Scope of this chapter. The question “What is karate?” is intellectually interesting precisely because no single answer can be settled upon — the question itself is a historical-philosophical phenomenon. This serial essay is not written to answer the question, but to dissect the structure that makes the answer split apart again and again.
1. Posing the Question
“What is karate?”
On the face of it, this looks like a question a child could answer. Karate is a martial art. It is a Japanese budo (武道, traditional martial way). It is something that started in Okinawa. It is what children practice as an after-school activity at the local community center. It is what the hero shouts as he strikes in a film. It is the discipline that was once adopted, in 2020 (held in 2021), as an Olympic event.
Yet the moment we direct this question at actual karate practitioners, the answers diverge unmistakably. In one dojo (道場, training hall) we hear, “karate is a culture of courtesy.” In another we hear, “karate is an unarmed combat technique for taking a person down.” An official of a sports federation will say, “karate is a competitive sport with a globally unified rule set,” while an old master of a traditional school will say, “karate is a do (道, way) through which one polishes the self by means of kata (型, form).”
Given how simple the question is, the multiplicity of answers is uncannily large. This chapter begins by anatomizing where this strangeness comes from.
2. Three Layers Where the Answers Split
The divergence happens at three layers.
📘Glossary: “layer.” A “layer” here means the level at which an argument is being conducted. Even when people use the same word, if they are speaking on different layers their statements never meet.
2.1 The Layer of Words (the Layer of Signs)
Karate, 空手, 唐手, 空手道, KARATE. In Japanese script alone there are four notations; adding the romanization, five different signs are taken to point at the same thing. But do they really refer to the same thing?
The corporeal technique called 手 (te / tī) — simply “the hand,” the indigenous unarmed technique of Okinawa — in the islands from the early modern period (近世, roughly the Edo era, 17th–19th c.) into the early Meiji years, or 唐手 (tōde / tū-dī, lit. “Tang hand”) when one wished to signal a relationship with Chinese martial arts (the character 唐 refers to Tang-dynasty China and, by extension, to Chinese culture in general); the 空手 (karate) that was introduced to mainland Japan from the 1920s onward — most famously by Funakoshi Gichin (船越義珍, 1868–1957), who presented the art in Tokyo in 1922 — and spread as an extracurricular activity at universities (Keio established its club in 1924, Waseda in 1933, and so on); the 空手 that was institutionalized as a competitive sport after the Second World War under multiple rule systems — sundome (寸止め, lit. “stopping one sun (≈ 3 cm) short,” strikes pulled before contact; the mainstream traditional-style competition, organized nationally from 1964 by the Japan Karatedo Federation, JKF) and full-contact karate (e.g. Kyokushin (極真), founded 1964 by Ōyama Masutatsu, in which blows are landed with force on the body, head strikes typically being restricted); and the KARATE that was contested as an additional event at the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021 under the sundome-based rules of the WKF (World Karate Federation, 世界空手連盟) — are these merely different transcriptions of the same word, or are they distinct practices?
2.2 The Layer of Practice (the Layer of Corporeal Technique)
Next is the layer of practice. Even under the single name “karate,” the actual use of the body varies dramatically by school. Stances, the way one punches and kicks, the timing and etiquette of kumite (組手, sparring), whether kata are practiced, whether weapons are used, whether contact is sundome (寸止め, controlled / point-stop) or full-contact (as in Kyokushin-style karate), whether protective gear is worn — these differences exceed mere “rule variations” and produce different conceptions of the body itself.
2.3 The Layer of Institutions (the Layer of Social Recognition)
Finally, the layer of institutions. What gets called “karate” is, in the end, a question of social recognition. When an organization declares, “this is karate,” and a government or international body recognizes it, then it is karate.
What matters here is that these three layers move independently. The sign “karate” may be the same while the practice is different, and institutionally a different boundary is drawn again. Conversations get crossed because speakers often fail to realize which layer they are speaking from.
3. “Karate” as a Collection of Answers
The working hypothesis adopted by this chapter is the following. “Karate” is not the name of a particular entity; it is a historical sediment of practices and discourses that have gathered under that name. Put differently: “karate” exists because the name “karate” exists; it is not the case that something that already existed before the name “karate” was later given the name “karate.”
