Marketing martial arts: competitive sport versus self-defence, combat sport versus Eastern philosophy?

Martial arts such as karate from Japan, taekwondo from Korea, and kung fu from China, refer to codified systems of traditional fighting, and tend to be associated with underlying belief systems and codes of honour relating to the specific culture or society from region of origin. While the eastern martial arts of karate, taekwondo and kung fu are relatively well-known in the west, many other cultures have their own traditional systems of fighting, including western cultures. In fact, the Eastern martial arts themselves are thought to have their roots in the ancient Greek martial art of pankration, a form of 'total combat' within a moral culture glorifying valour and honour, thought to have been brought to Asia by the armies of Alexander the Great, and then spread throughout East Asia by Buddhist monks. The common feature of the traditional martial arts, as considered in this paper, is that the primary objective of the system of fighting is protection of oneself and one's associates from physical violation. Framed in this way, the key feature of a martial art is self-defence and force is only applied in order to negate a threat and to negotiate a peace. If there is no threat, or a dispute can be resolved without fighting, there is no need to engage in forceful combat. Martial arts such traditional taekwondo and traditional karate have a philosophy that one well-executed attacking technique should take out one opponent. A well-trained martial artist should have the mental discipline and physical skill to apply exactly the degree of force that is warranted by the context in which they find themselves, no more, but equally, no less.