Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)
In a recent article a photo held a quote, a meme, that simply stated, “ … Together with the dissemination of karate into mainland Japan and the Occident, karate and martial arts folklore from Japan and the Ryukyu also found its way to the rest of the world. In the process, sometimes folklore was confused with history?”
Folklore: It is the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth. It is a body of popular, “Myth,” and beliefs that relate a particular place, “Activity,” or group of people like in Okinawa and regarding karate as well as martial arts.
An important term to note in this definition is, “Myth.” Myths are, “A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events. It is a widely held but false belief or idea.”
Both terms are often associated with synonyms like, “Folk tale; folk story; legend; tale; story; fable; mythos; lore; mythology and so on.” When you look at these definitions and their meanings then study the very stories and meme’s or quotes told in the karate communities even in their natural origins of Okinawa you will readily discover that although wonderful and inspiring stories they are still, “Stories, folklore and myths.”
As I study and research I find more and more quotes, stories and the believed history of karate to be just stories to tell children at the evening meal and have no substance, reality or factual validation in history except in very rudimentary ways.
History is, “The study of past events with emphasis in human affairs, a whole series of past events connected with someone or something and it is a continuous, typically chronological, record of important or public events or of a particular trend or institution.”
As I see it, historical data of any kind should be verifiable and validated by such proverbial, “Historical Records.” The passing of word of mouth data tends to change in the passing and therefore may lead to actual history but often pollutes it or changes it inadvertently in the passing from one human to the next especially over time. Add in that each person telling the story is also effected by the environment, the culture, the social belief systems and the personal/family belief system along with individual perceptions over time and so on - making a word of mouth transmission flawed. Regardless, any society who finds historical data important, since the advent of writing and books, etc., will document it for posterity and longevity.
This all has not occurred regarding karate from Okinawa. Any type of history of the system started at the earliest in the late 1800’s and on. Even then, through the WWII era and many years after the Okinawan’s give a lot of credence to documenting and recording karate’s history. It seems to be a more recent endeavor.
Bibliography (Click the link)
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