Everyone loves a good origin story! Especially martial arts origin stories. Most martial artists have heard how Bodhidharma trekked from Inda across China and settled into a Shaolin Temple where he saw frail and tired Monks struggling to even stay awake to meditate. He showed them exercises and taught them martial arts to help revitalize them. So much so that when China was in dire need of warriors, they called upon the Shaolin Monks to fight for them. They dominated in battle! Every Shaolin Kung Fu system is a direct descendant of these original, mystical, fighters!

Or how about that amazing story of how Wing Chun Kung Fu was created. The amazing martial arts master and nun, Ng Mui (also known as Wu Mei in Mandarin), stepped in to help a young lady named Yan Yongchun. A menacing gang member that was terrorizing the village, and specifically Yan’s fathers’ shop, demanded Yan marry him.

Ng Mui cut a deal with the gang leader. In six months, Yan will fight the gang leader. If she wins, he leaves her and her father alone. If she loses, she will happily marry him! Ng Mui spent those six months teaching Yan martial arts. When the day came, Yan destroyed the gang leader! Winning her freedom and being able to marry the man she really loved. Yan and her husband went on to develop Wing Chun!

Then there is the ancient art of Taekwondo! Thousands of years in the making, only to be brought back into the world by General Choi Hong-Hi. Or how about the legendary Muay Thai fighter, Nai Khanomtom. Imprisoned by the invading Burmese forces, he fought numerous Burmese champion fighters in the ring to earn his freedom. No rest between fights, just one right after the other!

I could go on and on with the amazing origin stories of martial arts styles and their legendary fighters and founders. But what if you learned that they were all lies? Created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to create back stories for their arts? I’m not stating that’s exactly true, but it might be.

The fact of the matter is, we just don’t know. Many of these stories go back hundreds, if not over a thousand years. Stories that were supposedly passed down orally from generation to generation with little to no official written history. Do you remember playing the telephone game as a child? One person whispers a sentence or story into a friend’s ear. That friend then tries to whisper the same story to the next friend, and the next and the next and so on down the line. A story about playing baseball ends up being a story about being a fighter pilot in the war.

And to suggest that the techniques and systems today are exactly the same as they would have been five hundred years ago is just ridiculous. Within just one generation a martial art can change. I teach some techniques differently than my instructor taught me as it suits me and my students better currently. But it’s the same martial arts.

Many books have been written about this idea that these origin stories are made up. I want to avoid just regurgitating the same information, but I do want to touch on a few things that help understand how many historians and researchers are coming to the conclusion that most of the origin stories and traditions we hold so dear, are simply nineteenth and twentieth century inventions.

Let’s go straight to the origin of origins, Bodhidharma training the Shaolin Monks and, in essence, creating Shaolin Kung Fu. In his book, A Brief History of the Martial Arts, by Jonathan Clements, he states regarding the Stele Tablets located around the Temple, “It’s only here, in 728 AD, that the monks’ service is mentioned in any great detail…”. He then continues on with, “…there is no mention at all of Shaolin’s martial prowess or training anywhere in Chinese writing for another nine hundred years.”

While this doesn’t mean they didn’t train in martial arts, it is suspicious that something so important, when it comes to martial arts history, wouldn’t be mentioned. This same scenario plays out over and over again in virtually every martial arts origin story. Even martial arts styles that were very clearly created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seem to have a cloud or suggestive “traditional” background.

I’ve discussed the history of Taekwondo in a previous post which outlines how Taekwondo was suggested to be thousands of years old, while very clearly being created in 1955. But another art that is well known to be a more modern creation may hold a hint as to why so many martial arts are seen as old and traditional. That art would be Judo.

The history and creation of Judo was fairly well documented. It was created in 1882 by Kano Jigoro by taking what he deemed to be the best techniques from a few schools of jujutsu as well as wrestling to refine what he felt was a superior art form, known as Judo. In the book, Mirror of Modernity, (a book compiled and edited by Stephen Vlastos is a collection of essays by multiple authors who have researched Japans “traditions”), goes into great detail how many of Japan’s traditions are essentially made up in our modern era.

