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Human Weapon: East Asian Martial Arts

Introduction

What is martial arts? Is it an activity? A sport? A self-defence method? A hobby? An exercise? Actually, the answer would be all of the previously mentioned. Martial arts is a combat sport that can utilize weapons, body armor or just hand-to-hand combat. Almost every single country on the planet has its own style or form of martial arts, but when somebody hears the term 'martial arts,' they tend to connect it with East Asia most of the time. Boxing, judo, sambo, kickboxing, wrestling, pankration, eskrima, muay thai, krav maga, wing chun, silat and many other forms exist in the world and all of them are devastating in their own ways. Almost all of them have a long history and were used during battles by soldiers; martial arts was originally created to prevent soldiers from being helpless on the battlefield if by any chance they lost their weapons. Now, as time has passed, martial arts has become a self-defense method as well as an exercise, hobby and sport. The popularity of this combat sport has increased so much that it is even featured in movies; an action movie isn't called an action movie without at least one scene of the character engaging in a spectacular battle. Movie stars famous for their skills in martial arts include the famous Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Donnie Yen, Tony Jaa, Benny the Jet and many others; their fighting scenes never fail to captivate the audience and amaze them. For those of you who have not seen these awesome battles, here are two fantastic battle scenes featuring Jackie Chan (black shirt in first video) and Donnie Yen (black leather jacket in second video).

media type="file" key="jackie chan.flv" width="435" height="326".............................media type="file" key="donnie yen.flv" width="435" height="326" ............................... movie "Rumble in the Bronx" ....................................................................................................... movie "Flash Point" ............................

Martial arts is a key component of the East Asian society; children who can be as young as 5 learn how to defend themselves, movies feature lots of battle scenes of breathtaking hand-to-hand combat and even a lot of comic books (Manhwa in Korean, Manhua in Chinese, Manga in Japanese) are based upon this combat sport. The frequent usage of martial arts alone shows how popular and essential it is to East Asia. The East Asian styles are also well known around the world: videos on the net including tutorials on Kung-Fu, professional demonstrators leashing out their swift and deadly TaeKwon-Do kicks, TV broadcasts about the math and physics behind Muay-Thai elbow smashes are all examples of the worldwide fame and popularity of East Asian Martial Arts.

Starting with the world's oldest form of martial arts, the Chinese combat style Kung-Fu (also known as Wu-Shu), I will explain about the history, fundamentals, techniques and show examples videos of the representative martial arts of China, Korea and Japan.

__**Click links:**__

Chinese Martial Arts

Korean Martial Arts

Japanese Martial Arts

Self - Evaluation

__**Sources (MLA)**__

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Morris, Glen R. "Taekwondo History." //World Martial Arts Academy -- WTF Taekwondo -- A Korean Martial Art//. Web. 12 June 2011. .

"Asian Games 2006 - Disciplines." //The Official Website of the BEIJING 2008 Olympic Games//. Olympic Games, 8 Aug. 2008. Web. 12 June 2011. .