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空手 karate Karate - Empty Hand

Japanese Scroll of Karate [Empty Hand] (karate) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
空手 Original Scroll by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Abstract

空手 is two words that share their characters: the older is an ordinary word for empty-handed, in Japanese from the 日本書紀 of 720, and a Zen line, Dōgen 道元's I came home empty-handed of 1236; the younger is the name of the Okinawan fighting art, written 唐手, Tang hand, and already read karate in print by about 1900, in Kadekaru's account of Okinawa, so that the change of spelling changed the character and not the sound. The Keiō University club of Funakoshi Gichin 船越義珍's students dates its declaration of the new name to 20 October 1929, and Funakoshi's book of 1935 put 空手 in its title and gave his reasons in his own voice: 唐 had been taken in an age that admired China, it wrongly suggested Chinese boxing, the art had now become Japan's, and 空 carried the bare hand and the Buddhist emptiness. In Okinawa in 1936 唐手 was still the common name and the island's Butokukai branch said 唐手道, while at a newspaper's round table Miyagi Chōjun and Shiroma Shinpan spoke for 空手. Several English books since the 1970s credit the change to Japanese nationalism and feeling against China; the wish for a Japanese name is in Funakoshi's own reasons, the Keiō club in 1936 called the old names of the forms reeking of China, and none of the Japanese witnesses of 1922–1958 read here says in so many words that the change was made against China, though the historian Kadekaru reads it as part of a turning away from Chinese culture.

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Overview

The sense. Two words, one spelling. デジタル大辞泉 enters から‐て【空手／唐手】 with two senses: 手に何も持っていないこと。また、力となる武器や財産を持っていないこと。素手, having nothing in one's hands; also, having no weapon or property to rely on; bare-handed; and 沖縄に伝来した中国明代の拳法が、沖縄の古武道と合体して発達した武術。徒手空拳で身を守り、相手を制する格闘術, a martial art that developed when Chinese boxing of the Ming reached Okinawa and merged with Okinawa's old martial arts; a fighting art of defending oneself and mastering an opponent with bare hands and empty fists [1]. 精選版 日本国語大辞典 keeps them apart: から‐て【空手】 is empty-handed only, and the art stands under から‐て【唐手・空手】, with 唐手 written first [1][2]. The same two characters have three older readings, each its own word: くうしゅ, having nothing in one's hands, the reading under which the dictionary files its Buddhist and literary examples; むなで or むなしで, the reading of the 日本書紀 (デジタル大辞泉 quotes むなで also from the 古事記, 〈記・中〉); and そらで, a pain in the arm for no reason [1]. In English today karate is the art, and empty-handed the old word; the Japanese word on the scroll is both at once, and a reader of Japanese sees both.

The words. 空, empty, the sky, and in Buddhist use the emptiness, śūnyatā, of all things: デジタル大辞泉 gives くう【空】 as 天と地との間, the space between heaven and earth; as 《〈梵〉śūnyaの訳》仏語。すべての事物はみな因縁によってできた仮の姿で、永久不変の実体や自我などはないということ, translating Sanskrit śūnya, a Buddhist word: that all things are provisional forms arising from causes, with no abiding substance or self; and as 何も存在しないこと, nothing being there; and its character entry lists 空手 under the reading から [1]. 手, hand. The reading karate is Japanese, から for 空 and て for 手. The art's older spelling puts 唐 in the first place, the Tang dynasty and, in Japanese, China and the foreign in general: デジタル大辞泉 derives から from the name of a state on the Korean peninsula, 朝鮮・中国の古称。多く、中国をさす。また、中世以降、広く外国のこと, an old name for Korea and China, mostly China, and from the Middle Ages foreign lands broadly, and the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 traces it to 伽羅 in the 日本書紀 [3]. So 唐手 and 空手 are homophones, both karate, and the change between them was a change of character that left the word's sound as it was. In Okinawan, 唐手 was read tōdī or tōdi [4][1].

The text in English. The Meiji dictionaries have only the old word: Hepburn in 1867 lists karate only as a synonym under te-buri, 手振, empty-handed, and from 1872 enters it as Empty handed, in kana, with no characters [5][6][7]. Kenkyūsha's dictionary of 1942 still gives only An empty hand … Empty-handed [8]. The art enters the Japanese-English dictionaries after the war: Kenkyūsha in 1974 has karate(-jutsu), the Ryukyuan art of self-defense, spelled 唐手(術) with 空 set beside 唐 in the dictionary's own square brackets as the alternative first character [9]. JMdict gives 空手 and 唐手 together, karate, and then being empty-handed [10].

The historical record

Second century BCE, the memorial of Chao Cuo 晁錯, in the 漢書. The Chinese word, in a statesman's advice on war with the Xiongnu: 兵不完利，與空手同, if the weapons are not whole and sharp, it is the same as going empty-handed [11]. 空手 here is two words, empty and hand, the condition of a soldier with nothing to fight with.

594, Zhiyi 智顗, the 摩訶止觀. The Buddhist proverb, in the chapter on the five hindrances, under sleep: 莫以睡眠因緣失二世樂，徒生徒死，無一可獲。如入寶山，空手而歸，深可傷歎, do not lose the joy of two lives through sleep, living and dying in vain with nothing gained; it is like going into a mountain of treasure and coming back empty-handed, deeply to be lamented [12]. The Meiji proverb dictionaries carry the line as a saying.

