Question - Karate?

[Flying Crane]

True, had forgot about this, but it did remind me that In the early 70s it was “Kung Fu” thank you David Carradine and his show Kung Fu

Which, by the way, Kung Fu us stI’ll miss used, first it means hard work, not martial arts and the way it is used these days, it is not A specific style but a container of all Chinese martial arts

Another weird thing I see is when people name taiji and wing Chun as specific things, and then list kung fu as a separate specific thing. As in: “our school teaches taiji, wing Chun, and kung fu”.

Wing Chun and taiji are both forms of what we in the West call “kung fu” (and yes, I do understand the mistranslation of that term, it should really be “traditional wushu” but I don’t want to confuse people even more than they are).

There, I said it, now everybody is informed and educated. No more excuses.

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

If anybody gets that joke I'll be super impressed.

isn’t his name Chow Yun Fat? Maybe that’s why. Yow Chun fat is something else.

 

[Tman]

I once asked the owner of the Tae Kwon Do school I train at, why he had a Karate sign on the street. He told me because it used as a generic term for martial arts. I suspect that it may be economic too, "Karate" is six letters so a cheaper sign to have made then one with nine letters (eleven if you count the spaces).

 

[isshinryuronin]

I once asked the owner of the Tae Kwon Do school I train at, why he had a Karate sign on the street

I have what some may think is a dumb question to pose: Why isn't TKD karate? Is it not just Korean karate? There is Okinawan and Japanese karate, each with their own styles - but still karate. So often, TKD is referred to as a separate art, apart from karate, not just by the general public, but by its practitioners as well.

IMO, there is no more difference between TKD and Japanese karate (especially Shotokan from which it sprang) than between Japanese and Okinawan karate. Aside from giving it its own identity (both for nationalistic and commercial reasons) what makes TKD unique enough to be considered not karate?

 

[Tman]

I have no definitive answer to your question, but I suspect it is rooted the nationalism and how the Koreans were treated by the Japanese through history.

 

[MetalBoar]

I have what some may think is a dumb question to pose: Why isn't TKD karate? Is it not just Korean karate? There is Okinawan and Japanese karate, each with their own styles - but still karate. So often, TKD is referred to as a separate art, apart from karate, not just by the general public, but by its practitioners as well.

IMO, there is no more difference between TKD and Japanese karate (especially Shotokan from which it sprang) than between Japanese and Okinawan karate. Aside from giving it its own identity (both for nationalistic and commercial reasons) what makes TKD unique enough to be considered not karate?

While this may be mostly true, there there are a lot of Koreans who still have extremely hard feelings about the Japanese forced mobilization of Korean citizens, the Japanese use of Korean "comfort women", etc. during WWII. So, yeah, nationalism is a large part of it, but not necessarily in the way you might think. I don't want to go into this any farther as I don't want to potentially misrepresent the conversations I've had with my Korean friends, nor violate terms of service about political discussion. Let's just leave it with my assurance that anytime you talk about Japan's impact on any aspect of Korean culture it's not as simple as it might seem.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Just as a note

In Korean

Taekwondo - 태권도 - taegwondo

Karate - 카라테 - kalate

 

[Dirty Dog]

I have what some may think is a dumb question to pose: Why isn't TKD karate? Is it not just Korean karate? There is Okinawan and Japanese karate, each with their own styles - but still karate. So often, TKD is referred to as a separate art, apart from karate, not just by the general public, but by its practitioners as well.

It's not Karate because Karate is a Japanese word. Japanese people use Japanese words. Taekwondo is Korean. Korean people use Korean words. Karate-do literally means 'the way of the empty hand' and Taekwondo literally means 'the way of kicking and punching'. So essentially synonymous.
Tang Soo Do, which is what most of the earliest Koreans schools called their styles, is nothing more than the Korean pronunciation of the characters that the Japanese pronounce Karatedo.
This question is like asking why the French don't call cheese cheese.

 

[Xue Sheng]

It's not Karate because Karate is a Japanese word. Japanese people use Japanese words. Taekwondo is Korean. Korean people use Korean words. Karate-do literally means 'the way of the empty hand' and Taekwondo literally means 'the way of kicking and punching'. So essentially synonymous.
Tang Soo Do, which is what most of the earliest Koreans schools called their styles, is nothing more than the Korean pronunciation of the characters that the Japanese pronounce Karatedo.
This question is like asking why the French don't call cheese cheese.

But the French don't call cheese cheese, they call it fromage

 

[isshinryuronin]

I have no definitive answer to your question, but I suspect it is rooted the nationalism and how the Koreans were treated by the Japanese through history.

