The demise of Karate

How the sport took over the world and lost its groove

When did karate become uncool?

My initial theory is that at least some time before Dwight Schrute’s yellow belt exploits. So we’re off to an early start of 2005. It’s around this time that it was a pretty universally lame activity, with Archer famously calling karate the Dane Cook of martial arts.

I will caveat that I’m only speaking for people in the decadent West, but karate used to be cool, right? To pinpoint exactly when this drop off happened, we should understand: what even is karate?

Karate as a kid

More than just the karate chop, karate is a martial art that originated in Okinawa, Japan, in the late 19th century. It’s difficult to trace at what point the Okinawan edition evolved from their roots as a form of Chinese Kung Fu, but the idea was to create a weaponless martial art. It’s in the name karate, directly translating to empty hand. Helpfully all starting with k, karate has three pillars, kihon (fundamentals), kata (form), and kumite (combat/sparring).

Sure, these days the idea of registering your hands as lethal weapons is seen as a joke, but it was the weaponless nature of karate that launched it into stardom. Prior to 1945, karate was not uncool, just unknown on the main islands of Japan. It was seen as a niche but slowly growing martial art in Japan, behind much more widely practiced judo, aikido and kendo.

During Allied (really just US) occupation of Japan immediately following WWII, everyone was still very afraid of Japan. The occupying General MacArthur expressly forbade other traditional martial arts including judo and kendo due to them being too militaristic. He was right too, considering the many subsequent wars started by judo aficionados.

Karate somehow escaped this blanket ban since President Ohama (not that one… President Ohama presided over Waseda University in Tokyo) had a stern word with General MacArthur on the value of karate, focused on the "kumite (sparring)” aspect. Ohama spoke of it as “boxing with kicks”, and like boxing, it was a gentleman’s sport. Convinced that karate was pure, MacArthur even implemented it as an exercise regime in schools and universities.

Kickpuncher 2: Codename Punchkicker

By mid-century, karate was finally finding its place in the dojo. It became formalised in 1949 when the Japan Karate Association joined disparate university karate clubs and dojos all together, like the meeting of mafia families in The Godfather. With a governing body in Japan, the sport started on its global quest. While becoming more widely known, Karate was still not discussed outside of practitioners, so was still underground.

Even among people who didn’t learn martial arts for the fashion, the coloured belts were still a big incentive for people to join. For the uninitiated, different coloured belts signify different expertise levels. It was not even a system started by karate (it began with Judo), but it was adopted wisely in the mid 1950’s by several karate organisations. They knew that a clearly defined goal setting system spoke to the type of people who would diligently practice a kata (series of fight actions). The myth-making of how different colours symbolise different stages was assigned later still, and helped draw in those who see all Eastern traditions as wise and ancient.

The Peak of Karate

Karate was introduced via the pipeline of Allied soldiers returning home and bringing whatever they could sell to their hometowns. Many had joined in through classes taught on US military bases, and wanted to share their hobby back home. This led to the first dojos being established outside Japan, and pretty soon the World Karate Federation was set up in the cultural and classical heart of karate, the Spanish capital, Madrid.

The sport’s popularity was turbo charged by Hong Kong Kung Fu movies. First Bruce Lee and then his imitators all cracked the code in appealing to American audiences (and so it followed, global), planting the idea that Asian men could be cool. This gave martial arts the fuel they needed; if you wanted to be as cool as your on-screen idol, just sign up at your local karate hall. Since it was America in the 1970’s, it didn’t matter that karate and kung fu were different martial arts from different countries. As long there was kicking and some yelling involved, students were satisfied they’d be able to fight hundreds with just their bare hands.

Photo by Man Chung on Unsplash

It is an obvious tentpole, but I would suggest that karate was at its peak of coolness just after The Karate Kid was released in 1984. It was the first time an American-made martial arts movie was popular, and it was set in a suburban dojo (not unlike the one near you!). Prior to 1984, US dojos primarily catered to “serious” karate athletes, so the benchmark quality of training was high. People were hooked by the movies, could go to their local gym and find karate being practiced that was even better than on screen.

McDojo

The influx of karate kid registrations in the mid 80’s was too much for the existing karate infrastructure to bear. The three pillared focus focused on teaching beginners the “kihon (fundamentals)”. Halls were packed with kids that were ready to fight (and didn’t find fun in the fundamentals). To every problem, a solution presents itself.