In one specific essay, The invention of Martial Arts by Inoue Shun, the author makes an interesting note on Kano’s naming of the art, Nihonden Kodokan Judo. Nihonden meaning Japanese tradition. While this seemed to have more to do with honoring the arts and instructors that came before him that helped him develop Judo, it does make a suggestion to many that it’s an ancient traditional art form. This is basically an invention of tradition.

Judo also makes an important impact on martial arts as Kano reinvented the martial arts uniform we are familiar with today as well as the ranking systems many martial arts are known to have (colored belts leading up to black belt). This is an important aspect of trying to understand if martial arts styles are as old as they suggest, and unchanged.

Considering most martial arts systems make use of uniforms and belt ranks, and these were refined and created after 1882, then it suggests that, at the very least, most martial arts systems were still being developed in the late nineteenth century. Therefore, definitely not “unchanged” for hundreds or thousands of years. It’s of note that most Chinese systems don’t use these ranking systems and still use the Kimono that Kano changed from to create his uniform. Which is why we can’t just scratch out the thought that some systems have been around for a very long time. It’s the origins that just can’t be cemented.

Understand though, that when I suggest that the martial arts you know and love may have false origin stories, invented traditions, or aren’t as old as they may suggest, that doesn’t mean fighting techniques and systems have only been invented in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Fighting has been around since the dawn of man. Not to mention fighting systems used in war.

When we think of specific martial arts styles such as Karate, Taekwondo, Wing chun, Judo, and so on, we think of the countries of origin, their traditions and that the system was developed by one person or a small group of people that invented this named martial art. And that it developed after an enlightening moment in this person’s life. Such as seeing a crane fighting another crane or fighting a snake. The originator took notes of the fight and developed the system.

Like all myths and origin stories, we want them to be true. But in nearly every scenario, especially those orally passed down long before being written down and recorded, it’s highly unlikely the story happened the way it was told. The more likely scenario is due to information transfer during war time. China, Korea, and Japan were constantly at war with one another over the years. The kingdoms and boundary lines of who controlled what was constantly changing.

The transfer of knowledge would have happened often. It was post-world wars 1 and 2 when many of these arts began to take form. The transfer of information became easier. Countries forming and rebuilding all contributed to the development of these arts. Creating traditions and stories helped build legitimacy, lineage, and national pride.

In his books, The Invention of Martial Arts and Mythologies of Martial Arts, the author, Paul Bowman, makes the case that much of what we know of martial arts systems and traditions came from media. Fiction books, movies, tv shows, comic books, and even news reporting all helped shape what we know about martial arts.

I tend to agree. And if you are mad or depressed at the possibility that the martial art you train in and love may be heavily created this way and not by the origin story you were taught, don’t be. Virtually everything in this world was created by media such as books and movies. Written or filmed stories have always influenced our cultures and society. Look at the impact the works of Shakespeare had on both storytelling and the English language.

It’s suggested that Shakespeare either invented or spread the use of around 1700 new words in the English language that we still use today. Not to mention that the majority of movies and fiction books simply rehash the stories of Shakespeare. And if you live here with me in America and had the same history classes I had, the made-up story of Christopher Columbus shaped our view of how this country was discovered.

In short we were taught, everyone believed the world was flat. Columbus believed it was round. He then was given the chance to prove it and he discovered America! The reality was it was well known that the earth was round and that he never set foot in North America, mostly just the Carribean. So much of what we were taught in school about the “discovery” of America and Columbus were heavily exaggerated works of fiction in the book, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving.

As Americans, we connected with this, it gave us a great origin story. Until Washington Irving’s book, Columbus was mostly just a footnote in History. But we love our origin stories, even if they are exaggerated. Most “true” stories are. And in many cases, there is at least a seed of truth to build off of. Hence why we can’t just throw out these origin myths altogether. But this brings up the final subject I want to touch on in regard to origin stories. How do we determine who gets credit for the creation of these martial arts?

As mentioned above, we can’t consider a technique used in a martial art as a definitive style. Nor can we state that since a technique is thousands of years old, then the art must be thousands of years old. If that was the case, cavemen would be the originators of most of striking and blunt weapon martial arts styles. But we don’t see a caveman picture hanging on our walls of the dojo/dojang with the rest of our lineage. Well, my face is up on my wall, so there’s at least one caveman up there, just not the originator. The question then becomes, when is a martial art considered a new martial art, and who gets the credit for it?

