Historical archive

1922: karate leaves Okinawa for Tokyo

How a local Okinawan art became a Japanese budō, changed its name and went global.

1922–1936

Original WABUKAN illustration (ink and wash), 2026. A karate teacher demonstrates a kata before a Tokyo audience, 1920s.

The story

For centuries Okinawans trained an unarmed art they called simply te (hand) or tōde, written with the characters for “Tang hand”, a nod to China. It was taught quietly, teacher to student. Around 1901–1905 it entered Okinawan schools as physical education, and that public turn opened the door to the main islands.

In May 1922 the Ministry of Education held a national physical education exhibition in Tokyo, and Funakoshi Gichin, an Okinawan schoolteacher, showed karate there. Kanō Jigorō, the founder of judo, then invited him to demonstrate at the Kōdōkan. Other Okinawan masters followed in the 1920s and 1930s, including Motobu Chōki, Mabuni Kenwa and Miyagi Chōjun, and university clubs began to form, the first at Keiō in 1924.

To fit into Japanese budō the art changed. It adopted a white uniform and the kyū/dan ranks of judo, and its name was rewritten. In a time of rising nationalism, “Tang hand” (唐手) became “empty hand” (空手), pronounced the same way: karate. Funakoshi’s Keiō club began using the new writing in Tokyo in 1929, and a meeting of Okinawan masters in Naha on 25 October 1936 made the new writing official; Okinawa now celebrates that date as Karate Day.

Key dates

c. 1901–1905
Karate enters Okinawan school physical education.
1922
Demonstration at the Ministry of Education exhibition in Tokyo, then at the Kōdōkan.
1924
First university karate club, at Keiō University.
1936
25 October: Okinawan masters adopt the writing 空手, “empty hand”.
2021
Karate makes its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020 (held in 2021).

Myth and fact

Myth

Karate is an ancient Japanese art of the samurai.

Karate grew up in the Ryūkyū Kingdom (Okinawa), with strong Chinese influence, and only reached mainland Japan in the 1920s.

Why it matters

The 1922 journey explains why karate has two faces: the Okinawan styles close to their Chinese roots, and the Japanese styles shaped by budō and university clubs that later spread across the world.

Images: public-domain or CC0 works credited under each picture, or original WABUKAN ink illustrations. Panels: the story told in numbered comic boxes.

Sources

Karate — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
Okinawan martial arts — Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
空手道 — Wikipedia (ja) — ja.wikipedia.org

Cite / use this content

You may quote and share this page with a link to WABUKAN. Suggested citation:

WABUKAN 和武館, «1922: karate leaves Okinawa for Tokyo», https://wabukan.com/marco-karate-japao (accessed 2026-10-30).

Using our content