Hey guys! I thought it would be fun to do a little quiz today.
So here we go...and good luck
1. Karate is a Japanese martial art that uses various punches, kicks and blocks. What does the word karate mean????
2. Which martial arts technique involves different kinds of grappling, locks and holds????
3. The Samurai were a class of ancient martial arts warriors from what country????
4. What is the name of the place where martial arts are taught or practiced????
*I will post the answers in exactly 6 1/2 hours which for me (my time) is 2:30.
Okay… most of the responses have touched on what I would have mentioned (Karate is an Okinawan art that has been transported to Japan, with some later systems being Japanese… er, what? on number 2…. that's not what the samurai really were… and what art are we talking about in the last one?), but there are some answers I wanted to cover in a bit more detail…
Karate means to emanate from the center. The rest I dunno either.
Er… huh? If you're talking metaphorically, and talking about an ideal within some of the systems, okay I guess… but as a translation, no, not at all.
China hand is actually Chuan Fa, or Kempo.
No, it's not. Chuan fa (Chinese pronunciation)/Kenpo (Kempo) (Japanese pronunciation) literally translates as "fist method/law", and is written with the characters 拳法.
1. Karate is a Japanese martial art that uses various punches, kicks and blocks. What does the word karate mean????
Pre-1950's (I think): China hand (Okinawan). Now a days: Empty hand (Japanese) - changed by Gichin Funakoshi to be accepted.
So let's look at the characters for karate…
The common usage characters today are 空手, with a literal translation of "empty hand"; the earlier characters were 唐手. Although that's often translated as "China Hand", it's actually more specifically "Hand from the Tang Dynasty China"… "China" by itself (modern) is 中華 (Chuu-ka), literally meaning "Middle Kingdom".
When it comes to the change in terminology, there was a meeting in Okinawa with the heads of many of the systems extant at the time in 1936, which included Chojun Miyagi and Choki Motobu, but did not include Funakoshi, at which it was established that the common term should change to "Empty Hand". However, it's not that simple either…
In Japan, when the art was first introduced, the characters were "China/Tang Dynasty Hand" (note: in Okinawa, it was the same characters, but pronounced "Tou-dii/Tode", which is an alternate pronunciation for the same written characters, or simply "Tii/Te", meaning "hand")… by 1905, one Okinawan teacher (Chomo Hanashiro) was already using the characters for "Empty Hand", although he was seemingly the only one (for reference, Funakoshi wouldn't travel to Japan for a number of years, with his major introduction in the early 1920's). Funakoshi's own books reflect this, with his 1922 publication (Tode - Ryukyu Kenpo - "China Hand - Okinawan Fist Methods" 唐手 - 琉球拳法) and his 1925 publication (Karate-jutsu - "China Hand Practical Art" 唐手術) both feature the characters, as seen, for "China Hand", albeit with two alternate pronunciations. It wasn't until his 1939 book, Karate-do Kyohan ("Empty Hand Way Instructional" - 空手教範) where the characters changed to "Empty Hand".
Not long after karate was introduced to Japan, there began a habit among instructors to write "karate" with hiragana (Japanese syllabry, like an alphabet, giving a purely phonetic rendering rather than specific words/kanji) - からて. The move to "empty hand" was a little more gradual… and was, in the end, adopted for a number of reasons… one given was that no-one was offended by "empty hand", although some were by "China hand".
