The first reference in English to karate was by Ernest Harrison, an English journalist and part time translator whose hobbies also included wrestling. He took up martial arts as a young reporter in Japan in 1897, and has the kudos of being the first person born outside Japan to be awarded a judo black belt. Harrison was still practising at the age of 80, making him the oldest living judoka at that time.
In his later professional life Harrison focused his attention on Lithuania, even working as a censor of Lithuanian language letters for the British Post Office during the Second World War. But he also continued to write what have become English classics in martial arts. They include Ju-Jitsu, Theory and Practise of Judo and the expanded version of Fighting Arts of Japan. This is the work that includes the first reference to karate, and it would be explored more fully in The Manual of Karate which Harrison produced soon afterwards. His books are notable for being highly factual. He saw the martial arts as a subject to be accurately reported and was amazed to see other writers using them as a basis for fiction.
This refusal to deviate from the facts and “play to the audience” may have contributed to Harrison’s lack of financial success. He remained relatively poor all his life, and often complained about this in his letters. He might have complained even more if he’d lived to see the success of films such as The Karate Kid, which earned USD 176 million at the box office, or the 1970s disco anthem Kung Fu Fighting. This single sold 11 million copies and made a star of Carl Douglas, a Jamaican whose kung fu moves owed more to enthusiasm than technique.
Harrison died in 1961, coincidentally the same year that the World Karate Federation was formed. Sadly this great chronicler of the martial arts is an obscure figure compared with many exponents. The Ernest John Harrison Facebook page has only 22 “likes”, while the Bruce Lee page has over 6 million.
