"To win 100 victories in 100 battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill."

Master Gichin Funakoshi (1868-1957)

Karate is a martial art developed in Japan from a system used on an island called Okinawa. Okinawa is the PrincipleIsland of the Ryukyu Archipelago, laying three hundred miles to the south of Japan and three miles east of main land China. Although the roots of Martial Arts can be traced back thousands of years to India, the evolution of karate as we know it today began in the seventeenth century.

Legend has it that an Indian Buddhist monk named Bodhidharma, the originator of Zen Buddhism, brought Ch Uan-Fa to the Shaolin temple in China during the Sung Dynasty. Some historians claim this to be false, but yet it remains a popular view. Very little is known from that period, until records of the practice of Ch Uan-Fa in Okinawa in 1372 when King Satto declared his allegiance to Chinas Ming Emperor.

In the centuries to follow Ch Uan-Fa gained a strong foothold in Okinawa, it was practised along side an indigenous unarmed fighting system known as Tode. In 1609 the Japanese Satsuma Clan marched on the Ryukyu Islands ending their independence and banning all weaponry. This brought a bond between the Ch Uan-Fa and Tode to develop a fighting method to strengthen the physical and spiritual body in a bid to survive. The union came to be known as 'Te' (hand).

Te was practised in secret in three main centres around the towns of, Shuri, Naha and Tomari. These local variations were later known as Shuri-Te, Naha-Te and Tomari-Te. Between 1784 and 1903 karate replaced the word Te to describe the fighting system. In 1875 the Satsuma occupation of the Ryukyu Islands ended and they officially became part of the Japanese Empire. By 1903 karate was practised openly in schools.