History of Karate

From the 1950's on, karate began to receive increasing international attention, mainly through exposure to American servicemen stationed in Japan after World War II, and also through Japanese students traveling abroad to study. Martial arts organizations in countries around the world began to request visits from instructors from the JKA, and so the internationalisation of karate had begun.

As karate spread around the world and began to be practiced by countries and cultures far removed from Japan , various disagreements and splits started to emerge. Today, there is a myriad of karate styles and associations in existence, but almost all practitioners of legitimate Shotokan karate, regardless of association or affiliation, can trace their roots back to the JKA.

It is important to note that while Funakoshi was developing and promoting his Shotokan style in Okinawa and Japan , others were, at the same time, developing and promoting their own, equally valid styles. Examples include Kenwa Mabuni's Shito-ryu and Chojun Miyagi's Goju-ryu. However it is also important to note that Funakoshi himself believed karate should be considered as a whole and that classification into different schools would only lead to unnecessary divisions. In his autobiography, “Karate-do – My Way of Life”, first published in 1956, he said,

“One serious problem, in my opinion, which besets present-day karate-do, is the prevalence of divergent schools. I believe that this will have a deleterious effect on the future development of the art…There is no place in contemporary karate-do for different schools… Indeed I have heard myself and my colleagues referred to as the Shoto-kan school, but I strongly object to this attempt at classification. My belief is that all these “schools” should be amalgamated into one so that karate-do may pursue an orderly and useful progress into man's future”.

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