The History of Fighting

Title: Daruma (Bodhidharma)

Date: 14th Century

Artist: Unknown (Inscription by Issan Ichinei)

Infomation: This ink painting from the Kamakura Era depicts
Bodhidharma, the founder, according to legend, of Asian martial arts.

Title: Illustration of John Graham Chambers
Date: 1883
Info:  John Graham Chambers (1843 – 1883) was an all-around sportsman from Wales who excelled in several disciplines including rowing, walking, cycling, wrestling and athletics. However his major contribution was to devise the rules for boxing, known as the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

Song Duk Ki demonstrating his art in Seoul in 1964

Song Duk Ki was a master of taek kyon, (a precursor of taekwondo), who was instrumental in preserving Korean martial arts in the first half of the 20th century. Taek kyon and soo bak were the main forms of art being practice at the time and they would later go on to be blended together along with moves from karate and kung fu, to help create modern taekwondo.

However this would have been impossible without a group of masters, led by Song Duk Ki, who at great risk to themselves kept the art alive in secret. This was despite the fact that from 1910, an invading Japanese government had ordered a ban on all Korean cultural practices, including making it illegal for Koreans to learn martial arts. 

More legendary masters from martial arts history

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Yip Man and his most famous student Bruce Lee, practicing Chi Sao or Sticky Hands (c.1955). Chi Sao is an exercise that is designed to improve the reflexes of the martial artist and is a favourite technique amongst Wing Chun practitioners of all levels.

Title: Capoeira Drawings
Artist: Kalixto Cordeiro
Date:  c.1906
Info:  A series of drawings that depict a couple of well-dressed Capoeira fighters in battle.
Note the use of the ‘navalha’ (barber’s razor) in the centre picture, a weapon synonymous
with the ‘o malandro’ (criminal/bad boy)

Prince Narusuan was a key figure in the development of the martial arts in Thailand (formerly Siam). In c. 1585, Narusuan succeeded in reorganizing a defeated Thai army. He made sure his men all learned martial arts leading to successful campaigns against the Burmese soldiers who had occupied the country since 1568.

Then, in a dramatic final showdown, he faced the leader of the Burmese army in open battle, both on the backs of war elephants. After a violent fight, Narusuan’s martial arts skills won through and he cut his opponent in half, from his shoulder to his waste. After this, the Burmese army left, liberating the Thai people and making Prince Narusuan a martial arts legend.

Kanku (Looking into the sky) Sho (minor) and Dai (major) are advanced kata in the Shotokan syllabus and practiced by many styles including those of Japanese, Okinawa and Korean karate. Kanku Sho (Performed above by Takayuki Mikami) is the younger of the two Kanku kata and was probably developed from kanku Dai and handed down as a part of Master Anko Itosu’s teachings.

It contains moves that are typical of Itosu kata, such as double punches and moves that are designed to control and or disarm someone with a stick. The older of the two, kanku Dai (Performed below by Hirokazu Kanazawa) is said to have been the favourite kata of Sensei Gichin Funakoshi and was one that he often used to demonstrate karate in Japan during the period when he popularised the martial art there in the 1920s.



According to Funakoshi, the kata has all of karate’s essential elements which was why he liked it so much. Originally called Kushanku but renamed in the 1930s by Funakoshi, his student, Masatoshi Nakayama stated that it represents modesty in karate, hence the humbling name, ‘Looking to the Sky’.

Kanku Dai is believed to have been first introduced to Okinawa in the 18th century by a Chinese diplomat and kendo expert named Kung Hsiang Chun, who passed it on to Tode Sakugawa of the Shuri-te school (teacher of Sokon Matsumura).

The same diplomat seems to have been of some importance in the history of the martial arts on Okinawa and may have also brought the original kata that the Heian kata were derived from, (it may even have been the same one), a kata called ‘Chiang Nan (Channan in Japanese). An alternative theory is that the kata was actually created by Sakugawa and named in honour of his teacher (Whose name is pronounced Ku Shan Ku in the Okinawan dialect).

More Kata History