I’d like for us to begin a segment where we discuss the true history of a particular Martial Art until the facts are separated from the BS.
So let’s start with Karate. What is the actual history of the art? What are some of the BS myths told about it? Who are some of its most influential people?
This thread will be stickied for the duration of March. Please contribute your input.
chojun miyagi was one of the biggest players…
which karate?
Blooming Lotus’ post is in violation of Bullshido rules. But I won’t tell anyone.
I’d recommend the works of Patrick McCarthy for a start.
Ouch. I even went and read the rules and I stiill don’t know what I did. 
…???
Its the “don’t post a link without a comment” rule he is referring to. I think he likes you.
Where should we begin?
-Bodhidharma?That only one man could have the influence alone to bring MA into China
-Shaolin temple being the begining of all things craptacular
-What came first:Was there a Martial art on the Island of Okinawa before the arrival of chinese fisherman braught with them Kung-fu?
-That Karateka may or may not have been sparring in white clothes at the begining of the last century.
-Red gi’s??
There’s just so much.
Things to keep in mind, that most people discussing history of Karate forget, is that Okinawa did have an indigenous fighting system called tode. During the trade with China many of the merchants brought over chuan’fa to the island. What you then had was two seperate systems being taught on the island, Chinese chuan’fa and Okinawan tode. These two systems often had clashes amongst schools, but it was the Japanese invasion of Okinawa that caused leaders of the two schools to start exchanging ideals which eventually lead up to the development of Okinawa-te. So there is a starting point for discussion. Have fun. 
It might be worth bringing out some sources and documentation for this project.
Karate’s never really been an area of much interest for me but one of the better early English language essays on the topic appears in Donn Draeger’s Modern Budo and Bujutsu Volume III: Martial Arts and Ways of Japan Vol 3 with the most recent edition published by Weatherhill in 1996. This thread has me skimming the two essays on Karate in David Lowery’s Traditions: Essays on the Japanese Martial Arts and Ways published by Tuttle in 2002 which seem to have some information to offer for this discussion. McCarthy’s work seem like a good jumping point as well.
Anyone else have any potential sources for this project?
info on the development of karate
karate the way by gichin funakoshi 1935 . this is excellant as it will give you the info from the horses mouth(old saying ) lol its hard to research as a old man in the arts (about 5o years this year)l spent a lot of time researching .there were visits bwtween okinawa and china going back many years. so info who did what and so on is pretty sketchy . remembering a lot of martial artist were illiterate or didnt bother with records. this probably is because they were more interested in saving there skin than worrieing about its history for the most part. you should try to research china arts its even more confusing .
“Karate began to take shape as a martial art in Okinawa, the main island of the Ryukyu Islands. This fighting art was formerly referred to as Chinese Kempo, signifying its roots and place of origin. It was not until early 20th century that it took on the name Karate in Japan.”
Can we all agree that the 2 Kung-fu styles to have the most influence on the developement that would become Okinawa-Te are Praying-Manthis and Kenpo?
history
as l can understand okinawa , it was influenced heavily by hung style as it was taught to okinawansby teachers from the southern part of china which is closest to them . hung basics are the basics of karate. other styles were not open to non chinese. as l remember funikoshi wrote that he changed what he taught to the japanese to go along with there intelect. l have a freind from china who teaches preying mantis from what l have seen its quite different than karate. as to kempo it appears to have arisen mostly in hawai by a mix put to-gether by a a groupe who did varied arts. non l dont belive did preying mantis . my opinion the hung style was the largest contributer to karate and to kempo . however like a lot of places in the world most had fighting arts developed in their area of the world. these may not have been influenced by any outside contact.
Yeh, that’s what I was talkin about. I actually think that’s a weird rule because once you post a link that sorta says it all … why start postin your opinions which probably pretty much are in the link you posted.
Nah, I wasn’t tryin to be catty … just a little sarcastic and witty. I guess I failed.
I thought that the varieties of Shorin Ryu were directly related to the White Crane styles of Kung Fu. I thought there was a lineage cited in the Bubishi.
So it seems.
http://experts.about.com/q/Karate-332/pressure-points-breathing.htm
http://www.aei.ca/~straycat/kungfu/w-crane.html
http://forum.kungfumagazine.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-6974.html
http://www.fwckungfu.com/servlet/baihe/template/Styles.vm
The thing with white crane though is that it comes from the fukien ( or fujian ) southern shaolin temple before Emporor K’ang (-hsu) ordered it’s razing and everyone split either overseas or to the new temple in the nth. If we’re tracing it back though, because of a few factors in the temple at time, the origins of white crane and ng moi ( the creator of that system ) or Fang Chi-Niang ( creator by other accounts) gets a llittle blurry. There all sorts of variations on the story that have her coming from china and others again that have her coming to china from vietnam where as a princess in some of those stories brought with her and adapted some triad family pre-wing chun kung fu.
There’s a few good reads up there though and if it doesn’t confuse the hell out of you it should shed a little light.
cheers
While I’m here, this ones pretty intersting too
Thanks. I’ll be awhile sorting out this stuff again but it’s pretty interesting to me. I first stumbled across the topic of the origins when I discovered that my WTF TKD instructor was flat out lying to me about modern TKD’s origins and began to trace it back for myself.
Since then, I’ve collected some books and other sources such as the one’s you’ve listed. I always end up re-visiting the subject every few years. Thanks alot.
lol… it usually does go something like that but no-one has aaall the answers so you can’t even really be too hard on them. As long as there’s sOomeone around to get ppl on the track then that’s a real nice start and they’re worth having around.
It’s a long story… have fun with it. 
BtL