Karate of Japan

Okinawa teachers' attempt to change the art of karate

The adoption of uniforms and standard ranking, the development of militaristic and sporting practices, and a purposeful effacement of the art's origin (Krug 2001), were all programs aimed at making karate popular with the Japanese.  In doing so, those Okinawan masters responsible for such changes sought to make the art something more in line with the Japanese martial art tradition, or budo.  The acceptance of these changes by practitioners in Okinawa (both instructors and students),  who were not themselves engaged in training with Japanese from the mainland, signals their own role in such modifications of the art.  Either as actors with their own agency who found value in these changes, or as the victims of structural forces that capitulated to the assimilation programs of the Japanese government, these practitioners modified their practice to align with the ideologies of mainland Japan.

Despite these efforts and compromises, karate was viewed as a foreign martial art, largely because the Japanese government (as well as many Japanese people) still did not consider Okinawans to be fully Japanese (Friman 1998).  This foreign connotation was not merely a neutral, geographic marker to the Japanese of the mainland, but was also wrapped up in the stereotypes applied everywhere to a minority culture.  As Donohue notes, “Karate had often been thought to be the art of thugs and the lower class- as a “foreign” art with none of the pedigree of kendo or even judo” (1993: 109).

As mentioned above, the most successful course of action was to adapt philosophy and art to a more "Japanese" model. It is recognizable to state authorities as well as prospective students.

nother aspect of the mold-making process of converting karate into a Japanese system was the incorporation of their own martial ethic into the newly established karate-do system by the Japanese. They were partly in the traditional form of samurai and combined with bushido. Code. This was done to inject into the karate-do what could be considered a Japanese spirit into Karate -Do”(Rosenbaum, 2002: 14).

Samurai karate

The traditional forms of the samurai class were held to be of great antiquity, having a history into the early part of the millennium- but such a characterization is an oversimplification (Goodman 2005).  It is true there was a samurai culture for centuries in Japan and that it powerfully shaped and influenced life and culture in certain ways (Nakane 1981).  Importantly,  the influence of the samurai class in Tokugawa Japan owes more to the status of the samurai class as what Sugimoto calls, a “core subculture”, than to the ubiquity of the samurai lifestyle (2003:12). 

Due to the power of their position politically and economically, core subcultures, such as the samurai of the Tokugawa Era, are able to project their idealized version of what society should be into the everyday world, where society is constituted.  Through a near monopoly of legal and legislative powers, media  channels, and even military force, a core subculture is able to frame the cultural discussion and shape it to their own desires or beliefs. (Sugimoto 2003).  The extent to which core subcultures are able to accomplish such a task is connected to their ability to minimize those subcultures within their society- either through compliance or capitulation- that do not come from the same cultural traditions or perspectives (Goodman 2005).  

Thus, though the samurai class was the most dominant subculture both politically and culturally in Tokugawa Japan, the samurai lifestyle was lived by only a few (Sugimoto 2003).  Interestingly the core subculture of the samurai class obtained its widest currency not when its political power was ascendant, but rather when it was on the decline and the very class identity of the samurai verged on extinction (Ueno 1987).  It was not until the Meiji Restoration, when the Tokugawa regime was seemingly dismantled, that the samurai class was able to effectively project their ideological influence further afield than ever before by offering a viable way to the other subcultures of Japan to adopt the samurai lifestyle.  As Ueno so elegantly puts it, “Democratization meant not the “commoner-zation “ of the samurai class, but the “samuraization” of the commoners” (Ueno 1987: S78).

Like the other classes that ordered Tokugawa in Japan, the samurai class was abolished, but the samurai class was reluctant to give up their values ​​and decided to share it. Instead of allowing democratization to make all Japanese people common people, they paved the way for all Japanese people to become warriors. Many ordinary people embraced these changes, seeing the advantage of following the preferences and norms of the former ruling class as a way to uplift their cultural status.

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