The history of Karate is a long and meandering path of development, across seas from Japan and Okinawa, through the heart of long-ago China and over the mountains into ancient India.
For many karateka training in a traditional, style, there is a certain satisfaction in making a connection to the past through training as their predecessors trained (or close to it) and, by observing tradition, carrying on values and practices still considered useful and important. But what is traditional? Through the ages, martial arrs undergo many changes: they adapt to new circumstances, they branch-off and are altered, they are lead by new people. Others die with their inheritors. In the end, what we have may be likened to the message in a game of Chinese whispers; altered from its origins by so many people that any obvious links to its beginnings may be hard to find.
The many stories that make up karate’s history have not escaped the Chinese-whisper syndrome. Modern karate’s origins have been the subject of research and debate for so long that the history of karare now has its own history! This is partly because unearthing karate’s earliest predecessors...