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Between 1840 and 1900 China, undermined by internal dissension, became the prey of foreign colonial powers (the Opium War with England in 1840-42, wars against France in 1884, Japan in 1894-95, etc.) This led to the Boxer Rebellion (the boxers were a sect of ultranationalist kempo practitioners) which was crushed by the Ch'ing dynasty in 1901. The boxers were executed in great numbers; dojos (training houses) were closed and kempo was completely eradicated. This truly Chinese fighting art was never to revive in China but before dying out kempo had spread to the Ryukyu Islands where it was to give birth to karate.

b. The Development of Karate in Okinawa

China had established a flourishing trade relationship with the Ryukyu Islands during the Sui dynasty around A.D. 607. In 1372 King Satsudo of Okinawa (the largest island of the archipelago) became the vassel of the Ming Emperor. An exchange of officials between the two countries resulted and in 1392 Chinese families emigrated to Okinawa, introducing kempo to the islands. In 1429 the Okinawan King Shohashi unified the islands under his rule and banned all weapons. This prohibition led the people into overt opposition and gave a tremendous impulse to the arts of empty-hand fighting. Moreover, in 1609 the Ryukyu Islands were conquered by the Japanese warlord Shimazu of the Satsuma clan. Because the Okinawans had refused to help Shimazu and the ruler of Japan, Toyotomi Hide-yoshi, in their unsuccessful war of 1592-96 against the Chinese protectorate of Korea, Shimazu issued strict laws prohibiting all weapons and martial arts practice. Once again the Okinawans went undercover and developed the art of empty-hand fighting to a formidable degree of efficacy, developing a parallel practice of using farm implements as defensive weapons against the samurai swords. Hands and feet were turned into deadly weapons by assiduous practice on maki-wara, a vertical board covered with straw. This fighting art became known as Okinawa-te (te means "hand" or "technique") and it was not until 1722 that Saku-gawa, who had studied kempo and bo fighting in China, started to teach in Shuri what he called karate-no-Sakugawa. This is the first time the name karate was used; kara is a reference to the T'ang dynasty and for the Okinawans, as for the Japanese, had come to mean China itself. Karate thus meant "the Chinese techniques."