What is Karate?
In very few words, Karate is a martial art of Okinawan origin that has been the subject of a differential evolution not only in Okinawa but more so on mainland Japan and the rest of the world too. In Okinawa it appeared as a self-defense method motivated by a series of invasions where the local inhabitants were prohibited to bear weapons of any type.
Thus an art of defense was born where the individual needed no other weapons other than fists, hands, elbows, feet, knees, etc and in some particular cases some of the normal tools used in agriculture or equivalents.
Gichin Funakoshi took this self-defense art to the Japanese mainland islands where he blended it with the philosophical basis of the Japanese "do" or "Budo" arts. Creating Karate-do, actually as a lifestyle, a way of life, a "do".