720, the 日本書紀. The earliest of the 精選版 日本国語大辞典's dated first examples of the word written 空手, in the tale of the two brothers who trade their hunting and fishing gear: 倶不得利。空手來歸, neither caught anything, and they came back empty-handed [13]. The reading traditions of the text gloss 空手 in Japanese as ムナシデ and ムナテ, with empty hands, and the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 gives this line, in the 寛文版 and 鴨脚本 readings, as the first example of each [1].

785, Saichō 最澄, the 願文. The young monk's vow: 釈尊遮闡提、得人身徒不作善業、聖教嘖空手, Śākyamuni turns away the icchantika; to gain a human body and do no good work in vain is what the holy teaching rebukes as empty hands [14][1]. The dictionary files this under the Sino-Japanese reading くうしゅ, which is the reading of the word in Buddhist Japanese.

1236, Dōgen, the 永平廣錄. Dōgen's first sermon at Kōshōji, on the tenth month of 嘉禎二年, after his return from China: 山僧歷叢林不多、只是等閑見天童先師。當下認得眼橫鼻直、不被人瞞。便乃空手還鄕。所以一毫無佛法, this mountain monk did not go through many monasteries; I only happened to meet my late teacher Tiantong, recognized on the spot that the eyes are across and the nose is down, and was not deceived by anyone; so I came home empty-handed, and therefore I have not a hair of Buddhism [15]. A Zen book of 1915 gives the reading of the line in its ruby, 空手還鄕(くうしゆくわんきやう), and glosses it in plain Japanese, 空らんぽにて歸鄕, coming home with nothing, setting it against the traveler who comes back from abroad with his luggage full [16]. In Zen 空手 is くうしゅ, and the emptiness of the hands is the point: what Dōgen brought back was not a thing.

1586–1599 and 1809, からて in speech. The reading karate for the old word is Japanese and early modern. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典 gives its first use in a sermon collection of the late sixteenth century, the 巨海代抄: 爰で徳山かの得手の白棒は奪はれつ、手持ちがなさにから手摩で居られた, here Deshan had his favorite white staff taken from him, and having nothing to hold, stood rubbing his empty hands; and it gives a kabuki line of 1809, それぢゃあお頭、空手かえ, so, chief, you've come empty-handed? [1]. からて in the sense of empty-handed is the plain word of this period, and a form からって is in a comic verse of 1772 [1].

About 1690–1691, Bashō 芭蕉, the 笈の小文. On setting out on foot with no possessions, as a print of 1925 sets the line: 猶栖を去りて器物の願ひなし。空手なれば途中の憂ひもなし, having left my dwelling I want for no utensils; with nothing in my hands, I have no worry on the road [17]. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典 quotes it with 愁 for 憂ひ, dates it about 1690–91, and files it under くうしゅ [1]. The print gives no ruby on 空手, so how Bashō read it is not recorded.

1714, 唐手 as craftwork. Before it named an art, 唐手 was a word of its own, 中国流の細工, craftwork in the Chinese manner, which the dictionary quotes from a popular book of 1714: 四条通にては青貝細工の唐手を仕出し, on Shijō street they turn out mother-of-pearl work in the Chinese manner [2]. 唐 here is the foreign and fashionable, the sense the art's name would carry.

1743–1745, the 球陽. The Ryūkyū kingdom's chronicle, compiled in Chinese by the royal historians [18], tells in its entry for the reign of Shō Shin 尚真 of the courtier Kyō Ahagon Jikki 京阿波根實基, whom the king, jealous of his fame, had attacked by a boy with a dagger at a tea gathering. As the Okinawan historian Shimabukuro Gen'ichirō 島袋源一郎 gave it in Japanese in 1941: 實基手に寸鐵なく、只空手を以て童子の兩股を折破り, Jikki had not an inch of iron in his hands, and with his empty hands alone broke both the boy's thighs [19]. Shimabukuro offered it as the place to look if one wants 空手 in the official history, and added at once 或は是れ單に素手と云ふ意味であるかも知れない、しかし徒手空拳の偉大なる力を發揮してゐることは事實である, perhaps this simply means bare-handed, but it is a fact that it shows the great power of bare hands and empty fists [19]. As written, it is the old word, used of a man who fought without a weapon.

1838 and 1867, the investiture celebrations. The Okinawan art under its old name. Andreas Quast, writing in McCarthy's Bubishi of 2016, notes that the record of the celebrations for the Chinese envoys of 1838 names a display of 唐棒, in his English Chinese cudgel, on eight occasions and 唐手 not at all [20]. Kadekaru Tōru 嘉手苅徹, in a paper of 2011, gives as the earliest known 唐手 the program of the celebration held in 1867, the year after the last king, Shō Tai 尚泰, received his investiture from the Chinese emperor, 「三六九並諸芸番組」, as printed in the collected works of Shimabukuro Zenpatsu 島袋全発 in 1956 [4].

About 1900 to 1905, 唐手 read karate. The same paper: 「唐手」は、沖縄語では「トーディー」と読むが、明治30年代初頭から新聞や教育関係雑誌では「唐手(からて)」とルビが振られて記載された, 唐手 is read tōdī in the Okinawan language, but from the beginning of the Meiji 30s newspapers and educational journals printed it with the ruby からて, that is, from about 1897–1900; and in 1905 it entered the prefectural middle school as a regular part of physical education [4]. So, in Kadekaru's account, the reading karate was attached to 唐手 a generation before the earliest known 空手 for the art in the National Diet Library's full-text search, of 1922.

