Hagakure Karate Club

Some of the earliest origins of karate have been traced to the island of Okinawa in the Ryukyu Island chain. It is thought that a native style of self-defence developed here called 'te', or hand in English.

Okinawa is close to the coasts of Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea thus there has been extensive influence from a number of Asian cultures in the subsequent history of this island.

It is believed that karate is an amalgamation of te with some prominent Chinese martial arts, such as Shaolin Temple Monk fist boxing. In early years, karate was translated as "Chinese hand) (kara = China/Chinese; te = hand).

In the early 17th Century, Okinawa was invaded by the Satsuma clan of Japan. Within weeks the island was under direct rule of the Japanese and it was the feudal lords who conquered Okinawa who prohibited any of the islanders from carrying weapons.

The Chinese link with Okinawa was kept in place and two military attaches 'Kushanku' and 'Chinto' were allowed to remain on the island.

Both were experts in in the martial arts and along with many others started to teach the Okinawans Ch'uan-fa ('Chinese fistway'), a form of Chinese combat, in secret.

During this time both the art of the hand, as well as weapon arts , or kobudo, were developing, with the nobility studying mostly te, and the peasant classes developing weapon systems based upon the use of familiar and available tools such as rice flails (nunchaku), mill grindstone handles (tonfa), sickles (kama) and other implements.

SHOTOKAN

Born in 1868, Gichen Funakoshi is regarded as the father of modern karate.

It was at the age of 11 when Funakoshi was introduced to Azato and Itosu, two great masters of the time.

1917 and Funakoshi made an exploratory trip to Japan. His hope was to establish karate on the Japanese mainland. He have a demonstration of Karate-Jutsu to government officials from the upper classes. This meant that all the spectators were descendants of Samurai and unfortunately karate was seen to be nothing more than a set of exercises for street fighting without weapons.

During 1921 the Crown Prince, Hirohito, toured Okinawa and witnessed a demonstration of karate-jutsu. The demonstration impressed him and he included the event in his formal report to the Japanese government.

The Minister of Education decided to invite an Okinawan expert to Japan and due to his Japanese being very good, he was also a primary school teacher and came from a family with a good background, which was essential if he was to gain any credibility, Funakoshi was selected.

This time his visit to Japan, in 1922, was to be different as this time the display was open to the general public at the first sports festival held in Tokyo. Funakoshi and Karate-jutsu were an immediate success and quickly became popular among the young Japanese, especially university students who gave this art a larger following in Japan than in Okinawa.

Funakoshi was quick to strike up a friendship with Jigoro Kano, the founder of modern day Judo, and adopted and copied Kano's uniform (gi) and his system of awarding black belts (Dan) to his senior students after a formal assessment.

Gichin Funakoshi died in 1957 at the age of 89. He however made what appears to be one of the most important changes to Karate-Jutsu in 1933 when he changed the concept of 'kara' which was originally written with a Chinese character meaning 'China Hand' by substituting another character, also pronounced 'kara' but meaning 'void' or 'empty'. However it was two years later before he discarded the word jutsu in favour of 'do' and karate-do 'empty hand way' was born in Japan.