosophy, and the intellectual history of modern Japan. This area is often hard for overseas researchers to access, but as a foundation supporting the theoretical depth of karate research, the following deserve mention.
16. Yuasa Yasuo, The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory (Kōdansha Academic Library, 1990), and others
About the author
Yuasa Yasuo (湯浅泰雄, 1925–2005) was a philosopher and scholar of religion. A graduate of the Department of Ethics, Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo, and holder of a doctorate in literature, he studied under Watsuji Tetsurō and developed, across disciplines, modern Japanese philosophy, Jungian psychology, the study of ki, and Eastern theories of the body. After posts at Yamanashi University, Osaka University, and the University of Tsukuba, he became a professor at J. F. Oberlin University and later professor emeritus there.
Overview and structure
The Body is his representative work, a philosophical reconstruction of the Eastern concepts of ki, ascetic practice (shugyō), and the unity of mind and body (shinshin ichinyo). (A first edition titled The Body appeared from Sōbunsha in 1977; the Kōdansha Academic Library edition is a substantially expanded version that grew out of it.) Ki, Ascetic Practice, and the Body (Hirakawa Shuppan, 1986) belongs to the same line.
Value for overseas researchers
First, it provides a theoretical framework for the philosophical analysis of karate’s theory of self-cultivation, the concept of ki, and the bodily nature of kata.
Second, Yuasa’s work exists in English translation (The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, SUNY Press, 1987), making it a bridge by which overseas researchers can connect to Japanese philosophy of the body.
17. Ichikawa Hiroshi, The Body as Spirit (Kōdansha Academic Library, 1992, and others)
About the author
Ichikawa Hiroshi (市川浩, 1931–2002) was a philosopher and theorist of the body, and professor emeritus at Meiji University. He specialized in French philosophy, including Bergson, and developed an original philosophy of the body that fused Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology with Paul Valéry’s notion of the implexe (the “complex” or interwoven body).
Overview and structure
The book is a philosophical attempt to grasp the body not as a merely material or physiological object but as a “signifying body,” a “body as spirit.” (A first edition appeared from Keisō Shobō in 1975; the Kōdansha Academic Library edition was issued in 1992.) It bridges the traditional Japanese arts of the body (the martial arts, the performing arts, dance) and contemporary phenomenology.
Value for overseas researchers
It provides a Japanese philosophical foundation for reading karate’s kata, breathing, and ma-ai (distancing/timing) not only through modern anatomy and physiology but through a phenomenological theory of the body.
18. Uchida Tatsuru, On Self-Cultivation (Kōbunsha Shinsho, 2013) and The Japanese Body (Shinchō Bunko, 2017), and others
About the author
Uchida Tatsuru (内田樹, b. 1950, Tokyo) is a thinker and essayist specializing in contemporary French thought and the study of Levinas, and is also an aikido practitioner (a seventh dan, under Tada Hiroshi). A graduate of the French literature program in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Tokyo, with a master’s degree from Tokyo Metropolitan University, he was a professor at Kobe College until retiring in 2011, where he is now professor emeritus. That same year he opened Gaifūkan, a combined dōjō and private academy in Sumiyoshi, Kobe, where he continues to teach and train as its head.
Overview and structure
On Self-Cultivation discusses “training” (shugyō), “practice” (keiko), and the master-disciple relationship in the martial and performing arts, connecting them to contemporary thought (Barthes, Levinas, Bourdieu). The Japanese Body is a collection of interviews that depicts Japanese physical culture polyphonically through dialogues with practitioners, including karateka and other martial artists.
Value for overseas researchers
First, as an attempt to retell the theory of budō self-cultivation in the language of contemporary thought, it has aspects that are relatively accessible to overseas readers.
Second, Uchida’s theory of the body, grounded in his aikido experience, contains insights that can be applied to the theory of karate technique as well.
19. Kōno Yoshinori’s theory of bodily technique
About the author
Kōno Yoshinori (甲野善紀, b. 1949, Tokyo) is a researcher of classical martial arts and of bodily technique. In 1978 he founded the martial-arts research society Shōseikan, and he developed an original theory and practice of bodily movement organized around the keywords “do not strain, do not undulate, do not store/charge” (i.e., avoiding muscular bracing, wave-like torso motion, and wind-up). From 2007 he also served for three years as a visiting professor at Kobe College. Through his writings he has advanced a fundamental critique of the modern sporting conception of the body and a contemporary reconstruction of classical bodily technique.
