Karate, or karate-do, loosely translated means "empty hand" (kara means "empty" and te means "hand"), and this art is predominantly concerned with fighting with bare hands and feet. The basic principle is to turn the body into an effective weapon to defend and attack when and where it is appropriate.

Karate can be regarded as both a sport as well as a self-defence art depending on the emphasis of the club or the association that is followed. Some instructors of karate place great emphasis on classical teachings, which incorporate traditional movements (such as kata) and philosophy, while others focus more on competition training. Many instructors teach all aspects of the art. Karate is also an effective system of self-defence, which originally evolved on the Japanese island of Okinawa, where the carrying of weapons was forbidden, and so the inhabitants had to learn to protect themselves by other means.

Karate is one of the most widely practised of the oriental martial arts. It evolved during one of the Japanese occupations of the island of Okinawa, part of the Ryukyu chain of islands, in the 15th century. Its roots, however, can be traced back much further than this - all the way back to ancient India and China. Many people hold the view that what we today regard as the oriental martial arts have their roots in India. Indeed, when we look at such disciplines as yoga and the breathing techniques that originated in India, there does seem to be a great similarity between those and many of the modern martial arts systems.

It is believed that Zen Buddhist monks took the Indian fighting techniques to China from as early as the 5th and 6th centuries BC. Bodidharmi, the most famous of these monks, travelled at the end of the 5th century AD from India to China, where he became an instructor at the Shaolin monastery. He taught a combination of empty-hand fighting systems and yoga, and this became the well-known Shaolin kung fu - the system on which many Chinese martial arts systems are based.

In 1470, the Japanese had occupied the island of Okinawa. The law of the land dictated that anybody found carrying weapons would be put to death. In order to protect themselves from local bandits, who largely ignored the ban on weapons, Zen Buddhist monks developed the empty hand system known as te ("hand"), importing new techniques from China. Eventually the new art was translated as t'ang ("China hand"), but was familiarly known as Okinawa-te ("Okinawa hand"). It was not until the 20th century that t'ang became known as karate-do ("empty hand").

Practice and demonstrations until that time had been extremely violent. Punches were not pulled and full contact was an integral part of the Okinawa-te style. Yoshitaka Funakoshi (Gichin Funakoshi's son) transformed the techniques of Okinawa-te into a gentler system, seeking not to deliver blows fully, but to "focus" strikes at skin level. The do suffix expressed the move away from the "aim of the warrior" and towards physical and spiritual development.