Unit 15 · Ownership

On October 17, 2003, UNESCO’s General Conference adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. It came into force in 2006. The treaty covers living practices such as music, festivals, crafts and games. States that sign it may nominate practices for international lists.

The convention stresses the communities, groups and individuals who keep a practice alive. A state submits the file, but the listing describes the bearers and a plan to protect the practice. A listing does not grant a trademark or a legal monopoly. Other countries remain free to teach and name similar practices.

In November 2018, UNESCO listed traditional Korean wrestling, ssireum, in one entry submitted jointly by North Korea and South Korea. It was the first joint listing by the two states. The file showed that one practice can have more than one steward, even across a closed border.

South Korea passed a law in 2007 to promote taekwondo and build a large taekwondo park. The park, called Taekwondowon, stands in Muju County in North Jeolla Province. It holds training halls, a museum and an arena for events and visitors from abroad.

In 2018 the National Assembly amended the taekwondo law to name taekwondo the country’s national sport. The change came after years of debate about how to mark the art as Korean. A national sport designation carries weight at home, in schools, budgets and ceremonies. It does not bind other countries or their federations.

The law sits beside international bodies that Korea helped build. Kukkiwon in Seoul issues dan certificates, and World Taekwondo governs the Olympic sport. A nation brand works through all three: a domestic law, a national headquarters and a world federation that began in Seoul.

Thailand and Cambodia share a border and a long history of ring fighting with gloves, kicks and elbows. Thailand’s version became known worldwide as Muay Thai. Its amateur federation, IFMA, won full IOC recognition in 2021. Cambodia has long called its own ring art Kun Khmer.

Cambodia hosted the Southeast Asian Games in Phnom Penh in 2023. As host, it listed the ring event under the name Kun Khmer rather than Muay Thai. Thai officials objected, and Thailand did not send fighters to that event. IFMA, which governs amateur Muaythai, also withdrew its support for the competition.

Each side read the name as a claim about origin. Cambodian officials pointed to carvings at Angkor and to Khmer tradition. Thai officials pointed to the sport’s modern rules, stadiums and world federation. Historians note that neighboring kingdoms traded soldiers and styles for centuries, so a single birthplace is hard to prove.

A world federation is an association of national bodies that writes rules and runs championships. Its name often becomes a set of initials on belts, mats and certificates. Those letters can matter to athletes as much as the sport’s own name, because they tell which body stands behind a title.

The World Union of Karatedo Organizations, or WUKO, was founded in 1970. It became the World Karate Federation in 1993. Wrestling’s world body, known for decades as FILA, took the name United World Wrestling in 2014. In June 2017 the World Taekwondo Federation shortened its name to World Taekwondo, partly because its old initials had an unwanted meaning online.

In boxing, the International Amateur Boxing Association, AIBA, became the International Boxing Association, IBA, in 2021. A rebrand can signal a new start, but records and certificates issued under the old name keep their dates. A historian reading a certificate checks which name the body used in that year.

The IOC does not own boxing, but it decides which world federation it recognizes for the Olympic Games. Recognition gives a federation a seat in the Olympic system and a role in running Olympic events. It also brings a share of Olympic money, which many small federations depend on.

In 2019 the IOC suspended its recognition of AIBA over concerns about governance, finances and the judging of bouts. The IOC ran the boxing events for Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 itself. In June 2023, after the body had renamed itself the IBA, the IOC withdrew recognition entirely. It was the first time the IOC had expelled a world federation this way.

A new body, World Boxing, was founded in 2023 by national federations that wanted Olympic boxing to continue. The IOC granted it recognition in 2025. The sport kept its name through the whole dispute. What changed was which governing body could speak for it at the Games.

Ueshiba Morihei, born in 1883, created aikido from older Japanese jujutsu and sword traditions. A foundation to support his teaching was set up in 1940. In 1948 it was reorganized as the Aikikai Foundation, based in Tokyo. Leadership of the Aikikai has passed within the Ueshiba family, from Morihei to his son Kisshōmaru and grandson Moriteru.

Senior students also built their own houses. Shioda Gōzō founded the Yoshinkan in 1955. Tomiki Kenji developed a version with competition. In 1974 Tōhei Kōichi, once the Aikikai’s chief instructor, left and founded the Ki Society. Each group issues its own ranks and certificates.

None of these groups owns the word aikido in every country. Each claims authenticity through a documented link to Ueshiba, such as years of study or rank he awarded. A historian compares those links with dated records. The schism shows how one founder can leave several legitimate heirs.

General Choi Hong-hi founded the International Taekwon-Do Federation, the ITF, in Seoul in 1966. In 1972 he left South Korea after conflict with its government and moved the ITF abroad. The next year, South Korea’s national association helped found the World Taekwondo Federation in Seoul.