Principal works
- Ideas from the Classical Martial Arts (PHP Bunko)
- Starting a Revolution from the Body (co-authored with Tanaka Satoshi, Shinchōsha 2005 / Shinchō Bunko 2007)
- A Spiritual Record of the Sword (Chikuma Shobō); The Discovery of the Classical Martial Arts (a dialogue with Yōrō Takeshi, Kōbunsha Chie no Mori Bunko)
- Numerous dialogue collections on theories of the body with Yōrō Takeshi, Mogi Ken’ichirō, Uchida Tatsuru, and others
Value for overseas researchers
Kōno’s work is important as a Japanese theory of bodily technique for considering efficient transmission of force, the center of gravity, and body manipulation in karate. His arguments can be applied to the interpretive theory of karate technique, and have become one of the theoretical sources of the contemporary movement to restore older Okinawan karate.
Section 5 — Karate research in sport, health, and exercise science
One major current in twenty-first-century karate research is empirical research on karate as a sport, exercise, and health science. Based at Nippon Sport Science University, the International Budo University, the University of Tsukuba, Waseda University’s Faculty of Sport Sciences, Kyushu University, the University of Tokyo’s physical education program, and elsewhere, many peer-reviewed articles are openly available through J-STAGE and similar platforms.
20. Kinesiological and biomechanical studies of competitive karate
Principal research areas
- Kinematic analysis of punching and kicking techniques (studies using high-speed cameras and motion capture)
- Match-tactics analysis (performance analysis of WKF bouts)
- Studies in physical-fitness science and training science
- Reaction-time and perception-action studies
Representative researchers and centers
- Biomechanical research on karate striking and kicking, beginning with Nagata Susumu and Sasaoka Sayuri, “The Biomechanics of Karate Striking Movements” (Bulletin of Physical Education Research, Waseda University, no. 21, 1989)
- Research on the anticipatory ability and brain activity of karate athletes by Sakabe Takamasa (Nippon Sport Science University) and colleagues
- Research on “karate and health” and the “prevention of cognitive decline in older adults” by Toyoshima Takehiro (Reitaku University) and colleagues
- Competition-performance analysis based at the Japan Karatedo Federation and the International Budo University (e.g., Arakawa Masatoshi, “An Analysis of Scoring Techniques and the Movements Leading to Them at the 51st All Japan Karatedo Championships,” 2024)
- The cluster of competition, kata, and technique studies centered on the karate subcommittee of the Japanese Academy of Budo’s Budo Studies
- Engineering studies of competition equipment and protective gear
Value for overseas researchers
First, this body of work is indispensable for grasping Japanese sport-science research trends before and after karate’s Olympic adoption.
Second, because much of it is openly available on J-STAGE, access is comparatively easy for overseas researchers.
Third, it can be directly compared and connected with European karate sport-science research, providing a foothold for international collaboration.
21. Karate research in health promotion, aging, and education
Principal research areas
- Karate practice as a fall-prevention program for older adults
- The educational effects of karate within school physical education (since budō became compulsory)
- Karate as a disability sport (para-karate)
- Effects on mental health and self-esteem
Value for overseas researchers
First, since the 2012 introduction of compulsory budō in junior high schools, research on the educational effects of budō, including karate, has greatly expanded — offering abundant material for the comparative-education study of martial arts as school physical education.
Second, research on budō as a health-promotion program in Japan’s aging society provides empirical data that can connect to Western research on exercise for older adults.
22. Sports-medicine research on karate — injury, concussion, and conditioning
Principal research areas
- The epidemiology of injury in competitive karate
- Concussion research in full-contact (Kyokushin-line) karate
- Conditioning and nutritional research
- Long-term health effects on competitors
- Surveys of concussion incidence in club (bukatsu) sports (research by the Japan Sport Council’s Japan Institute of Sports Sciences, the University of Tsukuba, and others, showing that — after rugby — judo and karate have high concussion-incidence rates)
Value for overseas researchers
Research on concussion and chronic injury across combat sports has accumulated heavily in the West, centered on boxing and mixed martial arts; for karate, however, the Japanese side has its own body of work. It is an essential reference point when overseas researchers discuss the safety and health effects of karate.
Section 6 — Adjacent fields: Okinawan studies, modern history, and the history of combat sports
Rather than pursuing karate research in isolation, reading it in connection with modern Okinawan history, modern Japanese history, and the history of combat sports makes a richer understanding possible.
