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Karatedo: The Way of the Empty Hand

Karatedo has a wonderful story of origin. The orthodox account is that karatedo originated in India. The martial arts of contemporary India at this point in their evolution, however, look much more like kung fu, with its complex “animal forms” and great variety of exotic weaponry, than the austere art of modern karatedo. Kung fu does not, in fact, point to a particular type of Chinese martial art but, as the literal translation of kung fu (“effort”) suggests, to any skill derived over time through hard training. It may be said that kung fu is at least partially derived from India and that later karatedo evolved from an ancient branch of kung fu.

The ancient story tells of Bodhidharma (Japanese: Daruma; Chinese: Tamo), the twenty-eighth patriarch of Buddhism, and his arrival in China in the sixth century A.D. on a mission to revitalize Chinese Buddhism. In the company of his Sherpa guides (traditionally described as eighteen in number), Bodhidharma briefly visited with Emperor Wu and then moved into residence at the monastery of Shaolin-szu (Japanese: Shorinji), “Temple of the Young Pine Trees.” (Some versions of the story claim that he founded the famous Shaolin temple.) Finding the resident monks too weak to follow his rigorous monastic regimen, he taught them a style of martial art which he derived from the Kshatriya (warrior) caste of India, combining an emphasis on strong diaphragm breathing, characteristic of Indian yoga, with an evolving admixture of the local kempo, or Chinese methods of unarmed combat.