The two bodies grew apart. They used different forms, different competition rules and different rank certificates. World Taekwondo’s version entered the Olympics. The ITF version spread through Choi’s network of instructors, and from the 1980s it was also taught in North Korea.

Choi died in 2002 in Pyongyang. After his death, rival leaders each claimed to head the ITF, and several groups still use the name. A student’s certificate therefore names not just an art but a federation. The paper tells a historian which branch of a divided family the student belongs to.

Ōyama Masutatsu founded Kyokushin karate in Tokyo and set up its international organization in 1964. His style became known for full-contact tournaments. By the 1980s, Kyokushin had branches in many countries. Ōyama himself remained the single head of the whole organization.

Ōyama died in April 1994. He left no successor that every senior student accepted. Within a few years, the organization divided into several groups. Each claimed to be the true Kyokushin and used the name, the emblem, or both. Some disputes reached Japanese courts and trademark offices.

Today several international Kyokushin bodies hold separate tournaments and grant separate ranks. A student’s belt means most inside the group that awarded it. The story shows how a succession dispute turns one founder’s legacy into competing claims.

Hwang Kee founded the Moo Duk Kwan in Seoul in 1945, soon after Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule. He called his art Tang Soo Do. The name uses characters that can be read as way of the Tang hand, pointing to China. The same characters are read karate-dō in Japanese.

In the 1960s, many Korean kwan joined the new national taekwondo association. Hwang Kee kept his school and his name apart from that merger. So Tang Soo Do continued as a separate art in Korea, with its own ranks and rules. A later branch of the Moo Duk Kwan did join the taekwondo association, so the kwan name itself came to have two meanings.

American service members stationed in Korea studied at Korean schools in the 1950s and 1960s. One was Chuck Norris, who learned Tang Soo Do while serving in the U.S. Air Force. Returning soldiers opened schools in the United States. Many American Tang Soo Do diaspora schools still trace their lineage to Korea rather than to a U.S. federation.

In June 1908 the ship Kasato Maru reached the port of Santos carrying the first organized group of Japanese immigrants to Brazil. Most came to work on coffee farms. Over the next decades, more families followed. The state of São Paulo became home to one of the largest Japanese communities outside Japan.

Immigrant communities built schools, newspapers and sports clubs. Judo clubs were among them, often led by teachers trained in Japan. For many families, judo kept a tie to Japanese language and custom. Over time, the clubs opened their doors to Brazilians of every background.

Brazilian judo then entered the Olympic record. Chiaki Ishii, born in Japan, won bronze for Brazil at the 1972 Munich Games. Aurélio Miguel won Brazil’s first judo gold in Seoul in 1988, and Rogério Sampaio won gold in Barcelona in 1992. The medals show a diaspora art becoming part of a new national sport culture.

Claims about a martial art’s name are strongest when they rest on dated primary sources. For judo, one of the most useful is a lecture Kanō Jigorō gave in Tokyo in 1889. He spoke to an education society, seven years after opening the Kodokan in 1882.

In the lecture, Kanō explained why he chose the word judo instead of jujutsu. He described three aims for his school: physical education, contest and moral training. He also argued that judo belonged in Japan’s schools. The text was printed, so later readers can check exactly what he claimed.

At least one older jujutsu school had used the word judo before Kanō. What made Kanō’s judo distinct was its institution: a named hall, a rank system and published aims. A historian weighing ownership looks for this kind of evidence. A dated lecture tells more than a story told decades later.

Okinawa was the center of the Ryukyu Kingdom until Japan annexed it in 1879. After the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, the islands came under United States administration. They returned to Japanese rule on May 15, 1972. Large U.S. military bases remained afterward.

On October 25, 1936, a group of Okinawan karate teachers met in Naha. A local newspaper organized the meeting, and its record shows the teachers agreeing to write karate with characters meaning empty hand. In 2005 the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly chose that date for an annual Karate Day.

The choice is an act of commemoration. It ties karate to Okinawa, not to mainland Japan or to the many foreign schools the art later produced. Okinawan leaders have used the day to draw visitors and to argue that the islands are karate’s home. The day is a memory claim built from a dated record.

The hwarang were groups of young aristocrats in the ancient Korean kingdom of Silla. The Samguk sagi, a Korean history completed in 1145, describes them. It tells of their loyalty, their travels to mountains and rivers, and their service in war. It does not describe an unarmed art named taekwondo.

In the decades after 1945, many official taekwondo books opened with the hwarang and with old paintings of fighting figures. This framing suited a newly independent nation. It pointed back to a Korean past and away from the colonial years when Japan ruled Korea.

