Educational Karate

Kyoiku Karate [教育空手]

The characters/ideograms mean, “Educational karate.” The first character means, “Teach; faith; doctrine,” the second character means, “bring up; grow up; raise; rear,” the third character means, “empty; sky; void; vacant; vacuum,” the fourth character means, “hand.” 

This term describes modern karate today. It also denotes the type of karate that was instituted into the educational systems of Okinawa in the late 1800s, with the official date of around 1905 for full implementation. 

Much like the Japanese jujitsu, etc., when first recommended to the educational system and as many of the karate-ka understand today contained unacceptable and perceived dangerous aspects so it was recommended they be “watered down (my phrase)” to suit the needs of the educational system. 

It is now known that karate was not intended to be a combative system but rather an introduction to additional martial arts training, specifically martial arts weapons - of the times. There was no direct intention, in training and practice, to have anything other than kata as the mainstay of the training model. It incorporated two man kata drill type training and practices but what we use today, kumite or sparring freestyle, didn’t exist. It is not to say that it was not used, in some form, for self-defense but as to it's training and practice intention, not. 

In the end this pretty much means that most karate today is actually practiced, in the modern traditional model, the way it originally was intended with modifications to make it an educational karate for the school systems, i.e., on Okinawan the Shuri Middle School - where the educational karate began. 

This is going to rankle some who are dedicated to achieving a more “traditional or classical” form of karate with hints toward combatives, etc., but that is just not accurate. It doesn’t mean a person cannot work toward making their karate a combative but the ingredients to achieve such a lofty goal tend to violate what is truly realist training toward defense against violence. 

Reading this short topic should not be misconstrued as derogatory to the practice of karate but rather a note as to its original purpose especially toward its intended purpose in the educational system of Okinawa, i.e., educational karate. 

Read more, buy the book on Lulu.com:

Bibliography:

Quast, Andreas. "Karate 1.0: Parameter of an Ancient Martial Art." Lulu Publishing (Self-published). December 2013.