Unit 11 · Illinois Storefronts

The Japanese word dojo is written with two Chinese characters. The first means way or path. The second means place. Together they mean a place of the way. In Japanese Buddhism, the word first named a place for religious practice.

Later, schools of Japanese swordsmanship and other arts used dojo for their training halls. Judo and karate schools kept the word. When karate spread to the United States after World War II, American teachers painted dojo on their signs.

Korean uses the same two characters. In Korean they are read dojang. Taekwondo schools in Korea and abroad use this word for their rooms. So a karate dojo and a taekwondo dojang share one old written word, spoken in two languages.

Many Chinese martial arts schools in the United States use the word kwoon. It is the Cantonese way of saying a Chinese word for hall or house. In standard Chinese the same word is said guan. Early Chinese immigrants to America came mostly from Guangdong province, where Cantonese is spoken.

The English word gym is short for gymnasium. It comes from the ancient Greek gymnasion. Greek gymnasion comes from gymnos, which means naked. Greek men exercised and wrestled without clothes in these public grounds.

So a sign that says kwoon points to southern China and Cantonese-speaking migrants. A sign that says gym points back to Greek cities more than two thousand years ago. Each name is a small record of where a practice came from.

A public high school is paid for mostly by local property taxes and state money. Voters in the district elect a school board. The board hires the staff, sets the budget and decides which sports the school offers. The wrestling room is part of that public building.

Illinois public high schools belong to the Illinois High School Association, the IHSA. The IHSA is a private, non-profit group run by its member schools. It sets the dates each sport season may begin and end. It also runs the state tournaments in wrestling and other sports.

Because the room is public, students do not pay rent to use it. A school may charge a small athletic fee, but the mats, the coach and the bus come from the school budget. That is a big difference from a storefront school, which must earn its own rent.

A public school team is open to students enrolled in that school. For much of the 1900s, though, many schools offered few sports for girls. In 1972 Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments. It bans sex discrimination in schools that receive federal money, including their sports.

In 1973 Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act. Its Section 504 bans discrimination against people with disabilities in programs that receive federal money. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 widened those protections across public life.

In 2013 the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to schools about sports. It said schools must give students with disabilities a fair chance to try out and take part. It said schools should make reasonable changes when they can. A student who is deaf, for example, may need a visual start signal.

During and after World War II, millions of Americans served overseas. The United States governed Okinawa from 1945 until 1972. Many American servicemen stationed on Okinawa and in Japan took karate and judo lessons from local teachers.

Robert Trias served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during the war. There he studied a Chinese fighting art. In 1946 he opened a karate school in Phoenix, Arizona. Histories of American karate often call it the first karate school on the U.S. mainland.

Ed Parker was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He studied kenpo there, an art taught in Hawaii by Chinese and Japanese immigrant teachers. In 1956 he opened a school in Pasadena, California. Returning veterans and teachers like these made karate a word Americans could read on a sign.

In 1964 Ed Parker organized the first Long Beach International Karate Championships in Long Beach, California. It was an open tournament. Competitors from many different styles could enter, not only students of one school.

At that first event, a young teacher named Bruce Lee gave a demonstration. He was then teaching Chinese martial arts in Oakland and Seattle. Film of his demonstration helped lead to his casting in the television series The Green Hornet, which began in 1966.

Open tournaments mixed Japanese, Okinawan, Korean, Chinese and Hawaiian styles on one floor. Promoters, not a national government, wrote the rules for each event. That is one reason American karate grew with many separate associations instead of a single governing body.

After World War II, American suburbs grew quickly. New shopping strips offered cheap commercial rent for small businesses. Karate and taekwondo teachers rented these spaces. By the late 1960s and 1970s, storefront schools were common in many American towns.

A storefront school is usually a private business. The owner pays rent, insurance and taxes. Students pay monthly fees and often a fee to test for a new rank. The school chooses its own style, its own rank system and its own rules for the room.

Illinois does not issue a state license to teach karate or taekwondo the way it licenses professional boxers. A school may join a private association or a national body for its art. Families usually judge a school by its teacher’s history and its reputation.

Judo came to American colleges through Japanese American teachers. Yosh Uchida, a Japanese American, coached judo at San Jose State in California from the 1940s. His teams won many national collegiate titles. San Jose State became the best-known college judo program in the country.

The NCAA, which runs most varsity college sports, does not hold a judo championship. So at most universities judo is a club sport. Students elect officers, collect dues and book mat time in a recreation building. A coach may be a volunteer.

