MARTIAL ARTS AS A MODEL OF CULTURAL DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE WEST AND THE EAST

Abstract

There are very few phenomena that have managed to outgrow their creators the way martial arts of the Far East have done it among the Western cultures and the cultures that have undergone a strong process of westernization. The subject that I will address in this paper is the role and the place that martial arts take in Western popular culture. In this context I will attempt to explore the influence that martial arts had on forming new ideas, unfamiliar to the West, mainly ideas about body concept, body awareness and physical culture. I am primarily using the term martial arts to refer to the martial arts of Japan: karate, judo, kendo etc., as well as to the Chinese kung fu and t’ai chi ch’uan which have emerged in the West after the end of World War II. In terms of popular culture the place of martial arts was built through media culture and it gained its individual interpretation through consumption of that culture, as well as through forming life styles that were suggested in media such as film and through cultural tourism. The purpose of this paper is to stress the basic features of the influence that martial arts phenomenon has in Western cultural tradition.