Karate: Okinawan-Chinese Boxing

The Chinese and Okinawan versions of minghequan 28-steps (nepai kata)

Karate, like jūjutsu and quanfa / kenpō, etc., has had various names in its history. We call it karate, as if karate is the name of a martial art. But if you were to take techniques from a jūjutsu school and turn them into an intricate kata (or potentially more than one), that would be the same as a karate kata. It or they would still be jūjutsu, but it or they could hold its or their own name/s as the karate kata do. That or those kata would be a kind of jūjutsu. The same is true for Chinese boxing, or quanfa / kenpō. Some systems have just one form, while others have multiple, and even many, forms. In each case, it is a kind of quanfa. Karate developed by learning various methods and combining them. So there are a range of systems that are all different kinds of karate. You could learn one, or a few, for example, and have learnt karate, or Ryūkyū kenpō, or te / tī, just the same as someone learning a few other kata. That would be equal to two people each learning a different kind of jūjutsu, or learning a different kind of Chinese boxing. Karate is like the term gongfu – when applied to the fighting arts – or like quanfa. After all, the old version of the name “karate” meant “Chinese-hands”. Karate is either just Chinese boxing, or it is the Okinawan style of Chinese boxing, with Okinawan and Japanese influence (Japanese not just being in more recent times, but from ancient times).