Just have crappier coaches! For many who watched the Karate Kid, the takeaway was that your belt colour defined how competent you were at the sport. Since karate classes aren’t audited with much (or any) scrutiny, less reputable coaches became the equivalent of diploma mills. As long as you had the dough, you had access to the dough-jo.

This format of poor education for an unclear grading system is obviously not just limited to karate. Even in more “important” parts of life like academia, financial due diligence or peer review publication, there are so many ways to artificially boost results and skip past rigorous examination.

Other martial arts also faced this problem but karate was just unlucky to be the popular choice for the fraudsters, since it was so enmeshed in popular culture. Credit goes to the fraudsters themselves too, innovating many tactics to get as many sign-ups as possible, while contributing as little as possible. If they had spent half as much time thinking of how to better their students rather than bilk them, maybe karate wouldn’t have suffered its downfall.

Tactics perfected by these McDojos include:

• Belt factory- Increasing the number of coloured belts so everyone felt like some sort of a master. The belt ceremonies were a great revenue stream in addition to the mandatory purchasing of enough multi coloured belts to clothe the cast of a musical (Joseph and the technicolour dreambelt?).

• Instructor mill- Having all keen students on the path to becoming an instructor, even if they weren’t actually suitable. Also resulting in very young “grandmasters”, available in every town.

• Non contact karate- A tactic that appeals to people who don’t want the “martial” in “martial arts”. This misses the whole kimune (sparring) pillar.

• Telecommunication karate- While I’m all for remote work, learning karate via video is more aerobics than combat training.

• Deadly system- Capturing the same energy as a get-rich-quick scheme where you can “make millions with one simple trick”, some shoddier dojos promise to teach you how to vanquish your enemies with “one touch”.

MMA (Mixed Messaging Again)

Karate’s fall cannot be pinned solely on the hundreds of exploitative trainers who took advantage of everybody who wanted to be kung fu fighting. The elephant in the room that caused self-proclaimed karate masters to lose a lot of their street credibility (I’ve lost it by typing the full word out) was the rise of MMA, UFC, and other arts on the rise.

By creating a real life Super Smash Bros tournament and pitting fighters from different disciplines together to find “the ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPION!!”, UFC put an end to the question every twelve year old boy asks: “who would win in a fight?” Almost always, the answer was the ground fighting Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner, and not the karate master.

This dampened the enthusiasm shown by those who wanted to use karate to fight real street battles. The mystique of the unbeatable masters was also rudely stripped away when videos started circulating of karate masters being beaten until submission (just search “Karate master fail” on Youtube). While the early promise of Ultimate Fighting was to show different experts across global styles of fighting, what emerged was a sport where every fighter seems to be varying degrees of the same kickboxing and grappling composite.

Grappling with reality

I would pinpoint the lowest point of karate in 2006, with a perfect intersection of several threads.

1. Those kids who were enrolled in the McDojos had grown up and had not realised their training didn’t actually qualify them as fighters.

2. Video sharing suddenly had become much easier with the rise of Youtube.

3. Those same kids had a propensity to share and upload videos, which were unfortunately of a quality that repelled others from joining.

4. MMA became mainstream.

5. Crass commercialisation (which relegated the once proud Okinawan tradition to this).

Despite all this, karate isn’t dead yet. True, the revival of karate’s image didn’t happen in 2010 like we all thought, when Willow Smith’s brother starred in a remake of The Karate Kid with Jackie Chan. Instead, modern-day karate has re-emerged away from the Hollywood spotlight.

Rather than repeating past mistakes of forgoing one or more of the three pillars of karate, western dojos are embracing all three to keep karate afloat. The kihon (fundamentals) ensures that practitioners don’t look like fools. The kata (form) has allowed many to embrace the forgotten beauty of the body movements. The kimune (sparring) ensures the martial art actually has some combat value.

A committed karate following has rebuilt the community and rehabilitated some of the sport’s image. It has been tough going but the 2020 (2021) Tokyo Olympics became a sturdy platform for unappreciated sports, and was when karate finally debuted at the Games. More mainstream acceptance of the sport seems to have returned through its cultural and artistic roots, which I think is a better way of building a devoted following.

If you’re keen to kick and punch the karate way, or you’ve been doing it for years, let us know, and let me know whether I’ve been too harsh on karate.