1905, Hanashiro Chōmo 花城長茂, 空手組手 (reported). The English books and the English Wikipedia give Hanashiro, an Okinawan teacher, as the first to write the art 空手, in a text titled 空手組手 of 1905 [21][22]. The source the English Wikipedia names is a book of 1938, 『空手道大観』, edited by Nakasone Genwa 仲宗根源和, at page 64 [23]; McCarthy and Stevens name none. The 1905 text itself has not been found in any library catalogue searched here, and what it says is known only from that report; Hanashiro's own words of 1936 are under that year.

1915, Takahashi Takuya 高橋琢也, 『起テ沖縄男子』. A book by an author who had served in the prefectural government of Okinawa, urging its young men to action. He dismisses a mainland visitor's fear that 沖繩人ハ那覇ニ於テモ夜間唐手ヲ以テ人ヲ斃シ所持品ヲ奪フ, Okinawans in Naha knock people down at night with karate and rob them, and later offers the art as proof of Okinawan courage: 彼ノ空擧ヲ揮ツテ對手ヲ斃ス唐手術ノ如キ [24]. The print sets 擧, to raise, where the sense and the set phrase 空拳ヲ揮フ want 拳, fist, a character of like shape; read so, such as that art of 唐手 in which one strikes down an opponent with the empty fist. The empty fist is the description of the art, and 唐手 is its name.

1922, Funakoshi Gichin, 『唐手 琉球拳法』. The book Kadekaru names as the first, 嚆矢, of the more than twenty on the art published before the war, most of them by Okinawans [4], published in Tokyo by the Okinawan teacher who wrote his name 富名腰 in his early books [1]. Its title writes 唐手. It has two prefaces. The first, by the naval captain Kanna Kenwa 漢那憲和, ends on page 4; the second, headed 序 on page 5 and signed on page 7 by the army colonel Oka Chikamatsu 岡千賀松 at the Army Toyama School, 15 August 1922, opens 琉球に空手術なるものあるを聞くや久し, I had long heard that there is in the Ryūkyūs an art called karate-jutsu, with the character for empty, and on the next page writes the art 唐手術 [25]. In the National Diet Library's full-text search read oldest first, it is the earliest 空手術 that names the art: every earlier hit read is a misreading of other characters.

1925, 唐手 and 空手 side by side. A physiology textbook of 1925, on the arts of the body: 尙近來、唐手術といふ琉球獨特の護身術が流行し始めてゐる。唐手は空手に通じ、一拳よく猛虎を斃すべく、鍊膽護身の術として柔道以上の價値あると言はれてゐる, lately an art of self-defense peculiar to the Ryūkyūs called 唐手術 has come into fashion; 唐手 is linked with empty-handed, a single fist can fell a fierce tiger, and as an art for steeling the nerve and guarding the body it is said to be worth more than jūdō [26]. The same year Funakoshi published his second book, 『錬膽護身唐手術』; its English translator of 2001 notes that in two sentences of the preface the text sets the characters for Chinese hand, the title's, in brackets and follows them at once with the characters for empty hand, which he calls the author's insistence [27]. In 1926 Motobu Chōki 本部朝基, on page 4 of his book on sparring, under its first heading, wrote 唐手卽ち空手, 唐手, that is, 空手 [28].

1929 and 1930, Keiō. Kadekaru: 本土では、1929(昭和4)年頃から「唐手」は「空手道」へと変遷していく, on the mainland, from about 1929, 唐手 changes into 空手道 [4]. Funakoshi's own account, in his memoir of 1956, is that the chance came when Keio University formed a karate research group, and I was able then to suggest that the art be renamed Dai Nippon Kempo Karate-dō ("Great Japan Fist-Method Empty-Hands Way"), making use of the character for "empty" rather than that for "Chinese." My suggestion initially elicited violent outbursts of criticism in both Tokyo and Okinawa [29]. The club gives the date itself. In the book it published in February 1936, subtitled for the tenth anniversary of its founding, the Keiō University karate club says that at its fifth-anniversary autumn meet, on 20 October 1929, it declared, ahead of others, that 唐手術 would be called 空手道, and, in another window, that the university, 義塾, had changed 唐手 to 空手 ahead of others; one section of the same book dates the step, outwardly, 對外的には, to 1930, and says that the old name 唐手術 had been given out of the Okinawans' fervor for 唐, 沖繩人の唐崇拜熱 [30]. Another window, whose subject the snippet does not show, says that the characters 唐手, in use for some hundreds of years, were officially changed to 空手, and that the old name was, it is thought, given out of a worship of 唐 [30]. The book is known here from the full-text search's snippets only. The university's own guide, issued on 25 December 1929, still lists the club as 慶應義塾唐手研究會　大正十三年創立、琉球古來の拳法唐手術の研究を目的とす, the Keiō 唐手 Research Society, founded 1924, for the study of 唐手術, the boxing of Ryūkyū from of old [31]. A club list can be carried forward from an earlier compilation, so the guide is in tension with the club's date and does not refute it. By 1930 the group printed its name with 空: the first number of its magazine 『こぶし』, published that year by the 慶應義塾空手研究會, the Keiō 空手 Research Society, carried an article on 空, as Kadekaru cites it in his thesis of 2017 [32]. The encyclopedia's history of the art puts the change in the early Shōwa years, by Funakoshi and Keiō together [1].

