Karate scholar says Karate originates from siamese boxing/muay boran.

Korean sidekick:

Japanese:

You would be blind not to notice the difference.
 
That's absolutely right. People shit on various styles of kung fu a lot, for example, but what they don't realize is that for many of them the boxing piece was an afterthought. They were mostly concerned with being good sword and spear fighters, not with empty handed stuff. It would be like if you took Escrima or Arnis and made a system just out of the empty handed stuff: it would look, and be, stupid. Because all of the empty hand stuff is designed to play off the main stick/knife stuff which is the meat of the system. European sword manuals show a lot of grappling, but that grappling wouldn't make any sense outside the context of also having a long sword. You certainly wouldn't expect it to make a sword master effective in a wrestling match against a wrestler. Proper context is really important for assessing the historical worth of various old arts.

Wow, well said man, I learned something
 
Bill Wallace said in an interview that the traditional TaeKwonDo guys in tournaments were all about power, but since they were so kicking oriented he preferred facing them because he knew kicks were coming, unlike Karate stylists that mixed it up.

Then the Olympic TKD style came along long after Wallace time and the focus on power is gone. Now it's all speed and snappyness.
 
<Moyes5>

please explain!...


Katanas were never really used in battle - only if you lost your main weapon and had nothing left on hand. It was more like a sidearm and one that was rarely used because it wasn't good for the battlefield.

The main weapons in warfare were the matchlock (during sengoku period), bows, naginata (like a polearm), yari (spear) - and variations of these.

The katana only came to prominence during the Tokugawa shogunate when there were no more wars to fight and there was relative peace. That's where the misconception of the importance of the katana in warfare comes from. It was further increased after the world wars especially in the US.

It's pretty well known among historians and weapons experts that it wasn't very good for warfare. IMHO it's not even the best cutting weapons. The best cutting weapons as far as swords go are curved swords - like the talwar/scimitar (Indo-persian swords). The katana is a good cutting sword though. But there are lots of issues with it. Here's a video that details a few problems:




There is a lot of bullshit though on the samurai in general - a lot of people just lack or simply ignore historical facts. You even get it in karate when ignorant instructors glorify/look up to the samurai and you even get this in other martial arts styles - everyone talking about samurai/bushido and glorifying it without knowing how the history of it and how stupid they sound glorifying something that was very very bad.
 
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If you think about it, training hand to hand combat unarmed is probably mostly for ego. People would all be carrying weapons when shit really goes down.

Your boxing ain't going to stop this machete.
Weapons were banned in Okinawa - hence the development of Karate.
 
Weapons were banned in Okinawa - hence the development of Karate.

Karate was only novel in name but not in actual existence. We still may never know for sure but from what I understand "Te/Tode" already existed in Okinawa even before the Japanese invasion and subsequent banning of weapons. The same history which makes this claim also says that the indigenous dealt with the banning of weapons by improvising and using various work tools as makeshift weaponry. The nunchaku, sai, tonfa, kama, eku, kuwa, etc. are originally farming or fishing tools. I find this theory somewhat plausible because although weapons were banned for the Okinawans, the Japanese law enforcers wielded katanas. In spite of what the movies portray empty handed combat is a terrible idea against a sword wielder; hence the use of work tools as improvised weapons.
 
There is a lot of bullshit though on the samurai in general - a lot of people just lack or simply ignore historical facts. You even get it in karate when ignorant instructors glorify/look up to the samurai and you even get this in other martial arts styles - everyone talking about samurai/bushido and glorifying it without knowing how the history of it and how stupid they sound glorifying something that was very very bad.
Yeah. Alot of them were criminals and gangsters. Not sure why the idea of them being fighting saints came from. Quite a few samurais back then ran protection / extortion rackets when they weren't at war.

It's the equivalent of 500 years from now, people romantizing cartel killers because of a "dying like a man" lifestyle.
 
Karate was only novel in name but not in actual existence. We still may never know for sure but from what I understand "Te/Tode" already existed in Okinawa even before the Japanese invasion and subsequent banning of weapons. The same history which makes this claim also says that the indigenous dealt with the banning of weapons by improvising and using various work tools as makeshift weaponry. The nunchaku, sai, tonfa, kama, eku, kuwa, etc. are originally farming or fishing tools. I find this theory somewhat plausible because although weapons were banned for the Okinawans, the Japanese law enforcers wielded katanas. In spite of what the movies portray empty handed combat is a terrible idea against a sword wielder; hence the use of work tools as improvised weapons.
I agree and do think that weapons use was an integral part of Tode from the very start. We all know that "kara" in Karate was changed to "empty" (from "Chinese") only to appease the Japanese - so it was never an intentionally empty-handed art.

For example, wide empty handed blocks (age uke, gedan barai etc.) are the laughing stock of most combat sports but if you grab a pair of tonfa they suddenly make a lot more sense both defensively and offensively.
 
I agree and do think that weapons use was an integral part of Tode from the very start. We all know that "kara" in Karate was changed to "empty" (from "Chinese") only to appease the Japanese - so it was never an intentionally empty-handed art.

For example, wide empty handed blocks (age uke, gedan barai etc.) are the laughing stock of most combat sports but if you grab a pair of tonfa they suddenly make a lot more sense both defensively and offensively.

