 The
origins of Karate took place more than thousands years ago, as the
monk Bodhidharma (the founder of Zen Buddhism) went to the Shao
Lin temple in China. There, he developed many methods of physical
training for his disciples. The religious discipline in the temple
was so rigid that he wanted to give his disciples the mental strength,
the resistance and the physical power to be able to endure the hard
life of Shao Lin. Later on, this training method of mental and physical
development was modified and completed and became what we call today
the Shaolin fighting method. This martial art was then imported
on the island of Okinawa and mixed up really fast with the local
fighting methods. The Lord of the antique Okinawa and a little bit
later the feudal of Kagoshima, which was located on the most southern
part of Kyushu in Japan, forbid the use of every kind of weapon.
As the peasants were constantly aggressed they began to develop
some fighting methods with "empty hands" and some techniques
of self-defense. This method of fighting was given the name of Karate
(because of his Chinese origin). At that time, Karate written in
Kanji (the Chinese characters) meant "the Chinese hand".
There are now approximately 100 various styles of Karate. |