Pulling No Punches: Karate Myths and Other Heresies—Updated Third Edition

by Colin Smith

There is a global assertion that karate training develops good character. Shotokan founder Gichin Funakoshi is credited with this “The ultimate aim of the art of karate lies not in victory or defeat but in the perfection of the character of its participants.” However, he lived in another era and never witnessed the extent to which karateka worldwide have mauled this aim. Inspiring as such rhetoric may seem, it establishes no fact or even a probability. Other factors shape our character, like our upbringing, our environment, or the pure-and-simple luck of the gene-pool draw.

But not karate. Funakoshi’s claim is a fiction because nobody can provide empirical evidence that karate training improves morality. This personal account nicely illustrates that the purported link between karate training and the improvement of morality and character is a myth that deserves a burial along with the other fabrications so prevalent in the Shotokan about living and dead instructors.

In this third edition, the author provides new facts, fresh recollections, and a few more takedowns of the arrogant, immoral liars in the Shotokan.

328 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 18, 2023

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