1927 to 1930, the First Higher School's 唐手研究會. The record of the karate club of Tokyo's 第一高等学校, printed in the school's dormitory history of 1930, opens with an undated preamble written in the full language of the period: the three thousand years of the imperial nation, 皇國三千年, the martial spirit, 尙武, 天下の士. It writes the art 唐手 throughout, and the idea of empty hands is there only as a phrase, 赤手空拳, red hands and empty fists; its chronicle then runs from the club's founding in June 1927, with 富名腰 as its teacher [33]. Among its entries for 1929 it records 十月二十日慶應唐手研究會五周年紀念大會に臨み, on 20 October we attended the fifth-anniversary meet of the Keiō 唐手 Research Society: the meet at which, on the Keiō club's own dating, the new name was declared, recorded by another Tokyo school's club under the old name and with no word of a declaration [33]. Whatever the mood of the decade did to the name, it did not prevent a club in the capital from writing 唐 in prose full of the imperial nation and the martial spirit.

1934, the reference works and the Emperor's tournament. The dictionary 広辞林 of 1934 enters two words, each headword から-て followed by its spelling in the dictionary's square brackets: 空手, 手に何物をも持たぬこと。てぶら, having nothing in one's hands, and 唐手, 琉球特有の空拳を用ふる格鬪術、支那の拳法に淵源し、柔術に類すれど手法頗る危險, a fighting art peculiar to the Ryūkyūs using the empty fist, with its source in Chinese boxing, resembling jūjutsu but with very dangerous techniques [34]. The Imperial Household Ministry's own book of the Emperor's tournament of 1934 lists, among the martial arts practiced in the country, 唐手術 with the ruby からてじゅつ [35]. In these two books of 1934 the art is read karate and written 唐.

1935, Funakoshi, 『空手道教範』. Among the books under Funakoshi's name in the National Diet Library's catalogue, the first with 空手 in its title, and under the new name 空手道; the catalogue lists his 『錬膽護身唐手術』 of 1925 again in 1928 and 1932, under 唐. In the Japanese, as Kadekaru quotes it from the first edition of 1935 under its heading 唐と空, Tang and empty, the decision reads 著者も旧慣に従って従来は『唐手』の字を用いて来たが、支那拳法と同一視される事があり、沖縄の武術『から手』と言わんよりも、既に日本の武術『から手』となっている今日、『唐手』の字を当てる事は甚だ不見識、且つ、不適当と思われるので、世と推し移ると言う意味を以て、今後は『唐』字を廃して『空』字に改める事にした, I too, following old custom, have used the characters 唐手 until now; but it is sometimes taken to be the same as Chinese boxing, and today, when the art is already the Japanese martial art karate rather than the Okinawan one, to write it 唐手 seems most injudicious and unsuitable; so, in the sense of moving with the times, from now on I have decided to drop the character 唐 and change it to 空 [32]. The book renames the forms on the same ground: it would not carry over 支那風の不可解な呼称, unintelligible Chinese-style names, for forms that had become wholly our country's 空手 [32]. In its English translation of 2012, which renders this first edition, Funakoshi first explains the old spelling: there was a time when people had a craze, enthusiasm, and admiration for China, and people deliberately started using the Chinese characters of "Táng" and "hand" … in order to add prestige to this particular martial art [36]. Then: Even I continued to use the character "Táng-hand" for kara-te because of this tradition. However, this mistakenly gives the impression that Okinawan kara-te and Chinese kempō are one and the same. Today this būjutsū (martial art) of Okinawa has even become the būjutsū of Japan. Therefore, it does not reflect good judgment to keep using the Chinese character of Táng for kara-te [36]. He then gives four meanings of 空: that the art defends using the bare hand and empty fist; that the student must empty his heart as a clear mirror reflects and an empty valley carries sound; that like the green bamboo he must be empty within, upright without, and have nodes; and, from Buddhist teaching, that all things that exist are impermanent, devoid of substantial reality, and are empty [36]. His reasons, then, are three, and a choice: 唐 had been taken for prestige in an age that admired China; it made the art look like Chinese boxing; the art had become Japan's, being aware of the changes the world is undergoing, in the English [36]; and 空 means what the art is.

1936, the Okinawan round table. Kadekaru: in 1936 a round table held by the newspaper 琉球新報, attended by karate masters, officials, soldiers and journalists, 「空手」に統一すべきと提案された, proposed that the name be unified as 空手 [4]. The newspaper's report of 26 October, as Kadekaru transcribes it in his thesis, ran under the headline 名称を"空手"に統一し, the name unified as 空手, and called the masters present 唐手道の大家, masters of 唐手道; at the place where it gives the agreement, its text as transcribed reads 唐手に統一するがよいと意見一致, agreed that it should be unified as 唐手, against its own headline [32]. In the second installment the masters speak for 空. A speaker the report records as 花城氏, Mr. Hanashiro (its list of those present has 玻名城朝茂, Chōmo, the given name of the Hanashiro Chōmo whom the English books credit with a 空手 of 1905), says that in the old days the art was called 唐手, tōde, or simply te, and then, 私の古い帳面にはみな空手と書いてある, in my old notebooks it is all written 空手. Miyagi Chōjun 宮城長順 says that people generally say 唐手 and so he uses it, but 文字の内容から「空手」がよいと思います, from what the characters say, I think 空手 is better, and 空手道 better still; and of the island's branch of the Dai Nippon Butokukai, 支部では「唐手道」と称している, the branch calls it 唐手道. Kyoda Jūhatsu 許田重發 asks that the name not be settled on the spot, since the people of the prefecture still know the art as 唐手 [32]. A year after Funakoshi's book, 唐手 was still Okinawa's common name and its Butokukai branch's, and of the masters whose words are read here, Miyagi was for 空手, Shiroma Shinpan 城間眞繁, in the third installment, said he wrote 拳法 and read it カラテ and that 空手 was the better spelling for a martial way without weapons, and Kyoda asked to wait [32].

