martial arts

Home > Sports and Everyday Life > Sports > Sports

martial arts The martial, or fighting arts are among humankind's oldest avocations. The urge to fight and compete, whether between individuals or groups, arises with every new generation, and becomes channelled or sublimated in various ways in different cultures. In earliest times tribes fought with each other, invading and defending territories; individuals within tribes fought for leadership, prestige, goods, and mates. As societies became larger and more complex, the importance of warriors and military effectiveness increased. Children mimicked martial heroes (just as in modern times children's games have included cowboys, cops and robbers, spies, space warriors, computer combat, and so forth), and successful warriors often went on to become kings or nobles.

Martial arts also lie at the root of competitive sports, whether sanitized by erecting a barrier between players to eliminate physical contact while hitting a ball as a substitute for pummelling blows (tennis, volleyball, baseball), or intellectualized in a game like chess in which the armies of two kingdoms seek to kill each other until ‘checkmate’, — an Anglicization of the Arabic sheikh mat (‘the sheik is dead’). As in war, success in sports requires strategy and tactics. The very same skills that can mean the difference between life and death in combat — speed, agility, strength, determination, reflexes, stamina, timing, vigorous training, and surprise — spell success in sports.

Outside today's military, martial arts are still cultivated for physical and even spiritual improvement. Martial competitions have become sporting events, where one puts one's body and sometimes even one's life on the line, though there have been many attempts to transform sports such as boxing, wrestling, judo, and karate into safer events where points, rather than lasting bodily damage, determine the winner. The Japanese, for example, differentiate between jutsu and do, the former designating a fighting art, such as ju-jutsu, and the latter its modification into a sport form, such as ju-do. In modern Chinese the term for martial arts, ‘wushu’, implies demonstrations of movements, often closer to dance or gymnastics than fighting.

Many ancient cultures extolled martial arts, whether in epics (the Iliad or Mahåbharåta) or in artifacts (Egyptian tomb paintings or the vast life-sized terracotta army buried with China's first Emperor, Shi Huangdi, in the third century bce. From India's warrior caste arose such spiritual progenitors as the Buddha and Mahåvira (putative founder of Jainism) and the mythical Arjuna, hero of the Bhagavad Gitå. The warrior's existential proximity to death could engender deep philosophical and religious reflections on the meaning of life. Hence the most prominent patrons of Zen Buddhism, when it was imported to Japan, were the samurai, primarily due to the fearlessness toward life or death displayed by many Zen masters.

The origins of East Asian martial arts are murky. The ancient Chinese produced an extensive literary tradition of martial classics on strategy and tactics, the most famous work being Sunzi (Sun Tzu), attributed to a military genius of the sixth to fifth centuries bce. It applied principles similar to those found in early Daoist works, such as the Laozi (Lao Tzu), to military matters like the deployment of troops, adapting to terrain, using spies, how a smaller force can overcome a larger force, and so on. Daoist notions, such as the soft or gentle overcoming the hard, became foundational martial principles. They underly the judo axiom, ‘use the opponent's force to overcome him’, or the Taijiquan axiom, ‘four ounces overcomes a thousand pounds.’

Chinese martial arts apparently disseminated elsewhere into Asia during the Tang dynasty (649–712) since an early Korean martial art is called Tang Su do (Way of Tang Boxing). Another Korean style, Tae Kwon Do, with some of the most powerful kicks of any martial art, developed later. Tang Su was introduced to Okinawa, where the Chinese characters were pronounced Kara-te (kara = Tang; te = su: ‘hand, fist, boxing’), which meant ‘Chinese boxing’. In 1922, in an effort to nationalize the art and strip it of its Chinese origins, the Japanese substituted another character, also pronounced kara, meaning ‘empty’, so that Karate came to mean ‘empty fist’ rather than ‘Tang hand’ (or boxing). Many Japanese karate katas, or sets of practice movements, still resemble those used in Tang Su do. In Japan the newly nationalized Karate was one of several new sport forms: judo and aikido (grappling and locks) developed from ju-jutsu (holds and throws) in 1882 and 1925 respectively. Kendo, a sport version of ken-jutsu (swordsmanship), began roughly a century earlier, swords often being called the soul of the samurai and the soul of Japan. Sumo wrestling and a host of weapon jutsus (halberd, staff, etc.) have an older history, many going back to the tenth century. In Asian cultures, where martial arts have long been considered national, even religious treasures, demonstrations of martial art prowess by individuals, groups, and children are often integral parts of religious and national festivals. Chinese customs such as lion dances, in which one or more people perform acrobatically while shrouded in a lion costume, were originally martial displays.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Westerners became aware of Asian fighting arts, mostly in their Japanese forms, as popularized by the ju-jutsu in Mr Moto movies (starring Peter Lorre) and the fierce karate techniques of Japanese soldiers during World War II. Breaking boards and bricks with bare hands seemed impressive, almost magical. Sailors brought kick-boxing techniques back to Mediterranean ports, labelling the ‘new’ sport Savate. It was not until the 1970s, with the international stardom of Bruce Lee, that Westerners gained an appreciation for the Chinese martial arts. Today many Asian styles of martial arts are practised in the West, including Thai boxing, Chinese Taijiquan, Burmese Bando, and even several rare arts from India, such as Binot. By the end of the twentieth century American Yokozunas (Sumo Grand Masters) — such as the Hawaiians, Akebono and Musashimaru — began to emerge: a shock to Japanese sensibilities since Sumo is intimately associated with the imperial prestige of the Emperor.

