Term · Japanese culture
Karate
An Okinawan striking art that changed one character in its own name and altered what it meant.
In Otakana the clue reads: Striking art that came from Okinawa
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- Japanese culture
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- 6 · Easy
Okinawa was its own kingdom trading with China long before Japan annexed it, and the fighting method that developed there mixed local grappling with Chinese forms. Practitioners called it te, hand, or tode, which the characters read as Chinese hand. Training was private, sometimes secret, and organised around kata, fixed sequences that store the techniques in a form a teacher can pass on without a partner.
Funakoshi Gichin demonstrated the art in Tokyo in the 1920s and stayed to teach it. Making it acceptable on the mainland meant giving it a Japanese shape: a jacket and belt borrowed from judo, a ranking system, and a rewritten name using the character for empty rather than the one for China. Empty hand also carried a Zen reading, which suited the moment.
Styles multiplied from there. Shotokan drives long straight lines, Goju-ryu alternates hard and soft, Kyokushin fights full contact without gloves and is where most of the tougher anime dojos borrow from. The sport reached the Olympics for the Tokyo Games held in 2021 and was dropped from the next programme immediately after.
Spelling KARATE
KARATE is six letters and the last one is a trap for English readers: the E is sounded, ka-ra-te, not silent as in the English word rate. Two As sit in the first half and there is no long vowel anywhere, so the romanisation is unusually honest. Nothing doubles. Getting the final E right often finishes the row on its own.