Karate in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
Why that’s both good news and bad news
This week, the IOC executive board has announced the addition of five new sports for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic games, one of which is karate. It looks like there’s one last formality left to make in August, but it’s pretty much a done deal. As far as combat sports are concerned, the Olympics already have wrestling, boxing, judo, tae kwon do and fencing in there. So it wasn’t much of a stretch to have karate added to the list, especially since the games are being held in Japan, the birthplace of the art.
With the World Karate Federation (WKF) pushing for this for over a decade and a half, and it looks like it will finally become reality. Great news, right? Personally, I’m a bit torn. Here’s why:
Why is this good news?
First, getting karate into the Olympics is a great way to promote and spread karate to the world. While the traditional martial art has gotten very popular over the last 60 to 70 years, it has lost some ground with the rising popularity of other arts like MMA, Brazilian jiu jitsu and muay thai. Even in Japan, you can see that the younger generation of potential athletes would prefer to be in a batting cage than to inside a dojo. The exposure that karate will get in the Tokyo games is more likely going to make karate an option for any young, future athletes looking for a sport to take up.
While there are already multiple tournament circuits and even an international karate league (check out the WKF’s Karate1 Premier League), becoming an Olympic sport means that elite, international athletes will want every edge they can legally and ethically get to stand on that podium. This means that more sports-specific, scientific research will be done to improve upon the current training methods that regular dojo use.
Yes, there will be modernization of old-school (and sometimes dogmatic) training methods with the goal of creating faster, more powerful, more explosive, and mentally tougher karateka. Better methods will be used to prevent injuries and to ensure a practitioner’s longevity in the sport. These improved methods will be standardized and will eventually “trickle down” from the elite to the average dojo-goers simply looking to get in better physical shape.
My guess is that, because there are going to be weight classes in Olympic karate, proper nutrition for optimized performance will also be a factor.
What might also be interesting about the art getting into the Olympics is the potential for young karateka to monetize on their training thanks to sponsors and government grants. This is especially beneficial for athletes who may be living in developing countries and may not necessarily have the means to pay for their training.
What could go wrong?
While there are a lot of positives, I’m still a bit apprehensive about this.
Most long-term karateka understand that sport karate really is just a very small part of the traditional karate, regardless of the style you practice. Too much emphasis on sport and competition will eventually lead to a watered-down version of the art.
The best comparison that I can think of is Olympic judo. Most people don’t know this, but in the past, kata and the ground fighting were actually very big parts of judo. When it became an Olympic sport, those two pieces were put on the back burner and the emphasis in competitive judo shifted towards the throwing aspect of the art.
The same will happen to karate. The tournament, semi-contact, point-fighting style will remain popular. But that’s only be the surface. Joint-locking, throwing, actual impact training and other self-defense aspects won’t get practiced as much because these techniques will be labeled as “too dangerous” in competition and will be lost eventually.
The select few “crowd pleasing” kata will still be practiced and modified for aesthetic purposes. Unfortunately, the less aesthetically pleasing, yet equally valuable, kata won’t be practiced as much and risk getting lost. In this case, kata will really become nothing more than a gymnastics routine made up of flashy strikes, kicks, punches and postures, instead of what it was really meant for.
Bunkai (kata applications) is definitely going to suffer. Right now, there are actually very few dojo that practice bunkai correctly as it is. We can make the argument that WKF team kata events do display bunkai, but really, these demonstrations are nothing more than diluted, unrealistic and flashy choreography. The so-called team kata bunkai generally have very little real-life, self-defense applications.
The other issue is the tendency for competitors to overspecialize in either kata or point-fighting. If you actually watch high-level, international karate competitions, it’s pretty rare to see a top fighter also be a top kata competitor. Along with personal preference, some people just have certain physical attributes that make them “better” at one instead the other.
With the sporting mentality, it becomes more likely that an athlete will gravitate towards what they think they’re better at to increase their chances of winning a medal. This means that their training will pretty much focus on only the aspect of the art that they’re good at and neglect the part that they can probably improve upon. As “Karate Nerd” Jesse Enkamp (@KARATEbyJesse) pointed out:
Dividing your Karate into only “kumite” or “kata” is artificial and negative for your development as a complete Karate-ka.
The last potential problem is (and always will be) “karate politics”. Ever since karate was brought from Okinawa to mainland Japan back in the 1920s and 1930s, there’s always been politics between the people leading the charge. This really is one of the reasons (though not the only reason) why there are multiple karate styles and why there are multiple karate associations within the same styles.
The Olympic initiative was led by the World Karate Federation. They did do a good job of bringing together karateka from multiple, non-contact and semi-contact styles under a single set of agreed upon competition rules under a single governing body.
The problem is that a lot of other karate associations feel that the WKF doesn’t really represent them (and we’re not even talking about the full-contact practitioners from Kyokushin karate who would hate the WKF tournament rules). These associations are unhappy with the way that the WKF might be trying to monopolize what the general public sees as karate. What could be problematic is that these associations might not want “kow-tow” to the WKF, which then prevents some of their talented, high-level students from competing in the Olympic games.
In the end, we need to remember that even Gichin Funakoshi, founder of Shotokan karate, said that karate will change as time passes. He probably wouldn’t even recognize Shotokan as it is practiced today. Getting karate in the Olympics is generally good news that will change how karate is practiced in the future no matter what. We just have to make sure that we’re able to avoid the potential issues that will water down the art.