Completely agree and you make excellent points about the perfect sense that age uke and gedan barai make with a pair of tonfas. We can probably say the same thing about tettsui while holding a kama (or even better, an actual hammer). And great reminder about the change in meaning in the word "Kara". Like you said, it was never intentionally an empty handed art.

For a quite a few reasons I have taken a really big interest in Kobudo and modern weapons as of late and I have recently come to the conclusion that the Kobudo arts are more valuable than I had originally thought them to be.
 
Completely agree and you make excellent points about the perfect sense that age uke and gedan barai make with a pair of tonfas. We can probably say the same thing about tettsui while holding a kama (or even better, an actual hammer). And great reminder about the change in meaning in the word "Kara". Like you said, it was never intentionally an empty handed art.

For a quite a few reasons I have taken a really big interest in Kobudo and modern weapons as of late and I have recently come to the conclusion that the Kobudo arts are more valuable than I had originally thought.
Thanks man. :)

I always enjoyed bo (stick) training that we did in my dojo from time to time. My Sensei pointed out how many movements with the bo are similar to kata movements. I would prefer tonfa training but we never had any. :(

Kobudo is bad-ass, always loved it.

EDIT: Tetsui holding a weapon:

2PCiyQO.gif


:D :D :D
 
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Yeah. Alot of them were criminals and gangsters. Not sure why the idea of them being fighting saints came from. Quite a few samurais back then ran protection / extortion rackets when they weren't at war.

It's the equivalent of 500 years from now, people romantizing cartel killers because of a "dying like a man" lifestyle.

Yeah I know - it baffles me why so many martial arts instructors are enthralled by the samurai.

Sure it’s interesting but not something I think is smart to live by. I mean let’s not forget that the samurai and their code were responsible for a lot of suffering of normal Japanese people during those turbulent periods. Never mind the fact that the same code of the samurai was the hallmark of imperial Japan and we all know of the atrocities they committed.

Yeah except the cartels didn’t cause as much destruction as the samurai/bushido did.
 
Yeah I know - it baffles me why so many martial arts instructors are enthralled by the samurai.

Sure it’s interesting but not something I think is smart to live by. I mean let’s not forget that the samurai and their code were responsible for a lot of suffering of normal Japanese people during those turbulent periods. Never mind the fact that the same code of the samurai was the hallmark of imperial Japan and we all know of the atrocities they committed.

Yeah except the cartels didn’t cause as much destruction as the samurai/bushido did.
I think its the romantic tales of the lone good guy ronin that people romanticize.
 
I think its the romantic tales of the lone good guy ronin that people romanticize.

Yeah people romanticise Miyamoto Musashi but conveniently forget that he basically went around goading people into fights and then murdering them. He literally went around killing.

I can’t think of any other mass murderer that is romanticised as much as Musashi is.
 
I think its the romantic tales of the lone good guy ronin that people romanticize.
The whole storytelling angle of them fighting in a bamboo forest is a cliche. There's a reason why they did it in an isolated area, them popo would send them up the river if it was in public.

Yeah people romanticise Miyamoto Musashi but conveniently forget that he basically went around goading people into fights and then murdering them. He literally went around killing.

I can’t think of any other mass murderer that is romanticised as much as Musashi is.
The Conor of the day
 
I think the Samurai and Bushido code are romanticized more for the ideas of selfless servitude for others and their views about "Honor". The other stuff (as already noted l) is conveniently overlooked and ignored.
 
I think the Samurai and Bushido code are romanticized more for the ideas of selfless servitude for others and their views about "Honor". The other stuff (as already noted l) is conveniently overlooked and ignored.

Yeah I know but the romanticized view about their selfless servitude and sense of honor - those ideas never existed really historically.

Anyone can read what happened during the sengoku period.

Samurai tended to be self serving and had virtually no honor - that's why there was over 100 years of constant warfare, betrayals, murders - it was like Game of Thrones Japan style.
 
To be fair, we romanticise knights and chivalry, and they were just as bad as the samurai were.

Seems like humans have a weakness for the "professional warrior" trope.
 
One thing I do find odd about samurais was the lack of shields. I dunno, every culture in human history uses a shield, its a natural instinct to protect yourself. Even when we train in striking, we don't go out there with no guard and pure offense while relying 100% on slips, evasive movement, and parrying. Get tagged? Your hands come up real quick and you don't let it drop again. Going with no guard you'd get clipped real quick down the line. And with swords you can't exactly "test your chin". Now I'm not sure if that was again another hyperbole of the myth for manhood, or if it was real, because to me it really seems odd. Okay, maybe your top 1% guys can do that, but not your entire attack force.

To be fair, we romanticise knights and chivalry, and they were just as bad as the samurai were.
They were, but for some reason its kinda of accepted that knights were alcoholics that did douchey things, whereas samurais have this warrior saint image to them still.

Then there's the whole ninjas were different from sams when in reality sammies moonlighted hit jobs for some extra monies.
 
Possibly because samurai are 'exotic' and somewhat unknown still to the majority of Westerners?

I personally figure that anyone whose entire career was "strap on a sword and armour go killing peasants" was an asshole by default. They might be badass, but they're still assholes.
 
Shut your whore mouth, "Ameridote" is the GOAT-est of styles. Who the hell wants to learn fighting from a bunch of third world commies and poor people that don't have freedom


They're both snap type kicks. Maybe one has more than the other, but its still within the same boat.

every ameridote enrollee gets a free freedom fry car holder!
 
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