Weapons as Supplemental Training for Karate

I have heard many times how kobudo training actually helps tune karate. It has possibly become a mantra to practice kobudo so that one's karate will be improved. I have heard some say that by performing kobudo they sense how the karate they practice can become more. Is this actually true?

In the book, "Karate 1.0," by Andreas Quast, it was mentioned that a purpose of empty hand training was to prepare the warrior physically for both weapons and combat. It was, possibly, considered a pre-requisite to learning the true martial arts of weapons. Think of it like Marines do today, that hand-to-hand combat is always a "last resort" in combat. Marines are taught that if weapons are rendered inoperable that you seek out other weapons as a replacement so you can continue your mission. This makes more sense.

A byproduct of empty hand training as this model suggests is the ability to handle combat with hand-to-hand techniques or more properly empty handed combat, if necessary. Primarily it was and is about weapons other than our empty hands. It is about the goal of karate or empty handed systems to prepare us to move into weapons.

So, in this instance, it is actually about getting it all backwards. Empty hand systems actually prepare us for combat and the use of weaponry. This, of course, applies to the times in which empty handed systems and kobudo, i.e. sword, spear, bo, sai, etc., were the main weapons of combat. This also explains why hand-to-hand has become such a small part of combat training for Marines. Marines use weaponry that do not require the standards created and set by the study of an empty hand system. 

I can also understand that possibly kobudo was added to the karate or empty hand training. It also took a more advanced level of empty hand training, as it should, so that one could become proficient in empty hand so that when kobudo were introduced that experience and conditioning actually supplemented the training and practice of kobudo. 

I and those who spoke of this to me had it backwards.