In his book, Analysis of Genuine Karate 2, author Hermann Bayer, while explaining the origins of Karate, presents the following thought. Is America’s success in NASA’s space program an American success? Most, if not all, would say yes. But the team leader on the creation of the rocket that successfully sent up Americas first Satellite was a German scientist, Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi scientist. But we all tend to accept that it was an American success, not a German success.

Herein lies how complicated these origin stories can get. Karate, for instance, was heavily created in Okinawa throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. But much of Karate’s techniques and ideas are believed to come from Okinawans who traveled to the Fujian province of China. Meaning that much of Karate was from White Crane Kung Fu. Karate had different names over time, such as “unante”, “tode” and “te”. Essentially known as “china hand” or “tang hand” (referring to the Tang dynasty in China).

When Okinawan Karate masters first wanted to spread Karate into the mainland of Japan, they knew they needed to change the name as Japan and China were at odds. And a Chinese named martial art wouldn’t go over as well. Therefore, in 1936, a group of Karate masters changed the name of Karate to…. Karate. I know, it’s confusing. They simply changed the kanji characters written for Karate. The name is now written differently in kanji but can be pronounced the same as there can be more than one way to pronounce a character. It’s like adding sugar to medicine for kids, one little adjustment makes it all be consumed much easier. Which is why we now call Karate “Mary Poppins Hand”. I’m joking.

But now the real question. If many of the techniques and ideas came from China. And Okinawa refined it to create what we know today. Why do we give credit to Japan? Most Karate masters will correct you and say it’s from Okinawa. Which it definitely it. But Okinawa is now a part of Japan. What I’ll break your brain with though is a question. When the United States occupied Okinawa for twenty-seven years (1945 – 1972), did that make Karate an American martial art during that time?

You can see how complicated all of this is. And this is just the tip of the iceberg when trying to figure out origin stories of martial arts, especially since so many began as oral history long before being written down. Or maybe there was not oral history and a writer simply made up an origin story? That seems to be the case when it comes to Ninjutsu. Specifically, when it relates to what we see in the movies and on TV. Ninjutsu is just a system of spying, sabotage and espionage that military and rulers would have used. It wouldn’t make much sense to have them dress in black clothing and carry around swords and throwing stars.

Someone performing “ninjutsu” would want to fit in with the crowd. Wearing normal clothing and not carrying visible weapons or getting into fights. Therefore, spending endless hours learning fighting skills would be a bit of a waste of time when other skills needed to be trained. It seems most of what we know about ninjas and ninjutsu were most likely invented by comic books and movies. However, like all of the martial arts origin stories, we just don’t know.

Of all the myths and misconceptions I’ve covered in this series, the martial arts origin myths are by far the most complicated and hard to understand I’ve ever researched. I’ve spent endless hours going through endless books and articles on this subject. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to throw my hands up and chuck all of my notes across the library in disgust and walk away. There are so many holes and dead ends to this topic that I don’t think we’ll ever truly know the full and true origin stories of any of our loved martial arts. Even the newest arts like Taekwondo and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which were created in the early and mid-1900’s, have myths surrounding them.

Everyone wants an amazing origin story. And since there’s no good way to really find out the true origin stories of many of the arts, there’s no one to stop us from creating our own. It’s easy to understand why too. Do you want to pick up training in a martial art that was developed by a dude named Steve who lives in his mothers basement because he had nothing better to do? Or the martial art that was developed by visiting aliens that created what they believe is the greatest martial art in the universe? Don’t get me wrong, Steve has a wicked awesome hook punch. But it’s aliens man!

If you’re reading this and are disillusioned, don’t be. As mentioned above, every origin story about everything is most likely littered with lies to turn a two-pound fish into a whale. It doesn’t change the techniques being used. It doesn’t change the experiences you have while training or competing in martial arts. It doesn’t affect the relationships you have built in the schools and martial arts communities you’re apart of. Treat those origin stories for what they are. Stories to be enjoyed.