I am happy and somewhat relieved to tell you that I have recently had a paper on Karate-do published in the proceedings of an educational conference. The full paper titled "Finding a Place for Karate-do in Mainstream Education" can be found online:
As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, last year I was asked by the CEO of iafor, Dr. Joseph Haldane to be a featured presenter at the Asian Conference on Education (ACE) 2015, held in Kobe, Japan from October 21st ~ 25th. My presentation was to be a demonstration of Karate-do. As the theme of the conference was “Education, Power and Empowerment: Transcending Boundaries” Dr. Haldane thought a Karate-do demonstration would be very appropriate for the opening ceremonies of the conference. With the help of my good friend Nishioka Hiroshi Sensei and his students I was able to co-ordinate a very well received Karate-do demonstraion on the main stage of the 神戸芸術センター Kobe Geijutsu Senta, Kobe Arts Centre.
(Above Left. the cover of the ACE 2015 Proceedings. Below, a photo taken toward the end of the demonstration of the members of Nishioka Dojo and Dr. Haldane breaking a board. I found out later that it had been a childhood dream of his to break a board like he saw the karate masters do on TV when he was young.)
As a result of attending this conference as a featured presenter, I was also able to present my own research paper for publication in the proceedings. In keeping with the above mentioned theme and the fact that we had already demonstrated the physical part of karate-do, I decide to focus on the academic and health befits that come with long-term study and practice of this art as a result of its 文武両道 Bunbu Ryodo approach to learning (See full paper).
Some of the points made in the paper are, a brief history of karate, its close relationship with the Japanese education system, and the difference between the terms karate and karate-do and in doing so tried to provide a better definition of the term karate-do. In my opinion, these two terms should not be used interchangeably.
In this post I will share with you what I wrote in the paper regarding the definition of the term karate-do.
Defining Karate-do
The Oxford Dictionary of Current English defines karate as a Japanese system of unarmed combat using hands and feet as weapons. Christopher M. Clarke in his book Okinawan Karate: A History of Styles and Masters Vol.1 (2012), he states that, “At its simplest, karate is a system of unarmed self-defense” (p.7), implying that karate is actually something more complex. Karate is indeed a self-defense system, but the discussion I wish to have deals with karate-do which requires more clarification in its definition.
The Oxford Dictionary of Current English defines karate as a Japanese system of unarmed combat using hands and feet as weapons. Christopher M. Clarke in his book Okinawan Karate: A History of Styles and Masters Vol.1 (2012), he states that, “At its simplest, karate is a system of unarmed self-defense” (p.7), implying that karate is actually something more complex. Karate is indeed a self-defense system, but the discussion I wish to have deals with karate-do which requires more clarification in its definition.
In order to deepen our understanding of the terms covered in this paper we must also look at the Chinese Characters (kanji). The word karate, as we know it today, is made up of two kanji 空 and 手, Kara; Empty or vacant and Te; Hand. These two kanji combine to become ‘empty hand’ which describes this weaponless art of self-defense. The two definitions given above, while accurately defining the term karate, are lacking when we attempt to define karate-do and therefore should not be misunderstood to encompass karate-do as well.
