Читать книгу Empty Hand. The Essence of Budo Karate онлайн

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Karate has changed more and more into a competition sport. This is one of the reasons why the number of women practicing karate mainly for self-defense has recently considerably decreased. But besides health care, self-defense was the original aim and is still a very important aspect of karate.

When my father taught at the Meijō Girls College, he invented two special self-defense kata for girls. One was called Meijō kata according to the name of the school and meaning “bright star”. The other was called Aoyagi (green willow) referring to elegance and gentleness. These kata were made for real combat. They contain techniques against typical attacks towards women like embracing from the front or from behind, and punches that use the energy of the attacker. But these real-combat kata are very short and not appropriate for competition and therefore unfortunately not very popular in our days.

Recently, I read an article in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. It was about a high school boy in Ōsaka who was at home when a burglar came in and attacked him with a knife. But the boy was clever enough to evade the attack and managed to escape. Afterwards he told a reporter, “When I saw the knife my body reacted spontaneously. If I had not practiced karate I would have been paralyzed by fear.”