Karate Posted by Ginny on Jun 2, 2010 in Culture
A new movie called The Karate Kid is scheduled to be released this year in June. Here’s the trailer :
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but the confusing part is that the movie is titled The Karate Kid, but yet the kid in the movie learns Kung Fu, not Karate. In fact, 1:02 of the trailer has Jackie Chan saying, “I will teach you real kung fu”.
Karate (空手) is a Japanese form of martial arts developed in Okinawa (沖縄). Ankō Itosu (糸洲 安恒) is called the grandfather of modern karate. He helped popularize karate as a way of practicing martial arts, by promoting Karate in Okinawan public schools. His ten precepts of Karate include using karate not just for health and circulation, but for fighting enemies as well.
Funakoshi Gichi (船越義珍) is considered the founder of Shotokan (松濤館) Karate. He was a student of Itosu Ankō. He created The Twenty Precepts of Karate (にじゅうくん), which emphasized respect, humility, patience, diligence, and inner peace. His precepts advocate against unnecessary violence. The principle behind Funakoshi’s precepts stress perfection of character, and place less importance on achieving victory.
After Funakoshi’s death, his students formed different schools or forms of Karate. After all these years, Karate continues to be popular both inside Japan and abroad.
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Comments:
frog:
Thanks for bringing this up; I very much agree with your assessment of the movie title. However, it’s more irritating than confusing.
They’re clearly just using the title for marketing, hoping the original’s popularity (or nostalgia) will boost sales. Although, I don’t know if the target audience for this movie (kids?) have even seen the original, so I’m not sure what they’re after. But conflating the two martial arts (and cultures) is quite bothersome.
Karina:
about the movie:
I think they named it Karate Kid so that the people, (me included) who watched the other movies of Karate Kid would be interested just because of the name, but from the trailer you can see that’s all about China with the Kung Fu and Jackie Chan, so I think it might be only the name.
I think the name “Karate Kid” was Ok before, because they had karate and they talked about the Japanese culture, but now only the name is left from the other movies, since now they will talk about Kungu, that’s from China, and the Chinese culture since they are in China now not Japan like before.
Cris:
Methinks its named “karate kid” since it has the story of the first movie:
Underdog kid (latin) is bullied by stronger folks, gets teached by an unusual trainer and finaly triumphs over his former opponent in a competition.
And of course “Kung Fu” has a lot of cool looking styles. IIRC event in the first Karate Kid, the used at least one Kungfu stance.
whatever, i dont think i am going to watch this.