From Martial Arts to Self-Cultivation: The Integration of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism and Karate Etiquette and Ethics
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Research on karate's cultural background often mentions Confucianism, but the specific route from late imperial Chinese thought to modern Japanese practice is not always spelled out. This study traces that route. It starts from Song–Ming developments—both the Cheng–Zhu synthesis and Wang Yangming's stress on the mind—which framed ethics, family life, and education across East Asia. In the same period, Chinese martial arts were circulating among lay groups and borrowing Confucian language to talk about discipline and harmony. Parts of this martial culture later entered Japan and, after adaptation to local settings, fed into what became karate. What is striking in today's dojos is that etiquette—bows, address forms, order of practice—still carries recognizably Confucian themes such as ritual self-restraint and reverence for the teacher. Drawing on textual sources and interviews with instructors and long-term practitioners, the article shows how these themes are performed in training and what they contribute to contemporary efforts at cultural inheritance. It suggests that karate's moral pedagogy is not incidental but shaped by a Confucian logic linking bodily practice to ethical cultivation and to wider social harmony.
Author: Jiayin Liu
Institution: Beijing Normal University
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4408420135