The History of Karate and the Masters Who Made It: Development, Lineages, and Philosophies of Traditional Okinawan and Japanese Karate-do

by Mark I. Cramer

A concise yet comprehensive history of traditional Okinawan and Japanese karate, with biographies of the great karate masters

This concise-yet-comprehensive history of traditional Okinawan and Japanese karate includes authoritative biographies of the great karate masters of the past and the philosophical issues they faced as karate changed and evolved. Bringing a fresh understanding to the study of the martial arts, Mark I. Cramer dispels many of the often-repeated martial-arts myths as he details the lineages of the modern styles of karate and describes the social, cultural, and political events that influenced them. While most books focus on a single style of karate or the biography of just one of the great teachers, this book offers a well-researched and detailed overview. By bringing all of this knowledge together in one volume, Cramer—an award-winning inductee into the USA Karate Federation’s Hall of Fame—fills a crucial gap.

Genres: Martial Arts, History

240 pages, Paperback

First published July 24, 2018

Reviews

[Emily]

A fascinating and in- depth history about the reasons for karate (why do we train etc) and the modern debates that have been very apparent since training sport karate rather than traditional karate at university for 3 years. The different key masters were very useful and interesting to learn about. It was so easy to read and raised some important discussions about my favourite sport!

[Augusto Bernardi]

This is the perfect format for a book for me. Short history book about combat sports. I love it. Big thing throughout the book is that he tries to eliminate any myths about the history of karate. This is right down my lane. But oh boy what a dilemma.

A short summary of the book or at least of them in this book is that it is the short history of Frauds!


He started talking about a bit of the influence from China and Japan on the islands of Okinawa. Today we obviously recognise them as part of Japan but throughout history they were sort of a middleman between the two empires. And even throughout the Shogun they still managed to trade a lot with China while the rest of the of Japan was closed off. Japan ended up invading the islands after China by the Satsuma clan. An important feature during this time is the second time that the people of the islands were banned of using weapons. This is one of the ingredients of what will lead to karate.

But essentially karate was some form of martial arts that was introduced by the Chinese to Okinawa. It might’ve changed in how it was done but it kept the core values which was Confucianism so thereby karate is heavily obsessed with the pursuit of character. And it originally was probably used as a self-defence.

Big change would happen to Okinawa after the Meiji emperor opened up the country again but also tried to unify the country by cutting off the cultural influence of China to Okinawa. Okinawa and it’s people would have a hard time fitting into the Japanese empire. They were seen as foreigners and their culture is not Japanese. So thereby karate had to evolve as it was in Okinawan cultural art.
Karate was very different during this time than it is today. During the late 1800s, karate wore no no belts or gi, only short pants and bare chest. It was practiced in secret only by the nobles that could afford it and was not strictly just martial arts. There was a lot of lecturing. And not just anyone could join either. The “trial” of sorts is that you had to pass a test of some sort of character by doing chores around the house of an instructor. What a load of crap. They didn’t have any curriculum either or anything possibly resembling a style yet.

It was after the kokutai movement of the early 1900s which made Japan become a more united country culturally. It became public and was introduced into public schools even in Japan. The kanji were also changed from Chinese hand to the empty hand and then later still the “do” or path was added as well, like judo. So it became the Japanese Karate-do.

Karate and Japan would take a massive hit and make change after the war. Japan would have to adopt an anti war and anti military stance and thereby outlawed judo and kendo for some time. This increased the popularity of karate. Karate would also though have to shift to a more sport orientated approach instead of the traditional martial art. This would of course be a factor into its massive popularity works wide. The part I like about this is how the evolution of a martial art, literally fighting, is so heavily influenced by external forces and possibly the decline of another martial art. The connection to sports is also very interesting to me.

In the part about styles and lineages, it shows how karate is an unorganised and also rather recent martial art with very little precise documentation. There certainly seems to be many confusions and contradictions and many questions. No wonder this book is so short. It’s virtually shrouded in hearsay. As I read on about the parts on the old masters, I find myself really annoyed by the pride and arrogance of a lot of them, refusing to teach their oh so dangerous skills and leaving them in secrecy. I find this to be one, very short sighted, and two, unbelievably presumptuous of their skills. The only figure that seemed to somewhat have some substance was the controversial Choki Motobu because he put a far bigger importance on practicality in kumite (the fighting component of karate).

