Karate 空手

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Eleanor Warnock, Which Kind of Karate Has the Chops to Make the Olympic?  'Noncontact' style hopes to be in Games, splitting sport's world; Rewarding kicks. Wall Street Journal, Sept 26, 2015 (front page).
http://www.wsj.com/articles/whic ... ic-chops-1443206488
(“Karate arose over centuries in the southern island of Okinawa, now a part of Japan, with influence from Chinese martial arts. While little is known about the sport in its infancy, historians say it probably wasn’t about being nice to the other fellow. But after the sport was introduced to mainland Japan in the 1920s, noncontact karate evolved”)

Note:
(a) chop (n; Hindi chāp & Urdu chhāp stamp): "a seal or official stamp or its impression"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chop

(b) "Sayaka KATŌ 加藤 小也香, 22 years old, has a world championship under her belt in Shinkyokushin karate, a full-contact style with sharp kicks and punches that uses minimal body protection. * * * The Japan Fullcontact Karate Organization estimates 20 million people around the world practice full-contact karate. Russian President Vladimir Putin has an honorary black belt. The group’s founder was known to kill bulls with his bare hands."
(i) Shin-kyoku-shin  新極真(会), whose full title is 全世界空手道連盟新極真会 and which split from 極真会.
(A) The three (“shin-kyoku-shin”) are all Chinese pronunciations of respective kanji.
(B) 新極真会 (emblazoned vertically) is on the left breast of her attire in the photo.
(ii) Japan Fullcontact Karate Organization (JFKO)  日本格闘競技連盟 (新極真会 is part of the 連盟.)
(iii) “The group’s founder was known to kill bulls with his bare hands.”
(A) This sentence came right after the mention of JFKO, and yet the “group” is 新極真会, whose founder 創始者 was Masutatsu ŌYAMA 大山 倍達 (1923-1994, born Korean as 崔 永宜), who killed bulls.  ja.wikipedia.org
(B) 日本格闘競技連盟 was formed (by aggregating umbrella groups) in 2009, has no founder, but does have a 会長.

(c) Japanese English dictionary
* kakutō 格闘 【かくとう】 (n,v): "hand-to-hand fighting"
* kyōgi 競技 【きょうぎ】 (n,v): "game; match; contest"
* karate 空手
  ^ kara 空 【から】 (n): "emptiness; vacuum; blank"
  ^ te 手  (Both 'Kara" and "te" are Japanese pronunciations of the respective kanji.)
* karatedō 空手道 【からてどう】 (n): "the way of karate; karate"

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(d) “the World Karate Federation [(WKF); 世界空手連盟; 1961- ; headquarters Madrid], which promotes a style known as noncontact karate. The International Olympic Committee has recognized the World Karate Federation as the international governing body of karate since 1999. * * * World Karate Federation President Antonio Espinos, whose group says it represents more than 90% of organized karate followers.”
(e) “There is another option—kōshiki 硬式[‘kō’ and ‘shiki’ are Chinese pronunciations] or ‘safe contact’ karate, in which contestants wear a chest protector and headgear. The founder of this school’s federation 世界硬式空手道連盟 [World Koshiki Karatedo Federation; based in Tokyo] is Masayuki Kukan HISATAKA 久高正之 空観 [空観 is more or less like a monk’s title; Masayuki 正之 is his given name], who taught karate to the late actor Bruce Lee among others. * * * Ciaran Mitchell, who founded a koshiki contact karate organization in the UK [this is the UK branch]”
(f) “The head of the Japan Karate Federation 全日本空手道連盟 [yes, 道 was added], the local [Japan’s] noncontact group, is Takashi SASAGAWA 笹川 堯, a former longtime member of parliament in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and son of the late right-wing billionaire Ryōichi Sasagawa 笹川 良一. Mr Sasagawa served as a state minister under then-Prime Minister Yoshiō MORI 森 喜朗, and Mr Mori is now head of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee.”

* Regarding the given name of 笹川 堯, literally taka = 高.
(g) “But Toshihisa NAGURA 奈藏 稔久 [kura 倉], general secretary of the World Karate Federation, says the noncontact sport inherits the ’kata’ 型 portion of karate practiced from the early days, in which practitioners carry out moves against an invisible opponent. ‘Traditional elements were preserved exactly as the old days,’ he says.”

In Japan, the kata 型 has all definitions as in Chinese language, with at least one additional definition (in Japan): “standard form of a movement, posture, etc in martial arts, sport, etc” Jim Breen’s online Japanese dictionary -- all definitions in (c) comes from this dictionary.