KARATE
Karate is a Japanese term for the martial art of the
empty hand. It has become the worldwide generic
term for all styles of martial arts that deal with kicking
and punching. Originally, two Chinese characters
were used to depict the martial art of kara hand or the
hand of the Kara Kingdom. The Japanese pronounced
these two characters as karate which means empty
hand.
The kara of kara hand refers to the Kara Province, one
of the old provinces of China that unified all of China
and became known as the Kara Kingdom. During this
time, there was cultural exchange between the
countries of China, Japan, and Korea, including the
spread of their martial arts. The Kara Province martial
art known as the hand of the Kara Kingdom was
widely respected by all the countries.
Most historians agree that karate began in India.
India’s history, folklore, dance, drama, sculptures, and
works of art depict great warriors who fought with
their bare hands. Legend has it that about 1500 years
ago, the Indian Buddhist monk, Bodhidharma, brought
karate into China where he taught Chinese monks at
the Shaolin-ssu Monastery. His students became
famous fighters and spread their fighting techniques
throughout China. The Chinese military gradually
adapted karate techniques to military offensive
purposes and taught them to military groups,
establishing formal training schools for this purpose.
These schools were the driving force behind the Boxer
Rebellion.
Once karate techniques were applied to warfare, other
counties began to adopt them. Each country gave
their version of karate a different flavor by adding
some of their own cultural differences. This accounts
for some of the numerous karate styles now spread
throughout the world.
Karate has historically been a defensive weapon, but
since it could also be used to oppose abusive laws,
many government leaders opposed it, so the practice
of karate many times had to go underground. To
disguise their karate training, karate practitioners
developed techniques to fight imaginary opponents
(precursors to hyungs, katas, patterns, or forms) and adopted them into dance routines.
Chinese warriors took kara hand into 17th-Century
Okinawa where it developed into Okinawa-te
(Okinawa hand) that Master Gichin Funakoshi later
introduced into Japan. Japan only recently changed
kara hand to mean empty hand, or karate. Koreans,
Japanese, and Chinese still recognize both words as
meaning the same thing. Through this continuous
change and with additions from various countries,
modern karate gradually developed into what it is
today.
TAEKWONDO
Taekwondo is a Korean martial art. Taekwondo
means: kick punch way – “tae” means kick or foot,
“kwon” means punch or hand, and “do” means way of.
The term karate has become the generic name for any
of the kicking and punching martial arts. Basically,
the Korean term taekwondo means the same as the
Japanese term karate.
In 1955, the Korean Taekwondo Federation adopted
taekwondo as the official name for the new Korean
martial art. So, the word taekwondo encompasses all
the previous terms for Korean martial arts, such as
subak and taekkyon. However, many Korean martial
art schools still use the olden names such as “tang-
soo-do” (kara hand way), “kong-soo-do” (empty hand
way), or “tae-soo-do” (foot hand way) to describe their
version of Korean martial arts.
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