This perspective resonates with the “Japanese food” analogy taken up in a later chapter. Sushi, ramen, tonkatsu, kare-raisu (curry rice) — all are called “Japanese food,” despite originating in completely different periods and lineages. That is because “Japanese food” is itself merely a concept that was bundled retrospectively. Karate, in all likelihood, is a similarly retrospective bundling.
4. We May Be Able to Speak in the Negative
If one cannot uniquely affirm “karate is X,” there is a route in approaching it negatively.
- Karate is not dance. Even if a kata sequence resembles a dance, its teleological structure is different.
- Karate is not Chinese martial arts in their entirety. Even granting that influence from southern Chinese martial arts (particularly from Fujian Province, 福建省, whose styles are widely thought to underlie the Naha-te (那覇手) lineage of Okinawan karate) is recognized at the headwaters of Okinawan martial culture, the body of practice that resulted, after centuries of transformation, has formed a system distinct from Chinese martial arts.
- Karate is not judo. Its center of gravity, weighted on grappling in judo, is placed differently.
- Karate is not a single school.
But the negative route too has its limits. A heap of negations causes the contour of the object to flicker into half-visibility, but it does not define the object itself. Even after piling up “not X” indefinitely, what remains in the end is only the blank: “something that is not X.”
5. The Method of This Series
This series does not try to fill that blank. Instead, while presenting the blank as a blank, it attempts to delineate, as precisely as possible, the histories, discourses and institutions that have piled up around it.
Methodologically, we draw on four approaches in combination.
| Method | Role |
|---|---|
| Conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) | To trace when, by whom, and in what sense words such as karate, budo (武道, the “way” of martial arts as a path of self-cultivation), bujutsu (武術, martial techniques as such, with less emphasis on the ethical/spiritual dimension), and kakutogi (格闘技, combat sports) have been used |
| Historical sociology | To analyze from which social strata karate’s carriers emerged, and through which institutions they spread |
| Philology | To treat karateka (空手家, karate practitioners)’ own writings, karate magazines, instruction manuals, and academic papers as primary sources |
| Cultural studies | To read how “karate” has been represented in films, manga, anime, and novels |
6. In Closing: Changing the Shape of the Question
Let me state one conclusion. This series will not give a final answer to the question “What is karate?” Rather, it tries to change the very shape of the question.
Not “What is karate?” but: “What, when, by whom, and why has it been called ‘karate’?” Once the question is rephrased this way, “karate” finally becomes a describable object. Karate as a substance may not be locatable. But karate as a phenomenon can be described in considerable detail.
This series is an attempt at that description.
📝For readers new to karate. The image you bring to the word “karate” — perhaps a point-stop tournament match (i.e. sundome-style competition), a full-contact bout (as in Kyokushin), a kata performance (a choreographed solo sequence performed against imaginary opponents), or a “karate chop” (an English colloquialism for the open-hand strike shutō / 手刀) from an old TV drama — is likely to vary entirely from person to person. All of these are called “karate,” yet their rules, purposes, and historical trajectories differ. This series slowly unbraids how the situation of “different things, sharing the same name” came into being.
Principal References
- Kadekaru, Toru (2017) Okinawa Karate no Sozo to Tenkai: Kosho no Hensen wo Tegakari ni shite (沖縄空手の創造と展開：呼称の変遷を手がかりにして, “The Creation and Development of Okinawan Karate: Through the Lens of Changing Nomenclature”). Doctoral dissertation, Waseda University.
- Kinjo, Hiroshi (2011) Tode kara Karate e (唐手から空手へ, “From Tode to Karate”). Tokyo: Nippon Budokan.
- Todo, Yoshiaki (2007) Judo no Rekishi to Bunka (柔道の歴史と文化, “The History and Culture of Judo”). Tokyo: Fumaido Shuppan.
- Bourdieu, P. (1979) La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement. Éditions de Minuit.
- Hobsbawm, E. & Ranger, T. (eds.) (1983) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press.
- Brunner, O., Conze, W. & Koselleck, R. (Hg.) (1972–1997) Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. Klett-Cotta.