Martial arts, also known as fighting systems, are bodies of codified practices or traditions of unarmed and armed combat, usually without the use of guns and other modern weapons. They are often taught today with the goal of developing both the character of the practitioner and the mindful, appropriate, controlled use of bodily force.
The martial arts, perhaps due to a half-century of dramatic portrayals in popular media (see orientalism), have been inextricably bound in the Western imagination to East Asian cultures and people. Martial arts are by no means unique to Asia, however. Humans around the world have always had to develop ways to defend themselves from attack, often without weapons. As a result, there are many martial arts known and practiced; for further information on a particular art, see the list of martial arts.
"Martial arts" was translated in 1920 in Takenobu's Japanese-English Dictionary from Japanesebu-gei or bu-jutsu (武術) that means "the craft/accomplishment of military affairs". This definition is translated directly from the Chinese term, Wushu (pywǔ shù, Cantonese, mou seut), literally, "martial art", meaning all manner of Chinese martial arts.
This term is slightly anomalous in its English usage. Its strict meaning should be "arts for military use" (flying fighter aircraft, sniper training, and so forth) but in normal usage it is used to refer to formalized systems of training to fight without modern technology. It is nevertheless valuable to distinguish between fighting systems intended for soldiers in battle (even without modern technology) and fighting systems intended for sport or for self-defense. The technical characteristics of these three kinds of fighting system are rather different.
What differentiates the martial arts from mere unarmed brawling is the organization of their techniques into a coherent system and the codification of effective teaching methods. One common training technique is to have a series of routines called forms (also called kata, ch'uan, kuen, tao lu, or hyung) which can serve as a dictionary of essential techniques to be memorized and drawn from at need. Martial arts are also characterized by the controlled, mindful application of force in ways selected for empirical effectiveness. In this sense, boxing, fencing, archery, and wrestling can also be considered martial arts.
Not all Martial Arts were developed in Asia. Savate, for example, was developed as a form of kickboxing in France. Capoeira's athletic movements were developed in Brazil.
Most martial arts include some study of all these, and some explicity attempt to be complete (Eskrima, many types of Jujutsu, some traditional Chinese arts).
Some martial arts, such as the traditional Chinese arts, go beyond this to teach side disciplines such as qigong, acupuncture, acupressure, bone-setting and other aspects of traditional Chinese medicine. This is a natural extension, as at an advanced level techniques can take advantage of a detailed knowledge of how the opponent's body works to drastically increase the effectiveness of techniques.
Every martial arts system, and every martial arts school has its own history. This generally falls into two categories: recent history and ancient history.
Recent history, in this context, is relatively verifiable: who did the teacher learn from? Where did the teacher study? What other arts has the teacher studied, and how has the teacher incorporated them into their teaching? Was the teacher given permission to teach by their teacher? What are the teacher's goals in teaching the class?
This last question deserves some explanation. Some classes are taught primarily to teach students to become effective competitors in tournaments. Some classes are taught to attempt to teach the students to defend themselves effectively against some class of imagined situations. Some classes are taught to preserve an ancient tradition. The practical details of these distinct kinds of classes will be very different.
Ancient history, at least in the sense used here, is much more difficult. In fact, for most systems it is essentially a myth --- in the sense that it is propagated by word-of-mouth among students in the absence of verifiable evidence. This is not to say that it is not also true! But the importance of such a history does not depend on its truth: the effect of such a myth on shaping the development of a martial art is probably much greater than the effect of events two hundred years ago (at least five generations of passing the art on from teacher to student). So an art that is believed to be an art of warriors will focus on battlefield effectiveness and weapon use against highly skilled opponents, while an art that is believed to be for self-defense will focus on reactions to surprise attack and multiple opponents.
The history of martial arts around the world is therefore quite complex; on the one hand, most groups of people have had to defend themselves and have developed effective fighting techniques, but on the other hand, most of those techniques have been rendered militarily obsolete over the centuries. Even at an individual, rural level, the threat to the safety of a village is now more likely to come from warriors armed with automatic rifles than from men with swords. Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to preserve a martial art; doing so requires many years of teaching at the hands of a good teacher to pass on the art for a single generation. So it is relatively rare that a martial art would survive and become popular in today's culture, and each art that has done so has a unique history. Some generalities can be said, though, and the next few sections will attempt to discuss the overall rise to popularity of some martial arts.
The teaching of martial arts in Asia has historically followed the Confucian cultural tradition of teacher-disciple apprenticeship. Students are trained in a strictly hierarchical system by a master instructor: Sensei in Japanese (Pinyin 先生, xiān sheng); in Chinese 老師, (Wade-Giles) Lao Shih, (Pinyin) lǎo shī (lit., old master); CantoneseSifu; 師父 Mandarin (Wade-Giles) Shih fu, (Pinyin) Shī fù (lit., the master-father). The instructor is expected to directly supervise their students' training, and the students are expected to memorize and recite as closely as possible the rules and basic training routines of the school.
Open speculation about training methods or the instructor's motives and personality is generally not tolerated in juniors, as they aren't considered familiar enough with the basic requirements of their respective arts to make realistic distinctions. They are instead encouraged to repeatedly train applications of the forms and techniques that they've been shown in gradually more complex scenarios.