23. Takara Kurayoshi, The Age of the Ryukyus: In Search of a Grand Historical Image (Chikuma Shobō, “Chikuma Books” 28, 1980; Chikuma Gakugei Bunko, 2012), and others
About the author
Takara Kurayoshi (高良倉吉, b. 1947, Izena Island, Okinawa) is a foremost scholar of Ryukyuan history. A graduate of Aichi University of Education, he earned a doctorate in literature from Kyushu University (1992). After posts at the Okinawa Prefecture Historical Materials Editorial Office, the Okinawa Prefectural Museum, and as director of the Urasoe City Library, he was a professor in the Faculty of Law and Letters at the University of the Ryukyus from 1995 to 2013, and is now professor emeritus there. He served as vice-governor of Okinawa Prefecture under Governor Nakaima Hirokazu (2013–2014). A member of the Shuri Castle restoration committee, supervisor of the NHK historical drama Ryūkyū no Kaze, and from 2019 chair of the technical review committee for the restoration of Shuri Castle, he received the 35th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (Grand Prize) in 2025.
Overview and structure
This representative work clarifies, empirically, the politics, economy, and external relations of the Ryukyu Kingdom period. (A first edition appeared from Chikuma Shobō as “Chikuma Books 28” in 1980; it became a Chikuma Gakugei Bunko paperback in 2012, 319 pp., ISBN 9784480094438.) Opening from the image of fifteenth-century Ryukyuan envoy ships entering and leaving the port of Malacca, and from the description of “the Ryukyuans of Malacca” in the Portuguese Tomé Pires’s Suma Oriental, it gives a comprehensive picture of the kingdom’s investiture relationship with Ming China, the Ryukyus before and after the Satsuma invasion, and the structure of shizoku (samurai-class) society. His other works include The Structure of the Ryukyu Kingdom (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1987), Problems in the History of the Ryukyu Kingdom (Hirugi-sha, 1989), The Ryukyu Kingdom (Iwanami Shinsho, 1993), and The Ryukyu Kingdom within Asia (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1998).
Value for overseas researchers
It is one of the most reliable contemporary studies for understanding the social structure of the Ryukyu Kingdom period, the matrix from which karate emerged. It updates, with postwar empirical methodology, the lineage of prewar Okinawan studies (Iha Fuyū, Higaonna Kanjun, and others) cited in Part 1.
24. Uezato Takashi, The Maritime Kingdom of Ryukyu: The Reality of One of “Maritime Asia’s” Foremost Trading States (Yōsensha, “History Shinsho y” 026, February 2012; new edition, Border Ink, 2018), and others
About the author
Uezato Takashi (上里隆史) is a researcher of Ryukyuan history and the maritime history of East Asia, and a writer. He completed the doctoral program in the Graduate School of Letters at Waseda University; after serving as director of the Urasoe City Library and director of the Urasoe Castle / Yōdore-kan, he is now active as a writer and as head of the Ryukyu Founding-Dynasty Studio. He works in both popular writing and scholarly articles.
Overview and structure
The book is an attempt to resituate the Ryukyus as a “maritime kingdom” and a “node of East Asian trade.” It depicts, empirically, trade relations with China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Japan, and the formation of shizoku society.
Value for overseas researchers
It offers a perspective that resituates the thesis of karate’s transmission from China within the empirical history of Ryukyu-China trade. It is essential reading for connecting the human exchange with Fujian and Fuzhou (the Thirty-Six Families of Kume, the tribute ships, the investiture envoys) to the history of karate.
25. Masuda Toshinari, Why Didn’t Kimura Masahiko Kill Rikidōzan? (Shinchōsha, September 2011), and other works on the history of combat sports
About the author
Masuda Toshinari (増田俊也, b. 1965, Aichi Prefecture) is a novelist and former newspaper reporter. After Asahigaoka High School he entered Hokkaido University, where he belonged to the judo club and experienced shichitei jūdō (the “seven-imperial-universities” judo that carries on the tradition of kōsen judo). After withdrawing from the university, he worked as a reporter at the Hokkai Times and the Chunichi Shimbun; in 2006 he made his debut as a novelist with Shatoon: The Forest of the Brown Bear. In 2016 he left the Chunichi Shimbun to write full-time. He is currently a visiting professor at Takushoku University and at Nagoya University of the Arts.
