What is karate and where did it come from? Published Aug. 24, 2006 By Senior Airman John Gordinier 20th Fighter Wing Public Affairs SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. -- Bruce Lee is considered one of the first martial arts experts to be seen on television and in movies. He flaunted his skills and techniques to amaze a crowd. Presently, movie celebrities such as Jackie Chan, Steven Segal and Jet Li do much of the same thing. They perform martial arts in countless movies with practically the same plot -- good guy versus bad guy. Even though karate was first viewed worldwide around the time of Bruce Lee, it was created many years prior. "Karate is a martial art more than 1,000 years old and unlike the way movies portray martial arts, karate has been an effective method of self defense," Sgt. Olsen said. "To understand what karate is, one needs to know where karate came from. "As legend has it, the evolution of karate began as early as the fifth century B.C. when a man, Bodhidharma, traveled from India to China and began teaching Zen Buddhism," he said. "He also introduced a systematic set of exercises designed to strengthen the mind and body, which later became the basis for the majority of martial arts. "In truth, the origins of karate appear to be somewhat obscure and little is known about the early development until it appeared in Okinawa," Sgt. Olsen said. Okinawa is a small island off the coast of Japan, and in its early stages, karate was an indigenous form of closed-fist fighting, he said. Weapons bans imposed on the Okinawans at various points in their history encouraged the refinement of empty-hand techniques, which was taught in secret until modern times. "In 1955, Mr. Ohshima came to the U.S. and became the first person to open a school and teach karate to the public," Sgt. Olsen said. "Since then, thousands of schools have opened up across the country and many forms of karate have been created."