1943, the pronunciation dictionary. A dictionary of Japanese accent of 1943 lists カラテ 空手 and カラテ 唐手 as separate entries, one after the other, and the art's longer form only as カラテジュツ 唐手術 [37]. Kadekaru's summary is that 唐手 did not disappear, and that some newspapers and books still used it during the war [4].

1956 and 1958, Funakoshi looking back. In the memoir of 1956 Funakoshi writes that before I came to Tokyo from Okinawa in the early 1920s, it was customary to use the character for "Chinese" rather than that for "empty" to write karate, that in Okinawa the art was more often called simply te or bushi no te, warrior's hand, and that people came to believe that karate was actually a form of the Chinese boxing art [29]. The second edition of the 『空手道教範』, of 1958, in its English translation of 1973, states the reason more sharply than the first: because of the frequent confusion with Chinese boxing, and the fact that the Okinawan martial art may now be considered a Japanese martial art, it is inappropriate, and in a sense degrading, to continue use of 唐 in the name. For this reason, in spite of many protests, we have abandoned the use of 唐 [38].

What is not a source. Dōgen's 空手還鄕 and the 摩訶止觀's 空手而歸 are the old word read くうしゅ, and Funakoshi, the one person who gave reasons for the new spelling in his own voice, cites neither: his Buddhist 空 is all things … are empty in 1935, and in 1956 Shiki-soku-ze-ku, 色即是空, form is emptiness, which he quotes from Buddhist scriptures; and his first meaning is the bare hand [36][29]. The Zen of the name is a later English reading [39]. The 球陽's 只空手 is the ordinary word, as its own modern reader allowed [19]. The derivation of から from the Korean state 伽羅 is the etymology of the character 唐's Japanese reading, not of the art [3].

The word in English

1867, 1872 and 1888, J. C. Hepburn. The first Japanese-English dictionary has no headword karate, and lists it only as a synonym at te-buri, 手振, Empty handed, behavior, manner, customs [5]. The second edition enters KARA-TE, カラテ, Empty handed. — de kita. Syn. TE-BURA, SUDE [6], and the fourth, of 1888, Karate カラテ Empty-handed: — de kita. Syn. TEBURA, SUDE, MUNASHIDE [7]. No edition gives characters for the word.

1936, Keiō University's English prospectus. The earliest known English karate for the art, in the Internet Archive's full text and the English books on our shelf, is in the university's own account of itself, in the list of the Physical Culture Association's branches: Judo, fencing (Japanese style), … basket-ball, Karate (Japanese art of bodily defence and offence), skiing, etc. [40]. It is the university whose club made 空手 its spelling, and its English gives the art no empty hand.

1942, Kenkyūsha. karate … n. An empty hand … Empty-handed [8]. The standard Japanese-English dictionary of the war years has the old word and not the art.

1960, Hidetaka Nishiyama and Richard C. Brown. The title Karate: The Art of "Empty Hand" Fighting puts the gloss in quotation marks in its title [41]. Empty hand as the English meaning of the art's name is, as far as this title and Etymonline's 1947 show, a post-war gloss.

1966, Masatoshi Nakayama. Funakoshi's pupil, in Dynamic Karate: My teacher, Funakoshi Gichin, changed the concept of karate-jitsu (literally, "Chinese hand techniques") to karate-dō (literally, "empty-hand ways") in 1935; and Funakoshi chose the character for its meaning in Zen Buddhist philosophy: "rendering oneself empty" [39]. The year is the book's, not the club's, and Zen is Nakayama's word; Funakoshi's own text of 1935 says Buddhist teaching and gives the bare hand first [36].

1973, Masutatsu Oyama. In This Is Karate, kara is traced to the Korean kingdom of Karak, and the change of spelling is dated: The change in written symbols from kara "Chinese" to kara "empty" occurred during the Second World War, when sentiment in Japan was opposed to using words that implied a debt to the Chinese [42]. The date is an error: the change was made in Tokyo by 1935 and proposed in Okinawa in 1936 [36][4]. The dictionaries that still wrote 唐手 in 1943 show only that general print was slower than the schools [37].

1974, Kenkyūsha. karate(-jutsu) … the Ryukyuan art of self-defense, spelled 唐手(術) with 空 in square brackets beside 唐 [9]: the art in the dictionary, with both spellings.

1995, John Stevens; Patrick McCarthy, first published that year. Two books give the explanation that the English literature has repeated since. McCarthy, quoted from the revised edition of 2008 of a book first published in 1995: the powerful forces of nationalism combined with anti-Chinese sentiment … propelled the karate-jutsu movement to reconsider a more appropriate ideogram, with Hanashiro's 1905 publication Karate Kumite as the first 空 and the new name ratified by the Dai Nippon Butokukai in December 1933 [21]. Stevens: As far back as 1905 a karate man named Chomo Hanashiro (1869–1945) had suggested the change, and the Keio University Karate Club actually made the substitution in 1929 … Undoubtedly Japanese nationalism also had something to do with the switch of characters [22]. Neither gives a source for the 1905 text or for the nationalism.