Overview and structure
Serialized in Gong Kakutōgi magazine from the January 2008 issue through July 2011, the work was revised and expanded and published as a book by Shinchōsha on 30 September 2011. The following year it won both the 43rd Ōya Sōichi Nonfiction Prize and the 11th Shinchō Documentary Prize. The paperback was split into two volumes and issued by Shinchō Bunko in February 2014. The book is a grand epic spanning the postwar Japanese history of combat sports (judo, professional wrestling, karate, and mixed martial arts). With Kimura Masahiko as its protagonist, it brings into view karate (especially Ōyama Masutatsu and Kyokushin), professional wrestling, and postwar Japanese physical culture as a whole.
Value for overseas researchers
First, although not an academic book, it meets a standard that can serve as a starting point for research, as a work of nonfiction that surveys the primary sources of postwar Japanese combat-sports history.
Second, its perspective — resituating karate (especially the Kyokushin line) within a postwar Japanese combat-sports history continuous with judo, professional wrestling, and MMA — is useful for overseas historians of combat sports.
Third, Masuda’s prose and narrative style, as a contemporary high point of the narrative discourse surrounding Japanese combat sports, can itself become an object of discourse analysis.
26. Postwar Japanese history, occupation history, and research on the resumption of the martial arts
Principal literature areas
- Research on the Occupation-era GHQ ban on the martial arts and the process of its phased lifting
- Organizational-history research on the postwar reorganization of budō bodies (the All Japan Kendo Federation, the All Japan Judo Federation, the various karate bodies)
- Research on the history of karate in postwar Okinawa (the period of U.S. military administration)
Value for overseas researchers
The postwar reconstruction of karate proceeded within the special political environment of the Occupation and the U.S. administration of Okinawa. Without grounding in this political history, one cannot understand the postwar global spread of karate — especially its expansion into the United States by way of the U.S. military presence in Okinawa.
Section 7 — Karate research as overseas expansion, business, and cultural diplomacy
A new current in twenty-first-century karate research is the growing field that analyzes karate as soft power, cultural diplomacy, and business.
27. Research on the martial arts as cultural diplomacy and soft power
Principal research areas
- The place of the martial arts in Japanese cultural diplomacy and “Cool Japan” policy (debates since the 2005 report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ “Consultative Forum on the Promotion of Cultural Diplomacy”; evaluation studies of Japan Foundation programs)
- Empirical research on the spread of the martial arts in ASEAN, the Middle East, Africa, and South America
- Political-sociological research on the process of karate’s Olympic adoption (its selection as an official event at the Tokyo 2020 Games; its non-selection for Los Angeles 2028)
Value for overseas researchers
English-language work applying Joseph Nye’s theory of soft power to Japan’s cultural exports (Iwabuchi Kōichi, Recentering Globalization, Duke UP, 2002; Nissim Kadosh Otmazgin, Regionalizing Culture: The Political Economy of Japanese Popular Culture in Asia, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2013; and others) deals mainly with popular culture (anime, manga, J-pop), but its methods can be applied to the international expansion of the martial arts and karate. As for soft-power research specific to the martial arts, the work of Andreas Niehaus and others on the transnational spread of judo and kendo, and the output of the judo-soft-power research group at KU Leuven (European Transoceanic Encounters and Exchanges), serve as reference points. The Japanese body of research provides primary sources and case studies that can connect directly with these.
28. Research on the organizational theory and governance of sports bodies
Principal research areas
- Governance research on the Japan Karatedo Federation (JKF, founded 1964) and the World Karate Federation (WKF, founded 1990, led by president Antonio Espinós and others)
- Organizational-history research on the school (ryūha) bodies (the four major traditional styles — the Shōtōkan line, the Gōjū-ryū line, the Shitō-ryū line, and the Wadō-ryū line — and, further, the full-contact bodies such as the Kyokushin line, Seidōkai, and others)
- Karate’s Olympic adoption and international governance (the 2014 founding of the parliamentary league for promoting karatedō; the IOC’s passage of “Agenda 2020” in December of that year, which gave host cities the right to propose additional events; and the sequence running from official adoption at the Tokyo 2020 Games to non-selection for Los Angeles 2028)
Value for overseas researchers
These studies are indispensable for understanding the institutional and organizational dimensions of karate. Empirical research is increasing on such questions as why karate, unlike judo, lacks a single international governing body, and why the full-contact bodies — including the Kyokushin line and Seidōkai — have developed in parallel with the WKF system.
Section 8 — Dialogue with contemporary English-language scholarship: a map for comparative research
In reading the latest Japanese research, overseas researchers often face the question of how to connect Japanese-side and English-language scholarship. For reference, this section lists English-language work that lends itself to such dialogue.
