Karate

            The Origin of Karate Do as Martial Art

             Back in the days, martial arts prepared warriors for hand-to-hand combat. Self-protection was paramount. In such a system was little room for art, spiritualism, moral, ethical formalism, and the pursuit of mental and physical perfection. Martial arts were perceived as “arts of war” that were based on the logic of “kill or be killed”.

                Karate Do: A Martial Art?

            Karate Do is also a martial art. But can we say it is an art of war? No. But that has not always been the case. Until the 1980´s, training focused on toughness. Masters during that time were less aesthetic, less athletic, less explosive than they are today. On the other hand, they were very strong and trained like that.

The stories about that period are numerous. My father (VII Dan, class ’53) told me:

“The training sessions in the 70´s were characterized by strong physical training. The conditioning of the body included an indefinite number of flexions on the arms and abdominal bending. Followed by hundreds of repetitions of basic techniques. I remember having performed the first kata with a training partner on my shoulders, I performed the positions and he the techniques of arms . When Master Hiroshi Shirai arrived on Sardinia, it was a great honor for us despite the hardness of the training and the inflexibility towards the smallest mistake”.

In the first years of Karate development in Europe, students were all adults. Being all big and strong they had no problems with hard training sessions like in Japan. Thus, the numbers of athletes grew very fast and reached 150.000 Karateka during the ’70s that.

The Change of Karate Do during the 1980´s

The euphoria of the early years, however, slowly faded away. The reason for the decrease was that Westerners understood Karate Do as a sport and a sort of workout. For the most Karateka rigors training sessions like in Japan were just too tough.