1998, G. Cameron Hurst III, Armed Martial Arts of Japan. A scholarly account that gives a Japanese source for the nationalist reading. In a note: When Funakoshi Gichin brought this Okinawan-style fighting art to Japan proper in the early 1920s, it was called todei (Chinese hand) in the Okinawan dialect. But the characters were soon pronounced karate, a rendering that sounded more Japanese but had the same meaning. It was apparently owing to nationalistic concerns that in 1929 the Keiō University karate club and then other karate clubs throughout Japan began to use the characters meaning "empty hand" to downplay the Chinese connection. Japan was already fighting in north China, and a decidedly anti-Chinese feeling was in the air, citing an essay by Fujiwara Ryōzō in the eighth volume of the 日本武道大系 [43]. The reading karate for 唐手 was not a Tokyo development of the 1920s: Okinawan print had carried it since about 1900 [4]. Hurst's apparently is the right word for the rest, and his source is named below among the sources not seen.

2016, Andreas Quast. In McCarthy's revised Bubishi, an English account of the name before 1900, with the absence of 唐手 in 1838 and its presence in 1866–67 [20]. Of the years since Itosu's maxims of 1908, in a paragraph that runs to 1936, Quast quotes, from the Japanese martial-arts historian Fujiwara Ryōzō (his note 114, Fujiwara 1990: 641), the kind of advice he says government agencies gave the Okinawan teachers: When viewed from the true spirit of Japanese Budo, the designation Karate (Chinese Hand) is not particularly favorable. How about you consider a different designation as a substitute for it? [20]. That is the pressure the nationalist reading needs, stated by a named historian with a source, and it is advice about Japanese budō, not a statement of Funakoshi's.

Etymonline. The online etymology dictionary dates English karate to 1947, literally "empty hand, bare hand", without a source [44]. The Keiō prospectus of 1936 is earlier, and does not say empty hand [40].

Today. JMdict gives 空手 and 唐手 as one entry, karate, with being empty-handed as a second sense [10]. This history renders the two characters empty hand. A rendering should keep both halves: the name is the art's, and the characters say empty hand, which for a thousand years before the art meant having nothing to hold.

A reading

The name was changed in writing and not in speech. By the earliest known 空手 for the art in the National Diet Library's full-text search, of 1922, Okinawa had been reading 唐手 as karate for a generation [4], and a word that already sounded like empty hand was waiting in the dictionaries [34]. That is why the change could be argued for by meaning at all: two characters with one sound, and a choice between what each says. The witnesses before Funakoshi show the choice being made in small ways, an army officer's preface in 1922, a physiologist's linked with empty-handed in 1925, Motobu's that is in 1926 [25][26][28], before a student club in Tokyo declared the new name in 1929 [30].

Funakoshi's reasons are the ones he wrote, and I read them as his. 唐, he says, was put on the art for prestige in an age when Okinawa looked up to China; it now made the art look like Chinese boxing, which he did not think it was; and the art had become Japan's, so that 唐 was most injudicious and unsuitable, and the change was made moving with the times [32][36]. 空 said what the art is, a fight without weapons, and what he wanted a student to be [36]. So the nationalist reading of the English books is not a later invention: a Japanese name for what had become a Japanese art is in his own reasons of 1935, and the Keiō club, in 1936, wrote of the Okinawans' fervor for 唐 and called the old names of the forms reeking of China [30]. By 1958 he calls the old character in a sense degrading and speaks of many protests [38], and Quast's source shows the advice the Okinawan teachers were given [20]. What none of these witnesses of the time says in so many words is that the change was made against China. Kadekaru, the Japanese historian read here at length, reads the renaming of the art and of its forms as no mere change of name but part of a 脱中国文化, a turning away from Chinese culture [32]: a historian's reading of 2017, and the strongest footing the nationalist reading has in what is read here. The patriotic language of the 1930s sat comfortably with 唐 in a Tokyo school club in 1930 and in the Emperor's own tournament book in 1934 [33][35], so the mood alone did not make the change; and the English accounts that make anti-Chinese feeling its cause rest, where they give a source at all, on the Japanese historian Fujiwara Ryōzō, whom Hurst and Quast both cite, in two different works this history has not read [43][20]. I read the change as Funakoshi gave it: a claim that the art was Japan's, made in the characters of its name. The cause as the English books state it is a report, not a finding. Oyama's during the Second World War is simply the wrong date [42].

On the scroll the word is both of its lives. It names the art, and it says empty hand, and Funakoshi chose it because it says that. The older lives, the soldier with no weapon, Dōgen coming home with nothing, Bashō walking with nothing to carry, are not where the art's name came from; they are what the two characters had already meant, and they are still in the word for any reader who knows it.

Notes

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Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Japanese Scroll of Karate [Empty Hand] (karate) in a block font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
空手VB2CBlock
Japanese Scroll of Karate [Empty Hand] (karate) in a cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
空手VC3BCursive
Japanese Scroll of Karate [Empty Hand] (karate) in Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's own style (Eri's Choice)
空手VD3BEri's Choice
Japanese Scroll of Karate [Empty Hand] (karate) in a semi-cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
空手VS3CSemi-Cursive

Sources not seen

仲宗根源和 編『空手道大観』, 東京図書, 1938, digitized by the National Diet Library (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1104139) and served only to readers registered in Japan; reprinted 2017 (CiNii Books, NCID BB24468096). It is the source the English Wikipedia gives, at page 64, for Hanashiro Chōmo's 空手組手 of 1905. It would settle what the 1905 text is, where it was written or printed, and whether its 空手 names the art or describes the hands.

