Kenpo versus Kempo versus Kenfat versus ?

I generally don’t comment much on the issue I am going to write about below, but this morning I woke up and felt unusually cranky. I say unusually because, while I am at all times at some level of crankiness, it usually doesn’t manifest until later in the morning.

I was reading another a day or so ago and the discussion was about “Kenpo” versus “Kempo”.  I would have thought that this issue was put to bed a long time ago, but evidently I don’t get out enough.

One writer said that the difference was the “Kenpo” came from southern China, and “Kempo” from northern China.

Another one said that they thought that “Kempo” only referred to those Chinese boxing arts that came to America in the early 1950’s.

A third person said that only Okinawans can use “Kenpo” and that everybody else should use “Kempo” to distinguish their arts from the “real” Okinawan Kenpo.

Its all hogwash.  Most people never bother to really research their arts, preferring to simply take for granted what their instructors tell them. This is where errors in transmission occur, like the Koreans not being willing to admit that Tae kwon Do and Tang Soo Do both come from Shotokan and/or Shorin-ryu karate-do.

Lets begin with the terms that originated all of the discussion.

“Chuan Fa” ( 拳法 ) refers to Chinese martial arts in general, but especially fist methods. Let’s break down the characters:

1.         拳 (Quán): This character means “fist”. It represents the physical aspect of martial arts, emphasizing techniques involving punches and strikes. It is also translated as “boxing”.

2.         The radical 手 in Quan above, actually means “hand” and can be pronounced “shou” [show] in Chinese Mandarin, “sao” [sow] in Cantonese, and “te” [tay] in Japanese. In the Hogen dialect of Okinawa, its pronounced “ti” or “di”.

3.         法 (Fǎ): This character translates to “method”, “law”, or “way”. It signifies the systematic approach and principles behind martial arts practice. In Cantonese it is “Fat” [faht]. In Japanese is it pronounced “ho”.

4.  The issue between Kenpo and Kempo is not one of geographic region or style differences, or area of origin, or even language in general, but one of morphology. Kenpo or Kempo is the same word. The “po” in either, is actually the “ho” from #3 above.  But because in Japanese the “h” sound, when preceeded by a nasal (“n” or “m”) it changes from an “h” to a “p” or a “b”.  Just as the word for “100” is “hyaku”, when preceeded by a nasal sound, it becomes “byaku” as in sanbyaku (300). It gets even worse if you try to say “600”. Instead of “Rokyu Hyaku”, it becomes “Ro-pyaku”.

For me, these changes allow for more fluid and comfortable flow of speech, without the glottal stops that would otherwise occur. There are other reasons as well.  Older Japanese speech patterns are still considered “correct” even if they are not in mainstream language use today.

5.  No matter what you call it, shouldn't the martial arts be more about bringing people together rather than keeping them apart?