- Raúl Sánchez García, The Historical Sociology of Japanese Martial Arts (Routledge, 2018) — engages directly with Kadekaru Tōru’s dissertation.
- Andreas Quast, Karate 1.0: Parameter of an Ancient Martial Art (2013) — the representative English-language study of Okinawan karate history; can be cross-read with the Japanese-side Okinawan karate research (Takamiyagi and others).
- The translations and research of Patrick McCarthy (IRKRS) — English translations and annotations of prewar texts such as those of Motobu Chōki.
- Mark Bishop, Okinawan Karate: Teachers, Styles and Secret Techniques (1989/1999) — a reference for English-speaking readers on the various Okinawan schools.
- The English works of Alexander Bennett (e.g., Japan: The Ultimate Samurai Guide) — on the martial arts generally.
- Andreas Niehaus (professor of Japanese studies at Ghent University, president of the European Association for Japanese Studies, and a researcher of Kanō Jigorō and judo history) and Christian Tagsold (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, a researcher of Japanese sport and nationalism; co-editor with Niehaus of Sport, Memory, and Nationhood in Japan: Remembering the Glory Days, Routledge, 2012), among other European researchers in the sociology of the martial arts and sport — can engage with Nakajima Tetsuya, Sogawa Tsuneo, and others.
- The historical research of Joe Svinth (EJMAS, Journal of Combative Sport, and elsewhere) — on the trans-Pacific history of the martial arts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
- The classics of Donn F. Draeger (Classical Bujutsu / Classical Budo / Modern Bujutsu and Budo, Weatherhill, 1973–74) — can engage critically with Uozumi Takashi and others on the conceptual history of “budō.”
By reading bidirectionally between the Japanese-side research listed in this guide and these English-language works, overseas researchers can form an international horizon for karate research.
Conclusion — A research space that keeps updating “the latest”
The roughly thirty bodies of literature gathered here survey the important research on karate, the martial arts, and related fields in Japan since the Heisei era. In closing, a few words to overseas researchers on how to use this guide and what to keep in mind.
First, this is not a finished list but a map meant to be updated. Karate research is an ongoing field; new dissertations, peer-reviewed articles, and survey reports appear every year.
Second, systematically learning how to access the literature yields the greatest return. By acquiring facility with CiNii Research (cir.nii.ac.jp), J-STAGE (jstage.jst.go.jp), Google Scholar, and the various university institutional repositories, you can track the articles of the scholars named here comprehensively, on your own. The journals of the Japanese Academy of Budo, the Japan Society for Sport History, the Japan Society of Sport Anthropology, and the Japan Society of Sport Sociology all carry many open-access articles.
Third, reading Japanese-side research is not only a way to “reinforce” the work of overseas researchers. Rather, through dialogue with Japanese-side research, overseas researchers gain an opportunity to re-examine the premises, methods, and problem-consciousness of their own work. Karate, as an object, remains incompletely understood — from both the Japanese and the overseas side. Only through dialogue between the two can karate research mature as an academic field.
It is the hope of this guide (the “recent research” installment) and of Part 1 (the “classical” installment) that, together, they may serve overseas karate researchers as a chart of the Japanese-language literature.
Key platforms and databases
- CiNii Research (cir.nii.ac.jp): comprehensive search of Japanese scholarly articles and books.
- J-STAGE (jstage.jst.go.jp): open access to major society journals, including Budo Studies (Japanese Academy of Budo), Sport History Research (Japan Society for Sport History), and Japan Journal of Physical Education (Japan Society of Physical Education).
- National Diet Library Digital Collections (dl.ndl.go.jp): viewing of prewar, wartime, and early-postwar printed books.
- Okinawa Prefectural Library / Okinawa Karate Kaikan archive: on-site reference for materials on Okinawan karate.
- Institutional repositories of Waseda University, the International Budo University, Nippon Sport Science University, and the University of Tsukuba: viewing of dissertations and bulletin articles.
- Google Scholar: tracking international citation networks.
A note on Japanese academic platforms. J-STAGE is Japan’s national platform for electronic scholarly journals; CiNii Research is the national bibliographic and article database operated by the National Institute of Informatics; and the National Diet Library (NDL) Digital Collections provide digitized historical books. Together with university repositories, these are the principal routes by which the Japanese-language works named above can be located and, in many cases, read in full.