Dan Lusthaus

martial arts. Martial arts is a broad term that covers a variety of schools and forms whose unity derives only from their origins in the arts of war and single combat. Thus, it covers the ‘empty-hand’ fighting style of karate as well as forms that concentrate on the use of various weapons, from swords and bows and arrows to farming implements such as sickles and threshers. Within Buddhist history, the martial arts have been closely identified with the teachings and practices of Ch'an and zen from an early period, a situation that arose when the military classes discovered that Zen practice enhanced fighting techniques by eliminating the fear of defeat and death and by enabling the combatant to keep his mind and energy focused in the present moment, thus shutting out distraction and enhancing concentration and reflexes.

In China, the origin of this connection is traced to the putative founder of Ch'an himself, Bodhidharma (3rd–4th centuries). It is said that when he arrived at the Shao-lin monastery (vihāra) in Honan Province, he found the resident monks in poor physical condition and subject to the depredations of local bandits, and so he taught them fighting techniques to improve their health and security. To this day, the monks of the Shao-lin monastery are famed for their fighting skills. A similar school of Buddhist Martial Arts (as opposed to ‘Royal Court Martial Arts’) arose in Korea. In Japan, the association of Zen and fighting led the samurai class to associate primarily with the Rinzai school from the mid-Kamakura period onward. They found in the Rinzai school an active, goal-oriented programme of self-cultivation that accorded with their own drive to self-discipline and achievement, and so a symbiotic relationship developed. Rinzai saw in the practice of martial arts a way to self-realization and expression of one's Buddha-nature of much the same sort that other arts (such as painting, calligraphy, and poetry) provided. The samurai found in Zen practice a way to further their own goals in becoming more skilled warriors. Some figures even straddled both worlds, such as Suzuki Shōsan (1579–1655), who as a young man was a warrior who made use of Zen in his combat, and later in life became a Zen monk whose teachings were filled with martial images.

martial arts various forms of self-defense, usually weaponless, based on techniques developed in ancient China, India, and Tibet. In modern times they have come into wide use for self-protection, as competitive sports, and for exercise.

Jujitsu teaches skills that enable one to overcome a bigger, stronger opponent. A popular style of jujitsu is aikido, which uses wrist, elbow, and shoulder twists and graceful falls; it is noncompetitive and incorporates various spiritual concepts. Judo , a Japanese sport created in 1882, makes use of jujitsu principles. Other popular forms of martial arts include kung fu, karate, and taekwondo, all of which emphasize blows with the feet and the side of the hand, and kendo, in which leather-covered bamboo "swords" are used. Judo and taekwondo are Olympic sports. Capoeira, a dancelike Brazilian discipline whose movements are performed to rhythmic music, is gaining in popularity.

The traditional Asian martial arts emphasize allowing ki (cosmic energy; also known as chi) to flow through one's body. This belief in ki connects the martial arts with t'ai chi ch'uan, a meditationlike discipline that emphasizes slow, graceful body movements. The most popular form of individual exercise in China, t'ai chi is often performed publicly in large groups; it has been claimed to reduce stress and lower blood pressure.

mar·tial arts • pl. n. various sports or skills, mainly of Japanese origin, that originated as forms of self-defense or attack, such as judo, karate, and kendo. DERIVATIVES: mar·tial art·ist n.