September 16, 2011

Attraction of Karate for Young People

児童を含む若者にとって,空手の魅力は何か。若者が,他のスポーツではなく空手を選択する理由は何だろうか。スポーツとしての効用は,どの競技も同じであると考えられるから,若者の選択を左右する要因として残るのは,空手が持つ独特の本質的な魅力であろう。では,その空手の本質的な魅力とは何か。格闘術としての魅力が大きいことは当然だが,周辺には,柔道や剣道や合気道の道場,少林寺拳法の道院,ボクシングのジムも身近に存在し,また,最近ではレスリングやブラジリアン柔術やテコンドーの道場も多い。では,なぜ空手なのか。もちろん,実際のところ,自宅の近くに道場があったから,あるいは,親や兄弟や知り合いがやっていたから,という理由が大きいかもしれない。ただ,空手には,外国のあるいは外国風の格闘術(ボクシング,レスリング,テコンドー,少林寺拳法,ブラジリアン柔術など)にはない,また,柔道や剣道などの高度にスポーツ化が進んだ競技にはない,日本的な「武道」としての魅力をなんとなく感じるのではないだろうか。すなわち,「武道性」という魅力である。また,厳密には,空手は沖縄の武道なので,そこにまた,他の日本武道系スポーツ(柔道,剣道,合気道,弓道など)とは異なる,一種独特の魅力があるのかもしれない。

What is the attraction of karate for young people including the children? What is the reason why young people select karate instead of other sports? Any kinds of sports may have the same goods of sports, and the rest of factors to influence their selection may be the attraction that karate has originally and essentially. What is the essential attraction of karate? Though it it natural that it is attractive as martial arts, there are dojos of judo, kendo, aikido, and doins of shorinji-kenpo, and gyms of boxing around young people. Recently, there are not a few dojos of wrestling, Brazilian-jujutsu, and taekwondo, too. But why some select karate? Of course, actually the most practical reason may be that a dojo of the martial art is near their home, or their parents, brothers, or acquaintances practice the martial art. But, doesn't karate make us vaguely feel attracted to its characteristics as Japanese "budo," which is not accompanied with foreign or foreign-like martial arts (boxing, wrestling, taekwondo, shorinji-kenpo, Brazilian-jujutsu, and so on), as well as highly-sportized marital arts like judo and kendo? That is the attraction of "bodoism." In addition, strictly speaking, karate is Okinawan budo, and then there may be a kind of original attraction in karate, which is different from one in other Japanese martial artistic sports (judo, kendo, aikido, kyudo, and so on).

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