In this Confucian family-based hierarchy, those who enter instruction with the instructor before the student are considered older brothers and sisters; those after, younger brothers and sisters. The instructor's peers are considered aunts and uncles, etc. into other generations above and below. Such clearly delineated relationships, based on seniority, are designed to develop intangibles such as good character, patience and discipline in martial students. As a matter of safety for the instructors, the student body and the individual student, before they are shown anything beyond the most basic conditioning exercises, students learn their place in the school hierarchy. Students should learn how and why to clearly demonstrate respect for others and how to follow the directions of their instructors properly. The traditional schools are said by this reasoning to provide thereby a level playing field for all students, providing a relatively fixed framework for interaction with one's seniors, peers and juniors, so that everyone, not just the physically gifted, can have an opportunity to benefit from the training provided in a martial art school.
Some method of certification can be involved, where one's skills would be tested for mastery before being allowed to study further; in some systems, especially in China, there are no such certifications, only years of close personal practice and evaluation under a master, much like an apprenticeship, until the master deems one's skills satisfactory. This pedagogy, while still preserved and respected in many traditional styles, has weakened to varying degrees in others and is even actively rejected by some schools, especially in the West.
The peoples of Europe have had a thoroughly war-torn history, and the peoples that survived had highly effective martial arts. However, these martial arts mostly adapted to changing technology, so that while their descendants still exist, they are focused on things like flying helicopters and infantry tactics for riflemen. We generally do not call these martial arts.
Some traditional martial arts have been preserved in one form or another. For example, fencing was preserved by being made into a sport; of course this has changed the practice significantly. Some historical fencing has survived, and some groups have attempted to reconstruct old European martial arts from a few surviving combat manuals.
Some of the oldest written and illustrated material on the subject of European martial arts dates from the 15th and 16th centuries, and was written by notable teachers like Hans Talhoffer, Fiore dei Liberi and George Silver. Some transcripts of yet older texts have survived, the oldest being a manuscript going by the name of I.33 and dating from the late 13th century.
Fighting manuals such as those listed above have served as guides for attempted reconstructions of European martial arts. Another example of such historical martial arts reconstruction is Pankration, which comes from the Greek (pan, meaning all, kratos, meaning power or strength). Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to record the essential parts of a martial art in written form (or in fact in any form except the training of a body of master students) so these efforts are very difficult and require the practitioners to borrow techniques from living martial arts to fill in the gaps.
Unarmed European martial arts that have survived in active form include English boxing, Olympic wrestling, and French savate.
Other martial arts were made into sports that we no longer recognize as combative, such as some kinds of gymnastics, where the pommel horse is called a horse because it simulates a horse: the art comes from the necessity of a cavalryman to be able to change positions and fight effectively from a the back of a horse. Similar origins exist for the shot put and the javelin throw.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, a number of martial arts movies, particularly those of Bruce Lee, caught the attention of the North American public, and tremendous interest in Asian martial arts appeared. Initially, only a few martial arts systems were available and popular, such as Karate and Taekwondo, but in the 1990s, students began to realize that there were many more choices of martial art, and a tremendous diversity in martial arts appeared.
Many practitioners reject these competitions as a valid comparison between martial arts. Certainly martial arts have a variety of different goals, threat models and styles of problem-solving, so it is extremely difficult to even agree on what "effectiveness" would be for a martial art. This is of course complicated by the pride of the martial artists themselves, each wishing their own style to be found the best.
Fighting is an extremely complex discipline. Professional warriors such as samurai, knights and other soldiers usually spent lifetimes studying fighting, honed by very hard practice and by real combat. Since few people today have such dedication, most martial arts systems focus on one aspect of fighting. Of course, most practitioners would like to have some skill in other aspects, and most arts include some study of many aspects. Often in-depth study of certain aspects is not begun until a practitioner has been training for many years.
Some aspects of fighting that may be focused on include:
Long-range unarmed fighting. In this situation, things happen relatively slowly (hundreds of milliseconds), giving participants time to react to visual stimuli. This allows powerful strikes as well as subtle feints to be performed.
Short-range unarmed fighting. In this situation reaction time is such an important factor that visual stimuli are not very useful, and practitioners must learn to react to tactile stimuli. Strikes are still possible but reactions must become reflexes, making feints more difficult.
Grappling. In this situation participants are holding each other too closely to permit effective striking. Leverage and physical strength become very important. If not forbidden by rules, biting, pinching and spitting can be very effective at this range.
Armed fighting. Fighting with weapons can be rather different from unarmed fighting, both because strikes can become much more destructive and because weapons can drastically increase the reach of a practitioner. Of course, each weapon and each range requires its own techniques, but a cleverly designed teaching system can take advantage of similarities to simplify the study.
Moral, emotional, and physical development. The dedication and practice required to acquire skill in a martial art can be very beneficial to the character of a practitioner. Some martial arts systems focus on these effects, and emphasize techniques and training that encourage this development.
Fighting against a single opponent. Both traditional duels and most modern sparring matches pit one expert fighter against another, with some set of rules, and after a battle, declare a victor. This has a number of different effects; for example, footwork can be simplified as a practitioner rarely needs to turn quickly. On the other hand, one can expect one's opponent to be about as highly skilled as oneself.
Fighting against multiple opponents. Some martial arts systems focus on being able to deal with multiple opponents simultaneously. In order for this to be possible, normally the opponents must be assumed to have less skill than the practitioner. This has technical effects as well, including tight, careful footwork to allow rapid turning, as well as rapid disabling of opponents in order to move on.