I never actually realised how much of karate training is made of kata. Virtually all of it. They include their spiring but the bulk and the very nature of karate is with kata. On top of some philosophy about your character. This is the core of the fraudulent nature of karate as a martial art or any sort of combat whatsoever. The author tries to somewhat give kata the benefit of the doubt but I think he fails.

[Patrick]

This is excellent! If you are interested in karate history this book is Really well researched with solid sources. It's an easy read, an excellent way to quickly get your bearings if you are starting to dip your toes in the sometimes very confusing history of karate. As the author states in the beginning, so much of what we "know" about martial arts is just legend and wishful thinking about our heroes, and he tries to set it right.

Now, the following should not put you off from reading the book. I thoroughly recommend you buy it for the information. This is just me nitpicking. .. But...

He could very well have used one more round of proofreading. Spelling errors and repetitions abound. People who he has quoted several times earlier suddenly get an in depth description 170 pages in, as if they are just now being presented. I assume this is the result of hasty editing and it doesn't really detract from the value of the information.

And sometimes, in what I think is an effort to provide a snappy or emotional ending to a chapter (or some such), he leaves the dry language and the grounded realm of text based research and gives opinions that don't quite follow from the earlier text.

[Mindaugas Pelanis]

Great book on history of karate

I was looking for a book on history of karate and was lucky enough to find this book just a few days after its release. I really liked the structure of the book and the author’s style of writing. It was very easy to read the book even after the working day (and being a non-native English speaker).
A short glimpse on Okinawa’s history and the sociopolitical situation of the time karate was born is given at the beginning. Biographies of most prominent karate masters follow the historical introduction. Biographies are arranged into 2 main lineages, which puts development of karate into clearly defined perspective. Several philosophical issues are discussed at the end of the book.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the history and development of karate. No specific technical knowledge of karate is required to read and enjoy this book.

[Riley Higa]

3.5 Stars but lean 4 instead of 3. This book is exactly what it says it is, a succinct history of karate and brief biographies of the most significant master's in its history. I found the book was really easy to read and informative enough. I appreciated that the author explored the guiding principles and philosophies of karate, as well as explained the true origins of karate as specifically Okinawan (with Chinese influence) and not Japanese in origin. It can be a little repetitive at times and has several typos and misspellings, which became distracting when they are some of the names of key figures. I would have to pause and try to figure out if that was a misspelling of the previously mentioned name or a relative, given that there are many relatives of key members mentioned who have similar names.

[Wesley Clifton]

This was a really great read. It provides an overview of the history of karate, brief biographical sketches for some of karate's great masters, and an overview of certain philosophical issues confronting today's practitioners. If you want a "bird's eye view" of traditional Okinawan and Japanese karate, this is a great place to start. My only real complaint is the editing. There are quite a few typos throughout, mostly just words repeated or slightly out of order. Not enough to distract from the overall quality of the book, however. Recommended!

[Jack H]

Has some worth as a general into to the background and philosophy of karate but is marred by terrible writing - the author has a really annoying habit of repeating himself several times *in the same paragraph*, for example:
sentence 1: statement
sentence 2: converse of statement (which is implicit in sentence 1 anyway)
sentence 3: quote from karate master repeating statement.
sentence 4: summary repeating statement and converse

[Daniel Cole]

Concise, easy to read chapters. Provides a great history of the art in general and some its greatest artists. A must read for any karate student, regardless of style. The book makes a strong argument for there being no styles at all.

[Matthew Hodge]

My black belt grading is coming up soon, so I wanted to get my head (loosely) around the history of karate. This is a good high-level overview, at least outlining some of the major masters, and their philosophical approaches to karate.

[Tiemu]

A good, easy to read book on the as it says, the history of karate and the masters who made it.

[Alex]

waste of time. same strories. same sources

[Ricky]

Overall good general history of Karate-do with particular focus on the early masters of Karate, interesting and informative read.