The Olympics thing though.. it was only put in there as a showcase thing as it really didn't make the cut; TKD beat them to the count. Though, as a karate person of 40 odd years training, I don't think the Olympics would do karate any favours, after all, judo was an Olympic sport back in the 60's and in Europe it's still a minority sport, so no silver bullet there.
If you watch sport karate now, it's not so different from Olympic fencing, very far removed from what it could possibly be and was in the past in Japan.
Karate, aikido and other fancy martial arts might look cool but were never effective for fighting. Decades before MMA made this clear to everybody, thai boxers were wiping the floor with karateka. That's because karate pioneers avoided full contact and even light sparring so not even high dan practitioners knew how to actually fight. This is something that Kyokushinkan Karate tried to remedy but most other styles of karate remained divorced from practicality. At least wushu folk usually admit that what they do is more of a martial dance than a martial sport.
Also Japan was cool in the 80's after an era of economic and technological successes so they could sell the story of quasi-mystical geriatrics who kick ass, but few are buying anymore that Mr Miyagi would defeat Conor McGregor.
When running a school as a business, so that you can have income while training, many students are going to be on the health track, not the fighting track. I was lucky to see both tracks in the karate styles I studied, perhaps because there were ex-military, cops, ex-cons, and MMA fighters among the instructors. People could choose either the health or the fighting path, and Darwin award for whoever forgot which way they chose.
Our instructors tested themselves in MMA because they felt the need to prove that the techniques really work.
The Thai boxers I knew in school were true street fighters, and as the ones who were still breathing and not disabled, they were obviously very tough.
I'm convinced that most traditional karate styles are effective for fighting, for those who train for the purpose of fighting.
(I do wonder if some other instructors bothered to teach their students what the moves in kata were for.)
Nope, you're not too harsh for what often happened to U.S. martial arts related to Karate.
People need to have realism to know what they're getting out of their particular level of training. If you do it at as an avocation, (as I did for many years,) you of course can't kick butt like the people who train 8 hours a day. But it gets you in great shape and helps hugely with agility.
Some people get accustomed to Hollywood fight choreography that defies the laws of physics, get over inflated expectations, and they say and do stupid things. Darwin awards are for that. :-D
I worked with this guy at the University of Hong Kong who does a lot with Korean cinema and kung fu. Might be interesting to check out his work. I wonder the differences in Korea and Japan (now) in terms of karate and other martial arts. I really don't know! In any case, this guy used to do demos in the middle of lectures. I guess anybody can make it hip again :) thanks for an interesting post!
i did karate as a kid.. and then later did brazilian jujitsu and muay thai...
But the general feeling was.. if i were to get in a 'real' fight that karate would be far less practical. And my main goal with the whole thing was to be ready for 'real fights'.
I have a feeling a lot of folks that once did karate perhaps think along these lines
Yes, you hit many of the points I had written in this post from my own Substack, https://budojourneyman.substack.com/p/has-karate-got-an-image-problem
The Olympics thing though.. it was only put in there as a showcase thing as it really didn't make the cut; TKD beat them to the count. Though, as a karate person of 40 odd years training, I don't think the Olympics would do karate any favours, after all, judo was an Olympic sport back in the 60's and in Europe it's still a minority sport, so no silver bullet there.
If you watch sport karate now, it's not so different from Olympic fencing, very far removed from what it could possibly be and was in the past in Japan.
Karate, aikido and other fancy martial arts might look cool but were never effective for fighting. Decades before MMA made this clear to everybody, thai boxers were wiping the floor with karateka. That's because karate pioneers avoided full contact and even light sparring so not even high dan practitioners knew how to actually fight. This is something that Kyokushinkan Karate tried to remedy but most other styles of karate remained divorced from practicality. At least wushu folk usually admit that what they do is more of a martial dance than a martial sport.
Also Japan was cool in the 80's after an era of economic and technological successes so they could sell the story of quasi-mystical geriatrics who kick ass, but few are buying anymore that Mr Miyagi would defeat Conor McGregor.
When running a school as a business, so that you can have income while training, many students are going to be on the health track, not the fighting track. I was lucky to see both tracks in the karate styles I studied, perhaps because there were ex-military, cops, ex-cons, and MMA fighters among the instructors. People could choose either the health or the fighting path, and Darwin award for whoever forgot which way they chose.
Our instructors tested themselves in MMA because they felt the need to prove that the techniques really work.
The Thai boxers I knew in school were true street fighters, and as the ones who were still breathing and not disabled, they were obviously very tough.
I'm convinced that most traditional karate styles are effective for fighting, for those who train for the purpose of fighting.
(I do wonder if some other instructors bothered to teach their students what the moves in kata were for.)
Nope, you're not too harsh for what often happened to U.S. martial arts related to Karate.
People need to have realism to know what they're getting out of their particular level of training. If you do it at as an avocation, (as I did for many years,) you of course can't kick butt like the people who train 8 hours a day. But it gets you in great shape and helps hugely with agility.
Some people get accustomed to Hollywood fight choreography that defies the laws of physics, get over inflated expectations, and they say and do stupid things. Darwin awards are for that. :-D
I worked with this guy at the University of Hong Kong who does a lot with Korean cinema and kung fu. Might be interesting to check out his work. I wonder the differences in Korea and Japan (now) in terms of karate and other martial arts. I really don't know! In any case, this guy used to do demos in the middle of lectures. I guess anybody can make it hip again :) thanks for an interesting post!
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003240204-3/dubbese-fu-kung-fu-wave-aesthetics-imperfect-lip-synchronization-aaron-han-joon-magnan-park
i did karate as a kid.. and then later did brazilian jujitsu and muay thai...
But the general feeling was.. if i were to get in a 'real' fight that karate would be far less practical. And my main goal with the whole thing was to be ready for 'real fights'.
I have a feeling a lot of folks that once did karate perhaps think along these lines