It's not Karate because Karate is a Japanese word. Japanese people use Japanese words. Taekwondo is Korean.

These are both valid, logical, reasons why the word "karate" is not used in Korea. The same is also true why the Okinawans resisted using the Japanese word "karate" as well, mostly using their original native word for it, toude (Chinese hands), up to the 1930's and even later. The original Japanese kanji for karate meant Chinese (Tang) hands as well, changing it to "empty hands" only prior to invading China a few years before WWII.

But aside from the terminology, the main point I was trying to make is that aside from what word is used for Korean karate, people's concept of it was/is that it is a separate art from karate. But just changing the name doesn't mean it's really any different. "A rose is a rose by any other name..."

 

[Flying Crane]

Here in the United States where we speak a form of English, we call it by its Japanese term, karate.

 

[KenpoMaster805]

Tkd is not karate because they dont used hands and feet they only used feet

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Tkd is not karate because they dont used hands and feet they only used feet

I don't think there's any tkd school that does not teach how to use hands.

 

[Dirty Dog]

Tkd is not karate because they dont used hands and feet they only used feet

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
Show us ONE example of a TKD school that only kicks. Please.

 

[donald1]

My memory's better than I thought.

Yours is all the way at the end.

View attachment 28526

Took me longer than it should have to get that joke. Chinese slow karate looked suspiciously like tai chi, but maybe it's a legit style and then I looked,at Korean foot karate and Brazilian ground karate like, wait a second! Ooooohhh.

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Seeing different schools with karate signs is a bit of a head scratcher and kinda misleading. I like Goju Ryu karate so if I went to a school believing there to be karate, but no such stuff there? I'd be a bit disappointed.

 

[J. Pickard]

It's marketing. Nobody outside of the martial arts community knows that there is a difference, to the laymen all martial arts are "karate". To put it into perspective, I run a school that teaching a fusion of Grappling, Tang Soo Do, and Taekwondo. I wasted money advertising as "Taekwondo" thinking enough people know what Taekwondo is and I can just explain the TSD and Grappling part once they get in the door. I changed my add from promoting "Taekwondo" to promoting "Korean Karate" and my leads went from one every few months to 10+ per week. It's a great way to get people into martial arts that have never experienced it.

 

[J. Pickard]

I have what some may think is a dumb question to pose: Why isn't TKD karate? Is it not just Korean karate? There is Okinawan and Japanese karate, each with their own styles - but still karate. So often, TKD is referred to as a separate art, apart from karate, not just by the general public, but by its practitioners as well.

IMO, there is no more difference between TKD and Japanese karate (especially Shotokan from which it sprang) than between Japanese and Okinawan karate. Aside from giving it its own identity (both for nationalistic and commercial reasons) what makes TKD unique enough to be considered not karate?

Oh man. This question. This question right here. The honest answer; bad blood between Korea and Japan during the unification period. The canned common (bs) answer that falls apart under any form of scrutiny; Koreans re-discovered previously "lost" native martial arts systems and incorporated them into their training essentially replacing Tang Soo Do/Kong Soo Do with "revived" native Korean arts.

I say this is mostly BS because the Muye Dobo Tongi is listed as the only source for several masters (I believe Won Kuk Lee and Hwang Kee both claimed this) that claimed to have revived the "lost" Korean art of kwonbup. The Muye Dobo Tongi barely gives kwonbup a passing mention (22 pages in english) and is definitely not comprehensive enough to claim to have revived an entire art from it. What it does say about it makes it seem like it's just a Korean modified version of Shaolin boxing. most of the pages are full of terrible drawings that don't explain much. It basically says in the first sentence that Kwonbup is only useful for beginners so the authors weren't going to spend a lot of time on it. And fun fact, the Muye Dobo Tongi was compiled in 1789 (13 years after the earliest text on Taekkeyon) and is supposed to be the authoritative classical text on Korean martial arts that existed in Korea at that time and Taekkyon is not mentioned anywhere. King Jeongjo ordered the Muye Dobo Tongi be compiled to create a list of all korean martial arts but, even though he wrote about Taekkyeon just a decade earlier in the Jaemulbo, it isn't mentioned anywhere in the MDT. This means either Taekkyeon was not considered a martial art at this time and was just a game (as documented in the Jaemulbo), or it wasn't effective enough to be included. So the whole story of Taekwondo being the modern revitalization of the "deadly art" of Taekkyeon or Kwonbup doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Pics from the English version of MDT for reference