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This is quite interesting. I lived in Okinawa for several years and remember how loathe they were to associate themselves with the Japanese Mainland "Honshu" -
by USNetizen 12y ago
This is quite interesting. I lived in Okinawa for several years and remember how loathe they were to associate themselves with the Japanese Mainland "Honshu" - even calling themselves "Okinawan" and not Japanese with adamant fervor. A lot of that relates to World War II era atrocities committed on the island, but, regardless, I think Okinawans see themselves as largely very different from the mainland Japanese even though they are citizens of the same country. That would be yet another distinction that I think this article sort of missed as it only referenced differences between far north and the rest of Japan.
Having lived in both mainland and Okinawa, the cultures are rather starkly different as well - Okinawa with a pretty typical, more laid back island culture and mainland with a bustling, busy one. In this regard, Japan isn't as homogeneous - both culturally and genetically - as the article would have you believe if the covered area were to include Japan's southernmost islands.
- moogleii 12y agoYeah, I noticed the article didn't really mention the Okinawans either. They were annexed relatively recently, and are pretty different. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyu_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyu_Kingdom On a related tangent, apparently modern karate originated in Okinawa, where it was locally called something like Tang-style (of the Chinese Tang dynasty). But it was re-branded Karate to make it more palpable to Japan (since they happened to be in the middle of invading China).
- reallyRaoul 12y agoor the Ainu.
- S4M 12y agoIn Japanese, "te" means hand, and "kara" means both "Chinese" and "empty", so karate originally meant "Chinese hand", since it was derived from the Chinese kung fu, but its meaning later was changed into "empty hand". Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karate#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karate#Etymology
- slurry 12y agoBefore about 1932, karate was written with the characters 唐手 (Tang/China hand). Then it was written with 空手 (open hand) - same sound, different characters.
- ABS 12y ago> On a related tangent, apparently modern karate originated in Okinawa it's well documented actually, before 1900 or so no one in mainland Japan knew anything about what would later be called karate. Gichin Funakoshi (father of shotokan karate, even though he never called it that himself) moved to mainland Japan in 1922 to popularize it. Before then only a few people in the Japanese navy and the prince/emperor-to-be had seen it while visiting Okinawa. Yes, there are other styles other than Funakoshi but he is undisputably the one who broke into mainland Japan first
- richsinn 12y agoThis is also one of the reasons why Japan the Country has historically supported Judo more so than Karate (support via the Japanese government to promote it internationally, to the Olympics, etc).