USA Judo is the national governing body for judo in the United States. It is the group that the U.S. Olympic committee recognizes for the sport. It sets rules for American contests and helps choose Olympic teams. College clubs often enter events run under its rules.

Many boxing gyms began in city parks and neighborhood clubs. The Chicago Park District was formed in 1934, when 22 separate park districts joined into one. Park field houses have long held boxing programs for young people alongside other sports.

An amateur boxer does not fight for pay. In the United States, amateur boxing is run by USA Boxing, the national governing body for Olympic-style boxing. Amateur boxers register with it, and its rules set bout lengths, gloves and headgear for each age group.

A professional boxer fights for pay. In Illinois, the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation licenses professional boxers, referees, judges and promoters. So the same gym may train amateurs under a private national body and professionals under a state license.

Historians compare institutions by asking the same questions of each one. Who owns the room? Who pays for it? Who writes the rules? Who can come in? Asking the same questions keeps a comparison fair.

Take the school wrestling room. The public owns it, taxes pay for it, and the IHSA sets its season. Federal law requires it to be open to enrolled students without sex or disability discrimination. Its coach is hired by the school board.

Now take a karate storefront. A private owner rents it, and student fees pay for it. The school or its chosen association writes the rank rules. Anyone who pays and follows the room’s rules may join. Neither room is better; they are built on different institutions.

Chinese workers helped build the first transcontinental railroad, finished in 1869. Afterward, some moved east to cities like Chicago. Most came from Guangdong province in southern China. They opened laundries, shops and restaurants.

In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. It barred Chinese laborers from coming to the United States. It also kept Chinese immigrants from becoming citizens. It was the first major federal law to ban immigration by one nationality.

Congress repealed exclusion in 1943, during World War II, when China was an American ally. The repeal, called the Magnuson Act, set a quota of only 105 Chinese immigrants a year. Chinese communities in Chicago stayed small for decades because of these limits.

Chicago’s first Chinatown grew in the 1880s near Clark and Van Buren Streets, in the Loop. Rents there rose, and landlords pushed some tenants out. Around 1912, many Chinese businesses moved south to the area around Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue.

The On Leong Merchants Association helped lead the move. A merchants association is a group of business owners who help each other. Such groups also settled disputes, helped newcomers find work and kept community records at a time when the law gave Chinese immigrants little protection.

In the late 1920s, the association finished a large building on Wentworth Avenue. Its tiled roof and towers made it a landmark of Chinatown. Today the building is called the Pui Tak Center and is used for classes and community programs.

The lion dance is a performance tradition from China. The southern style most often seen in American Chinatowns comes from Guangdong. Two performers move inside one lion costume, while a band plays drum, gong and cymbals.

In southern China and in Chinese communities abroad, lion dance teams have often trained in kung fu schools. The same hall, or kwoon, taught both. Teams perform at Lunar New Year, the first day of the Chinese lunar calendar, and at openings and celebrations.

In Chicago, lion dancers appear each year at the Chinatown Lunar New Year parade. For many families, the dance is a public way to mark the new year and welcome good fortune. The tradition links a Chicago street to villages in Guangdong.

By 1940, most Japanese Americans lived on the West Coast and in Hawaii. Many families belonged to Buddhist temples, churches and clubs. In Japanese American communities, judo and kendo clubs often met in these halls.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It let the Army remove people from military zones. The Army forced about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. About two-thirds of them were American citizens.

Most were held in ten camps run by the War Relocation Authority. The camps stood in remote places in the West and in Arkansas. Records and photographs show that people in the camps organized schools, sports and clubs, including judo and sumo, behind barbed wire.

In 1943 the War Relocation Authority began letting some people leave the camps. They could not go back to the West Coast yet. The agency opened offices in Midwestern and Eastern cities, including Chicago, to help them find jobs and housing. This was called resettlement.

Chicago had jobs in factories and offices during the war. Estimates say about 20,000 Japanese Americans lived in Chicago by the late 1940s. Many first settled on the Near North Side, around Clark and Division Streets. Later, many moved north to Lake View and Uptown.

Newcomers built new institutions. The Midwest Buddhist Temple was founded in Chicago during the 1940s. Churches, community centers and sports leagues followed. As on the West Coast, such halls gave families places to meet, and some offered classes in Japanese arts.

After the war, many Japanese Americans pushed for the government to admit its wrong. In 1980 Congress created a commission to study the removal. Its 1983 report, Personal Justice Denied, found that the removal was not justified by military need.

The report named the causes as race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership. Those words became well known. They shaped how Congress and schools came to describe the camps.

