Karate

Originally meant China hand, changed to empty hand (using different characters) Most Okinawan karate instructors changed from using the China hand characters during the 1920's and 1930's to using the empty hand characters due to the political climate of this period in Japan. For various reasons, the Japanese of this time period tended to look down upon all things Chinese. Therefore, to gain popularity, the Okinawans swapped characters for a non-political one.

Pronounced: car-are-tay

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License