There is a global assertion that karate training develops good character. Shotokan founder Gichin Funakoshi is credited with this aphorism: “The ultimate aim of the art of karate lies not in victory or defeat but in the perfection of the character of its participants.” But he lived in another era and never witnessed the extent to which his karate ideal has been mauled worldwide. Inspiring as such rhetoric may seem, it establishes no fact or even a probability. Other factors shape our character, like our upbringing, our environment, or the pure-and-simple luck of the gene-pool draw. But not karate. Funakoshi’s claim is a fiction because nobody can provide empirical evidence that karate training improves morality.
After forty-plus years in karate, I wrote Pulling No Punches—Karate Myths and Other Stories in 2019 (third edition 2024, available on Amazon in paperback or e-book). It’s a record of my positive and negative karate experiences in South Africa, Japan and the USA, in which I combine some karate history, philosophy, and politics and discuss certain individuals who considered themselves bulletproof from criticism and defiled the ideals of karate-do over their entire careers by delivering disturbing masterclasses in misconduct, self-promotion, narcissism, dishonesty, corruption, cowardice, and outright lying.