Regarding when the School Board allowed Karate to be taught in the schools.

 

 

Reading further into Joe Swift’s book “Itosu Anko” about the cultural changes on Okinawa giving rise to taking toudi into the Okinawan school system, it brought many other  things I have been reading in the past half year from other sources on that same topic. Then this gave rise to some very interesting thoughts.

 

Back in the 1870s Okinawa was subjected to many changes by Japan. They were formally brought into Japan, their king was replaced, the gentry were de-classified as such making their need for te and toudi in their lives irrelevant as new Japanese controlled systems were set up.

 

The important thing to recognize were many of the same things were occurring in Japan, too.

 

The old social order was abandoned; meaning among other things the promotion of social equity meant there were no further need for a samurai class. The military was organized by the institution of training for all soldiers. They very quickly realized many of their citizens were unprepared for military training. A new education system was established and incorporated training ideas from the United State and France. Among them martial gymnastics and sport, in an attempt to indoctrinate the young into current Japanese social belief, to build stronger bodies, etc.

 

This was also done on Okinawa as schools were opened for many who did not have that access before.

 

 To show their patriotism 50 Okinawan’s attempted to enlist in the Japanese Army, however only 10 of them passed the physical. The doctors noticed all of them had trained in the Okinawan martial arts.

 

That might have been part of the reason behind Itosu writing to that school board that Toudi (pronounced in Japanese as Karate), abet with modifications, ought be incorporated into the schools. I also suspect he had more knowledge of what was going on in Japan (of course supposition on my part.).

 

The school board he was writing to was in Japan, as they controlled the content of the Japanese school system.

 

At that time they were considering how/why not include judo and/or karate throughout the new Japanese school system.

 

So that school board likely considered Itosu’s proposal as a way to test if this training would work As Okinawa was regarded pretty much as the back water of Japan, if it didn’t work out, only Okinawa would be affected.

 

No doubt a harsh reasoning as to why the Japanese School Board went along with Itosu’s proposal.

 

And an experiment that worked out and continued to influence the development of Karate in many different ways, both in Japan and on Okinawa.

 

So much so Japan 5 years later eventually included judo and kendo instruction in their own schools.

 

Joe then moves into a more in-depth discussion about the change from Te and Toudi into the Karate of the Schools.