Karate (空手)
Karate (空手) is
a form of martial art. It was developed by the hands of Ryukyu Kingdom in the Okinawa Islands.
History
In contemporary world, Karate is now being practiced as a striking art using punching, kicking, knee strikes, elbow
strikes and open-hand techniques such as knife-hands, spear-hands and
palm-heel strikes.
It also involves use of various traditional Japanese Weapons like Nunchucks, Tonfa, Bo, etc.
A karate practitioner in Japanese is called a karateka (空手家), and its plural
is "karateka" or "karatekas".
Etymology
The word karate comes from two kanji (Kanji are the
Chinese characters used in the Japanese writing system) characters, Kara空and te手. Kara means
"empty" and te means "hand." Hence, Karate is can be translated as "empty hands" referring to the fact that a karateka, learns to defend oneself without the use of
weapons or empty handed.
However, at the same time, the character for kara was also written as "China", giving karate the original
meaning of "China hand". Thus, reflecting China's early influence on the
Japanese martial arts.
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