In 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act. It gave a formal apology from the nation. It also paid $20,000 to each surviving person who had been held. Chicago’s Japanese American community took part in the long campaign for this law.

In 1924 Congress passed a new immigration law, often called the Johnson-Reed Act. It set national origins quotas. Each country got a yearly number based on how many Americans had roots there. The system favored Northern and Western Europe.

The law also barred immigrants who could not become citizens. Earlier laws and court rulings had kept most Asian immigrants from citizenship. So the 1924 law closed the door to almost all new immigration from Japan, Korea and the rest of Asia.

For Chicago, this meant Asian communities grew slowly for forty years. Most growth came from children born in the United States, who were citizens by birth. Teachers of Asian martial arts could rarely move to America during those years.

On October 3, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act. He signed it at the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The law is often called the Hart-Celler Act, after two lawmakers who led it.

The act ended the national origins quotas of 1924. In their place, it gave preference to family reunification, meaning relatives of people already here, and to workers with needed skills. The new system took full effect in 1968.

Immigration from Asia grew fast after the change. Newcomers from Korea, China, the Philippines, India and other countries settled in Chicago. Some of them were trained martial arts teachers. They opened schools that taught arts from their home countries.

Jhoon Rhee came from Korea to the United States in 1956 to study at a college in Texas. He taught Korean martial arts to fellow students there. In the early 1960s he opened a school in Washington, D.C. Many members of Congress later trained with him.

After the 1965 law, Korean immigration to the United States rose sharply. Many families settled in Chicago. A Korean business district grew along Lawrence Avenue in Albany Park, on the city’s North Side. Churches, groceries and dojang opened along the street.

Many taekwondo schools in the Chicago area were founded by Korean immigrant teachers. Their ranks were often certified through the Kukkiwon in Seoul. Their students came from every background, so a Korean word for room became common on Illinois signs.

Historians use many kinds of evidence. Business directories, building permits, church records and census tables all show who lived where. Old photographs of signs can show when a new language appeared on a street.

In Chicago, the dates line up with laws. Chinese businesses clustered in Chinatown during the years of exclusion. Japanese American groups appeared on the Near North Side after 1943. Korean signs spread along Lawrence Avenue after 1965.

A historian reading a street asks careful questions. When did this sign first appear? Who owned the building? What law or event made the move possible? The answers turn a row of doors into a primary source about a city.

Martial arts gyms around the world open class with a warm-up and a safety check. The habit protects students more than any piece of gear.

1. Tell a grown-up you are practicing, and practice where one can see you.

2. Clear a space about two big steps wide in every direction. Move pets, bags and furniture.

3. Warm up for five minutes: jog in place, arm circles, leg swings, and gentle knee lifts.

4. Watch the move in the Dojo, step by step. Then try each step slowly before you join them.

5. Use control: stop every strike and kick in the air at the point you choose.

What helps: count the steps out loud. Practice both sides. Rest and drink water between rounds.

Stay safe: practice alone, into the air, never at a person. Keep kicks at knee or belly height until your balance is steady. Falls only on a mat or soft grass. Stop if something hurts.

From Chicago Golden Gloves rings to taekwondo storefronts, footwork comes before punches. The shuffle step moves you while keeping your guard and base.

1. Start in a guard, one foot forward.

2. To go forward, push off the back foot and slide the front foot ahead a short distance.

3. Bring the back foot forward the same distance. Your stance is the same width as before.

4. To go back, push off the front foot, slide the back foot, then the front. Practice both ways.

What helps: stay on the balls of your feet. Small, quick steps work better than big ones.

Stay safe: clear the floor and stop well short of walls and furniture.

The one-two, a jab followed by a cross, is the first combination taught in many boxing gyms. It joins two straight punches into one rhythm.

1. Start in a guard.

2. Jab: push the front fist straight out into the air and bring it back to your cheek.

3. Cross: turn your back foot and hip, push the back fist straight out, and bring it back.

4. Return to your guard. Count "one, two" and repeat slowly. Switch stances.

What helps: the jab returns as the cross goes out, like two pistons taking turns.

Stay safe: into the air, never at a person. Stop short of locking the elbows.

The hook is boxing’s curved punch. The arm stays bent, and the turn of the body moves the fist sideways.

1. Start in a guard.

2. Bend the front arm to about a right angle, with the elbow lifted to shoulder height.

3. Turn your front foot, hip and shoulder together, swinging the fist sideways through the air at chin height.

4. Stop in front of your body and return to the guard. Switch sides.

What helps: the arm keeps its bend the whole time. The turn of the body does the work, not the arm alone.

Stay safe: into the air only. Keep the other hand by your face.