MY WAY OF LIFE
GICHIN FUNAKOSHI
Unrecorded History
Inasmuch as there is virtually no written material on the early history of karate, we do not know who invented and developed it, nor even, for that matter,
where it originated and evolved. Its earliest history may only be inferred from ancient legends that have been handed down to us by word of mouth, and they, like most
legends, tend to be imaginative and
probably inaccurate.
In my childhood, during the first year of Meiji, as I mentioned earlier, karate was banned by the government.
It could not be practiced legally, and of course there were no karate dôjô. Nor
were there any professional instructor.
Men who were known to be adepts accepted a few pupils in secret, but their livelihood depended
on work quite unrelated to karate. And those who succeeded in being taken
on as students did so because of their interest in the art. At the very first,
for example, I was Master Azato’s
only student and
one of the very few who studied under Master Itosu.
They’re being no
professional instructors; very
little emphasis was placed on
written descriptions
of techniques and the like, a lack
that a man like me,
whose mission in life has been the propagation of
Karate-dô, has regretted very deeply.
Although I obviously cannot hope to remedy
the lack, I shall attempt to set down
what I remember hearing from my teachers
about the legends that have survived
in
Okinawa. Alas, I
know that my memory is not always
reliable, and I am sure that I will make my
share of errors. Nevertheless, I will do my
best to note here what little I have learned
about the origin and development of karate in Okinawa.
Napoleon is said
to have observed that somewhere
in the Far East there was a small kingdom whose people possessed not a single weapon.
There seems little doubt that he was referring to Ryukyu
Islands, to what is now the prefecture of Okinawa, and that karate must
have originated, developed, and become
popular with the people of the islands
for that very reason: because they
were prohibited by law from bearing arms.
There were, in
fact, two such prohibitive decrees:
one promulgated about five centuries ago, the second some
two hundred years later. Before the
proclamation of the first decree,
the Ryukyu were divided in to three warring kingdoms: Chuzan, Nanzan, and Hokuzan. It was the monarch of
Chuzan, Shõ Hashi, who, once more he
had succeeded in unifying the three
kingdoms, issued a command prohibiting all Ryukyuans from possessing weapons, even rusty old swords. He also invited the famous
scholars and statesmen of the three
kingdoms to his capital city of Shuri, where
he established a centralized government
that was to endure for the next two centuries.
In the year
1609, however, the reigning king of the dynasty
found himself obligated to outfit an
army for the sake of repelling an
invasion of the islands that had been
launched by Shimazu, the daimyo of Satsum (now Kagoshima Prefecture). The newly armed Ryukyuan warriors fought with conspicuous
bravery and gallantry against the soldiers of
the Satsuma clan, known and
feared throughout the country for the fighting skill, but, after Ryukyuan
success in a few pitched battles, a
surprise
landing by Shimazu’s forces sealed
the fate both of the islands and of their monarch, who was forced to surrender.
Since Shimazu reissued the edict banning weapons, many
Ryukyuans (most of them members of the
Shizoku class) Began secretly to practice a for of self-defense wherein hands and legs were the only weapons. What
this actually was may only be conjectured. However,
it is know that, for many
centuries, Okinawa engaged in trade with the people of Fukien Province in southern China, and it was
probably from the source that Chinese
kempo (“boxing”) was introduced in to the islands.
It was from kempo
that the present-day karate evolved.
It was first known as “Okinawate.”
And I recall, when I was a child, hearing my
elders speak of both “Okinawate” and
“karate” (the kara in this case
referring to China). I began then to think of Okinawate as an indigenous Okinawa
fighting art and of karate as a Chinese form of boxing. In any case, I
perceived a clear distinction between
the two.
During the years
of arms prohibition, inspectors were sent to the islands from Satsuma to ensure that the prohibition was
being strictly observed, so it is
hardly surprising that karate (which, as it developed, enable a man to kill without weapons) could only be
practiced an engaged in clandestinely. As I noted early, this clandestine aspect of karate persisted through the
early years of Meiji, in part because
the ancient decree lingered on in the minds of the people
It is my own observation that Okinawan folk
dances make use of a number of movements that are similar to those used in karate, and the reason, I believed, is that adepts who practiced the martial
art in secret incorporated those movements into the dances in order to further
confuse the authorities. Certainly
anyone who carefully observes Okinawan folk dances (and they have today become quite popular in the large cities) will note that they differ markedly from the more
graceful dances of the other Japanese islands. Okinawa dancers, male and female, use their hands and legs far
more energetically, and their
entrances onto dancing area, as well as their departure from it, are also reminiscent of the
beginning and end of any karate kata.
Indeed, the essence of the art has been summarized in the words: “Karate begins and ends with
courtesy.” As for Okinawa itself, its people for many, many centuries
regarded their country as a place where all the forms
of etiquette were most strictly observed.
The famous
gate In front of Shuri Castle was called Shurei
no Mon: “the Gate of Courtesy.” After
the Meiji government came to power and Okinawa became a prefecture, the Shurei no Mon exists
no more: it was totally destroyed during the battle for Okinawa toward the close of the Second World War. How ironic it is that American
military bases now occupy the ground
adjacent to that where once stood the gate that symbolized peace! [Since this
was written, the Shurei no Mon has been reconstructed in its original form.]
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