船越義珍『空手道教範』, 大倉廣文堂, 1935, in the National Diet Library's catalogue (https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000000791255). The catalogue page links a digitized copy, pid 13176898, but that item's own record is a reprint of 1994 of Funakoshi's 『琉球拳法唐手』 of 1922, read in the library only; no digitized copy of the 1935 edition has been found. Its decision sentence is quoted here as Kadekaru quotes it [32]; the rest of the passage on the name, which this history quotes in the English of 2012, would settle the exact words of Funakoshi's reasons.

球陽研究会 編『球陽』 原文編・読み下し編, 角川書店, 1974, the edition the encyclopedias cite for the chronicle [18]. The Chinese original of the entry on Kyō Ahagon Jikki would settle whether the chronicle writes 空手 as Shimabukuro's Japanese gives it.

Fujiwara Ryōzō, the essay Hurst cites as Karatedo no rekishi, in 『日本武道大系』 第8巻 (空手道・合気道・少林寺拳法・太極拳), 同朋舎出版, 1982, pp. 28–29 (CiNii Books, https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1970304959935678875). It is the Japanese source Hurst gives for the nationalist reading of the renaming. It would settle whether that reading rests on a document of the 1920s and 1930s or on a historian's inference.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 「空手」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, 日本大百科全書 (小山正辰, 2019), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/空手-47195; 「空」, デジタル大辞泉 (くう【空】 and the character entry), at kotobank (https://kotobank.jp/word/空).
  2. 「唐手」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/唐手-2024860
  3. 「唐」, デジタル大辞泉 (から【唐／韓／漢】), 精選版 日本国語大辞典 (から【唐・韓・伽羅】), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/唐-103025
  4. 嘉手苅徹「空手の名称の変遷 ―②「唐手(からて)」から「空手道」への変容―」, 武道学研究 44 Supplement, 2011, p. S22. https://doi.org/10.11214/budo.44.s_22
  5. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary; with an English and Japanese Index, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1867, s.v. TE-BURI. Internet Archive japaneseenglishd00hepb. Read at the page image. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishd00hepb
  6. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, second edition, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1872, s.v. KARA-TE, scan 125. National Diet Library pid 993689. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/993689/1/125
  7. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition, Z. P. Maruya, Tokyo, 1888, s.v. Karate. Internet Archive japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft. Read at the page image. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
  8. Takenobu Yoshitarō, ed., Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, American edition, Harvard University Press, 1942, photolithographed from the printing of 1939, s.v. karate.
  9. Masuda Koh, ed., Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, Kenkyusha, Tokyo, 1974, p. 736, s.v. karate(-jutsu).
  10. 空手, JMdict, at jisho.org. https://jisho.org/search/空手
  11. 『漢書』 卷四十九 爰盎晁錯傳, at the Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/漢書/卷049
  12. 智顗『摩訶止觀』 卷四, Taishō 46, no. 1911, p. 45b16–18, at CBETA. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T1911&juan=4
  13. 『日本書紀』 卷第二 神代下, at the Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/日本書紀/卷第二
  14. 最澄『願文』, transcription at 仏教の源流 (sybrma). http://sybrma.sakura.ne.jp/629saityou.ganmon.html
  15. 道元『永平廣錄』 卷一, in 弘津説三 編『承陽大師聖教全集』 第三巻, 永平寺出張所, 1909, scan 54. National Diet Library pid 823141. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823141/1/54
  16. 秋野孝道『禅の活用』, 東亜堂書房, 1915, scan 30. National Diet Library pid 933648. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/933648/1/30
  17. 芭蕉『笈の小文』, in 樋口功『芭蕉紀行全集 輯釈』, 京屋書店, 1925, scan 63. National Diet Library pid 1016762. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1016762/1/63
  18. 「球陽」, 日本大百科全書 (高良倉吉), 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, 日本歴史地名大系, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/球陽-244241
  19. 島袋源一郎『琉球百話』, 沖縄書籍, 1941, scans 69 (寶刀物語) and 90 (空手道の起原と其の沿革). National Diet Library pid 1052000. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1052000/1/90
  20. Andreas Quast, essay in Patrick McCarthy, Bubishi: The Classic Manual of Combat, revised and expanded edition, Tuttle, Rutland, Vermont, 2016, with notes 13, 14 and 114. Read in the publisher's EPUB text; the copy has no page images.
  21. Patrick McCarthy, Bubishi: The Classic Manual of Combat, revised edition, Tuttle, North Clarendon, Vermont, 2008 (first published as The Bible of Karate: Bubishi, Tuttle, 1995; the 1995 text not read), "The Kara of Karate-do". Read in the publisher's EPUB text; the copy has no page images.
  22. John Stevens, Three Budo Masters: Jigoro Kano, Gichin Funakoshi, Morihei Ueshiba, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1995, p. 74. Read at the page image.
  23. "Karate", the English Wikipedia, § History, with its reference to 仲宗根源和 編『空手道大観』 (1938), p. 64. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karate
  24. 高橋琢也『起テ沖縄男子』, the author, 1915, scans 9 and 38. National Diet Library pid 953898. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/953898/1/38
  25. 富名腰義珍『唐手 琉球拳法』, 武侠社, 1922, the second preface, by 岡千賀松, pp. 5–7, scans 13–14 (Kanna Kenwa's preface ends on p. 4, scan 13). National Diet Library pid 971654. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/971654/1/13
  26. 伊藤隼『体育的生理学』, 広文堂, 1925, p. 268, scan 160. National Diet Library pid 1087920. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1087920/1/160
