Karate Is Japanese

(I wasn't sure whether I should relegate this post to my Japanese blog or not, but I figured the fighting trivia belonged here. So many blogs, so little time...)

A new Karate Kid movie has been in the works for quite some time. Will Smith is helming it, Will Smith's son will be the Kid, and Jackie Chan will be Miyagi-esque. This has a lot of people upset for many reasons. First, their childhood memories will be chewed up into a pulp. Second, Miyagi was Japanese. Third, karate itself is Japanese. Fourth, the original movie helped bring Japanese culture to American attention yadda yadda yadda.

Smith defended his choice of making the Miyagi character Chinese by saying that "fortunately, karate is originally a Chinese art form" in this old news article.

Karate is Japanese. The word itself means "empty hand" in Japanese. This is true, but I had thought it had been a brand new invention created by the Japanese. Not so, apparently. The Japanese took the style from the Ryukyuan people of Okinawa.

Okinawa hangs out in the ocean between China and Japan and was for centuries a way for both countries to trade with each other without having to officially open trade. The Okinawans learned martial arts from the Chinese; they even went to study it in China for a while. The term for the kind of martial art it was at the time is "kenpo."

The Japanese codified it and created the martial art called "karate." I'm sure the details are all very interesting, so you can read about it more at the wiki.

Later, China kind of forgot about the techniques. They had to relearn it from Japan. So to say that it won't matter whether you place your movie about karate in China or Japan is still bullspit, Will Smith. Don't call it Karate Kid is all I'm saying. Call it "The Kenpo Kid" or something. Leave Ralph Macchio out of it.

(On second thought, put Ralph Macchio in it! That would be awesome!)