空手How Karate Got Its Name

Karate (空手, “empty hand”) was originally written 唐手 — “Tang hand” or “China hand,” read tōde or karate — reflecting the art’s Chinese roots. Over the 1920s–30s, Okinawan masters led by Gichin Funakoshi shifted to the homophone 空手 (“empty hand”) and added 道 (dō, “way”) to make karate-dō. It was a gradual process, not one moment — driven by both a Zen reframing and the politics of the age.

From “China hand” to “empty hand”

The older name 唐手 honoured the Chinese (Tang-dynasty) influence on Okinawan fighting arts; in Okinawan it was often read tōde. The clever move was phonetic: the characters 唐 and 空 can both be read “kara,” so switching to 空手 kept the sound but changed the meaning — from “China hand” to “empty hand.” For the wider story of the art and the man, see the history of Shotokan & Funakoshi.

A process, not a single event

Year	Step
1905	Chōmo Hanashiro is first to put the characters 空手 in print — so Funakoshi did not coin them
1922	Funakoshi’s Tokyo & Kōdōkan demonstrations bring Okinawan karate to mainland Japan
1929	Keiō University club reframes the name around the Zen idea of “emptiness”
1933	The character change gains recognition (Dai-Nippon Butoku Kai)
1935	Funakoshi renames the kata and publishes Karate-Dō Kyōhan
Oct 1936	The Naha “roundtable of masters” formally resolves on 空手

Sources give slightly different years for some steps — even Shotokai’s own accounts vary — so treat the dates as the shape of a gradual shift rather than exact milestones.

The two meanings of 空 (“empty”)

The new character was chosen because it carries two meanings at once:

Unarmed. “Empty hand” = fighting with no weapon, using only the body — the plain, literal sense.
Zen emptiness. 空 (kū) is also the Buddhist concept of emptiness (śūnyatā) from the Heart Sutra — emptying the self of ego and aggression. This reframed karate as a path of character, not just a fighting method.

Adding 道 (“way”) to make karate-dō completed the shift — exactly as jūjutsu became jūdō — recasting a set of techniques as a lifelong “way” of self-development.

Why the name changed

Two motives sat side by side, and historians don’t reduce it to one:

Politics. As karate entered mainland Japan amid rising nationalism and Sino-Japanese tension, a name literally meaning “China hand” was awkward; “empty hand” was more palatable to a Japanese audience.
Philosophy. The Zen “emptiness” reading genuinely fit the budō reframing Funakoshi and others were pursuing — see the minds of budō and the twenty precepts.

The honest version. Funakoshi didn’t invent the character (Hanashiro printed it in 1905), and there was no single switch-flip. Present it as a gradual, debated transition across the 1920s–30s that both de-emphasised the Chinese origin and added a Zen, “way”-of-life meaning.

Sources & further reading

This guide is cross-checked against the references below. Where sources genuinely disagree, that is flagged in the text above rather than smoothed over.

Frequently asked questions

What does karate mean?

Karate (空手) means ‘empty hand’ — fighting unarmed, using only the body. The character 空 (‘empty’) also carries a Zen sense of emptying the ego, which is why the full name karate-dō means ‘the way of the empty hand.’

Why was karate’s name changed from ‘China hand’ to ‘empty hand’?

Two reasons together: as karate entered mainland Japan amid nationalism and Sino-Japanese tension, ‘China hand’ (唐手) was awkward, and the homophone 空手 (‘empty hand’) also fit a Zen reframing of karate as a path of self-development. The characters 唐 and 空 are both read ‘kara,’ so the sound stayed the same.

Did Funakoshi invent the character for karate?

No. Gichin Funakoshi championed and popularised writing karate as 空手 (‘empty hand’), but Chōmo Hanashiro had already put those characters in print in 1905. Funakoshi drove its mainstream adoption in the 1920s–30s, not its invention.

What does karate-dō mean?

Karate-dō (空手道) means ‘the way of the empty hand.’ Adding 道 (dō, ‘way’) reframed karate from a set of fighting techniques into a lifelong path of character development — the same step that turned jūjutsu into jūdō.

When did karate get its name?

The shift from 唐手 to 空手 happened gradually across the 1920s–30s rather than on one date. Key points include the first printed 空手 in 1905, recognition of the change around 1933, and a 1936 meeting of Okinawan masters in Naha that formally settled on 空手.