It looks that young jp don't follow jp martial arts...
the martial arts arrived from China to
Okinawa by sailors that were chinese boxing experts...the okinawans learn and transmormed these tyles
as to be more effective as for they phisical costition not tall but strong
short arms and leg differente from chineses...
so they created the euchy ryu ishinryu goju ryu stiles and some japanese went there and or other from Okinawa went in Japan
and trasfomed in the new karate Funagoshi, Otsuka after Nakayama
and the Japan Karate Associan went in the Us (Nakayama) and Shirai
Enoeda Kase and others in Europe.
In south america pacific ocean side came strongly Kenpo.
also some styles from Hawai.
Main styles in Japan are Shotokan Wadoryu Shito ryu Gouju ryu and all over the world.
some teach ninjitsu I cannot say a word about....i do not speak about
an argoment that I do not know, my impression was that came out only for grow more new schools...but I never meet a real ninjitsu master.
There are many shools of self defence that teach
ninja' s technics....
The okinawans could not use swords or knifes as per the japanese army control and orderrs so they began to use agricolture struments and began to be masters in Kobudo....tonfa sai nunchaku and bo are the most known...meanwhile Iaido and Kyuodo were learned in Japan (
samurai).
In many tournemnts there are kobudo categories katas.
Personally I learned an old okinawan Bo kata.
From Jujitsu in Japan Higoro Kano transformed in Judo as a sport and
became an olimpic sport.
I think that Kendo grown in Japan coming from the ia jitsu kumite'
with swords...but kendo allows to do kumite' without bad injuries.
Unfortanly the japanese styles and senseis divided mordern karate
and grown 1000s of federations in alll the world...and lost the opportunity to be reconized by the Cio olympic games.
They lost power....and Taekwondo took the opportunity in Korea olympic games and reconized.
I am not sure but I think there are more karate praticants in the world than Taekwondo.
But politics are more important sometime than numbers.
have all a nice day
Ippolito
Mandylion said:
I'm sorry if this is old hat (or even if it is wrong) but here is what I have come to understand - I'll try and find some reliable sources for you to look at later ("web" and "reliable" often don't go hand in hand). Please correct me if I am mistaken.
I have no idea how martial arts made the jump from China to Japan, but I would imagine there was some form of martial arts in Japan - imported fro China or no - well before Buddhism arrived in the 7th century AD. Japan by that time had an advanced political and military structure and it would stand to reason some fighting systems of their own - not 100% unique systems, but ones that could be said to be Japanese. The bow - kyujutsu or kyudo in the modern period - has been documented as becoming more than just a hunting tool aroudn 250 BC. I woudn't have any problem saying the introduction of Buddhism had some sort of impact on Japanese arts.
However, we don't really see a strong bond between Buddhism and the martial arts until much later. Even then, we still see an emphasis in most arts in the "jutsu" or technique of fighting, than the "do" or means of person development (a stronger transition to the use of "do" didn't happen until the fairly peaceful Tokugawa Shogunates). Basic forms were probably developed much earlier, but what we think of as kendo, judo, aikido etc. would need to be traced back much, much further to find concrete links to China. Right now that is beyond my resources....