The origins of karate dates back to more than a thousand years, but the modern art of karate-do is just about three-quarters of a century old and its origin on Okinawa, the largest island in the archipelago south of the Japanese mainland, known as the Ryukyus. In 1477 and 1609 successively, the king of Chuzan and the Shimazu and Ryukus Clan of the Satsuma Domain issued edits banning the possession of weapons. This they did after they conquered the islands. The Okinawans being by nature a temperament and peace-loving people offered virtually no organized or effective resistance. Even farming implements were stored in government warehouses, where they could be properly monitored. In 1609 the manufacture of ceremonial swords was also banned in Okinawa, and the Okinawans were left literally “empty-handed.” There can be little doubt that these successive bans on weapons, coupled with resentment, encouraged and strongly influenced the development of empty-handed combat arts in the Ryukyu Islands.

Funakoshi Gichin, the man credited as being the father of modern karate-do was born in Okinawa in 1868. Gichin Funakoshi had trained in both of the popular styles of Okinawan karate of the time: Shorei-ryu and Shorin-ryu. After years of study in both styles, Funakoshi created a simpler style that combined the ideals of the two. He never named his style, however, always referring to it simply as "karate." Funakoshi's karate reflects the changes made in the art by Anko Itosu , including the Heian/Pinan kata series. Funakoshi changed the names of the kata in an effort to make the "foreign" Okinawan names more palatable to the then-nationalistic Japanese mainland. In the 1920s, Funakoshi adopted the Kyu / Dan rank system and the uniform (keikogi) developed by Kano Jigoro, the founder of judo. This system uses colored belts (obi) to indicate rank. Originally, karate had only three belt colors: white, brown, and black (with ranks within each).

8th-4th kyu: white
3rd-1st kyu: brown
1st-5th dan: black

Funakoshi awarded the first 1st dan (shodan) Shotokan karate ranks to Tokuda, Otsuka, Akiba, Shimizu, Hirose, Gima, and Kasuya on 10 April 1924. Hong Hi Choi, a key figure in the development of taekwondo, studied Shotokan karate during the Japanese occupation of Korea during the first half of the 20th century. Master Funakoshi was invited to lecture and demonstrate at an exhibition sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Education. The people were so impressed that Master Funakoshi was requested to teach in Tokyo. Instead of returning to his country, he taught karate at various universities and at the Kodokan, the Mecca of Judo, until he established the SHOTOKAN in 1963. This was a great landmark in the history of karate in Japan. In 1955 the Ministry of Education in Japan incorporated the Japan Karate Association (JKA) as an educational institution. Master Funakoshi died in 1957 at the age of eighty-eight in Tokyo. The leaders of JKA, mainly Japanese intelligentsia saw that the survival of karate lay in its exportation and from as early as 1953 karate instructors were brought to the United States.