  27. Gichin Funakoshi, Karate Jutsu: The Original Teachings of Master Funakoshi, translated by John Teramoto, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 2001, p. 182, note 1 to the preface. Read at the page image.
  28. 本部朝基『沖縄拳法唐手術 組手編』, 唐手術普及会, 1926, scan 6. National Diet Library pid 922034. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/922034/1/6
  29. Gichin Funakoshi, Karate-Dō: My Way of Life, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1975 (the paperback of 1981), "Chinese Hand to Empty Hand", pp. 32–34. Read at the page image.
  30. 慶応義塾体育会空手部 編『空手道集成』, 1936, National Diet Library pid 1144879, served to readers in Japan only; known from the full-text search's snippets. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1144879 · its CiNii Books record, 『空手道集成 : 創立十周年記念』, 松本信雄 編, issued 1936.2 (NCID BN13376627), matched to the NDL item by title, publisher and year: https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1970586434890716990
  31. 『慶応義塾総覧』, 慶應義塾, 昭和4 (1929), p. 154, scan 91; the colophon, scan 231. National Diet Library pid 1464337. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1464337/1/91
  32. 嘉手苅徹『沖縄空手の創造と展開―呼称の変遷を手がかりとして―』, doctoral dissertation, 早稲田大学, 2017, pp. 14 (note 56), 133 (note 11, the first edition of 1935 consulted; and the 脱中国文化 framing), 143, 170 and 175–177. https://waseda.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/40324/files/Honbun-7673.pdf · archived copy, Internet Archive, 19 September 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20240919044813/https://waseda.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/40324/files/Honbun-7673.pdf
  33. 『向陵誌』, 第一高等学校寄宿寮 編, 1930, 一高唐手研究會記事, pp. 1975–1979, scans 1073–1075. National Diet Library pid 1466015. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1466015/1/1073 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1466015/1/1075
  34. 金沢庄三郎 編『広辞林』 新訂, 三省堂, 1934, s.v. から-て, scan 187. National Diet Library pid 1126465. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126465/1/187
  35. 宮内省 監修『昭和天覧試合』, 大日本雄弁会講談社, 1934, scan 39. National Diet Library pid 1232699. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1232699/1/39
  36. Gichin Funakoshi, Karate Do Kyohan: Master Text for the Way of the Empty-Hand, translated by Harumi Suzuki-Johnston, Neptune Publications, second edition, 2012 (first edition 2005), which its preface calls an exact reproduction of the complete original publication, presented to the Emperor on 19 July 1935, chapter 1, "Kara-te – Táng-Hand and Empty-Hand", pp. 2–3, read at the page images.
  37. 日本放送協会 編『日本語アクセント辞典』, 日本放送出版協会, 1943, s.v. カラテ, scan 82. National Diet Library pid 1126379. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126379/1/82
  38. Gichin Funakoshi, Karate-dō Kyōhan: The Master Text, translated by Tsutomu Ohshima, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1973 (with the prefaces of the second edition of 1958; the translator's preface: This work follows the first edition of Karate-dō Kyōhan in rendering the kata), "Karate and Karate-dō", pp. 3–4, read at the page images.
  39. Masatoshi Nakayama, Dynamic Karate: Instruction by the Master, translated by Herman Kauz, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1966, the preface and "Karate — Yesterday and Today", pp. 10–11. Read at the page image.
  40. The Keiogijuku University: A Brief Account of Its History, Aims and Equipment, Tokyo, 1936, p. 19. Internet Archive keiogijukuunive00goog. https://archive.org/details/keiogijukuunive00goog
  41. Hidetaka Nishiyama and Richard C. Brown, Karate: The Art of "Empty Hand" Fighting, Tuttle, Rutland, Vermont, 1960 (the date of the Archive's record), the title as the Archive's record gives it; the book is lending-only there and its pages were not seen. Internet Archive karateartofempty00nish. https://archive.org/details/karateartofempty00nish
  42. Masutatsu Oyama, This Is Karate, translated by Richard L. Gage, revised edition, Japan Publications, Tokyo, 1973, pp. 35–36, read in the second revised edition of 1980, printing of 1984, which carries no copyright later than 1973. Read at the page image.
  43. G. Cameron Hurst III, Armed Martial Arts of Japan: Swordsmanship and Archery, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1998, p. 203, note 18. Read at the page image.
  44. "karate", Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/karate · archived copy, Internet Archive, 6 December 2025: http://web.archive.org/web/20251206183436/https://www.etymonline.com/word/karate

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · Takase Studios (an address check by script), 2026-10-31, citations — 67 claims tested at their addresses: 38 resolved, 6 differed and were judged at the page (Bashō's line re-quoted from the 1925 print, the Hepburn edition named fourth, Quast's “Chinese cudgel”, and three readings that stood: one at the page image, two in the edition cited), 23 could not be opened by the check (web pages and books served only in Japan) and none was absent · two fresh-context readers per round (Claude), 2026-10-31, every claim in the page's summary block traced to its source, claim by claim: round 1 FAIL, both (Bashō's line as printed, what the 1936 round table said, a date given to Dōgen's return); round 2 FAIL on a reader (the 1922 preface that writes 空手術 is the army colonel Oka Chikamatsu's, not the naval captain Kanna Kenwa's), the other passing; round 3 PASS, both; corrections made

Research depth: step 3 of our 10-step ladder, foundation complete · October 2026

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 空手 (karate)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/karate.