Historians have tested that story against records. Udo Moenig’s 2015 study traces early taekwondo to Korean founders who learned karate in Japan or under Japanese rule. The earliest kwan of the 1940s taught karate forms. Recognizing that historiography does not lessen the art; it shows how a nation remembered its past.

Japan ruled Korea from 1910 to 1945. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans moved or were brought to Japan in those years for work. From 1940 a colonial policy pressed Koreans to take Japanese-style names. Many Korean families in Japan kept those names after the war to avoid discrimination.

Rikidōzan was born in Korea in 1924 and came to Japan as a young man. He wrestled in sumo, then became Japan’s most famous professional wrestler in the 1950s, when his televised bouts drew huge crowds. During his lifetime, his Korean birth was little known to the Japanese public. He died in 1963.

Ōyama Masutatsu, the founder of Kyokushin karate, was also born in Korea during colonial rule. His Korean name was Choi Yeong-eui. Later biographies and Korean media brought both men’s origins into the open. Their stories show how identity can be left off the wall of honor.

Palmares was a large quilombo, a community of people who escaped slavery, in the hills of northeastern Brazil. It lasted for most of the 1600s. Portuguese colonial forces attacked it many times. Its last leader, Zumbi, was killed on November 20, 1695.

In the 1970s, Black activists in Brazil chose November 20 to mark Black Consciousness Day. The date honored Zumbi rather than the 1888 Golden Law, which a princess had signed. Many states and cities made the day a holiday. In December 2023 a federal law made it a national holiday across Brazil.

Capoeira groups often join the day’s events with public rodas. Many capoeira songs name Zumbi or Palmares. Teachers present capoeira as part of Afro-Brazilian history of resistance. The choice of hero shows a community remembering its past through its own leaders.

Vicente Ferreira Pastinha was born in Salvador, Bahia, in 1889. In 1941 he opened a center for Capoeira Angola, the older style of the game. He wrote about capoeira and taught for decades in the historic Pelourinho district. Visiting writers and musicians came to watch his academy.

In the early 1970s, Pastinha lost the use of his academy space during work on the old buildings of the Pelourinho. By then he was elderly and losing his sight. He lived his last years in poverty, far from the students who had once filled his hall. He died in Salvador in 1981, at the age of 92.

Later generations made Pastinha a central figure of Capoeira Angola. His photograph hangs in many Angola schools around the world. Brazil’s heritage recognition of capoeira in 2008 honored the mestres who carried it. The contrast between his poverty and his fame is part of the honest record.

Jack Johnson won boxing’s world heavyweight title in 1908, the first Black man to hold it. Many white Americans reacted with open hostility. In 1913 a federal jury convicted him under the Mann Act of 1910. The law banned taking women across state lines for immoral purposes.

Historians describe the prosecution as racially motivated. It targeted Johnson’s relationships with white women. Johnson left the country rather than go to prison. In 1920 he returned and served about a year in federal prison. He died in 1946 after a car crash in North Carolina.

For decades, boxers, historians and members of Congress asked for a posthumous pardon. President Donald Trump granted one on May 24, 2018. The pardon forgave the conviction; it could not undo the years Johnson lost. It shows a nation revising, through law, whom it honors.

Sumo is run by the Japan Sumo Association and is closely tied to Shinto ritual and Japanese identity. For most of its professional history, its wrestlers were Japanese. Wrestlers from Hawaii began joining sumo stables in the 1960s. Takamiyama, born in Maui, won a top-division championship in 1972.

Konishiki, also from Hawaii, reached the second-highest rank, ōzeki, in 1987. In 1993 Akebono, born Chad Rowan in Hawaii, became the first foreign-born yokozuna, sumo’s highest rank. Wrestlers from Mongolia followed. Asashōryū became yokozuna in 2003, and Hakuhō later set records for tournament wins.

Their rise sparked debate. The association limited each stable to one foreign-born wrestler, a quota it tightened in 2010 to count naturalized citizens. Supporters called the rule a way to keep sumo Japanese. Critics saw it as closing doors. The record shows both the openings and the limits.

Funakoshi Gichin, born in Shuri, Okinawa, in 1868, brought karate to mainland Japan in the 1920s. He died in Tokyo in 1957. His students later placed a memorial stone at Engaku-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple in Kamakura. Groups of his followers gather there in his memory.

The stone carries a saying linked to Funakoshi: karate ni sente nashi, often translated as there is no first attack in karate. It is one of twenty precepts credited to him. By choosing this line for the stone, his students set the founder’s public image as a teacher of restraint.

A memorial stands at a place his students chose, in mainland Japan rather than Okinawa. It speaks in words they selected. Historians read such a monument as evidence of how a community wanted to remember a founder. They compare it with his books and the records of his life.

On November 13, 1982, Duk Koo Kim of South Korea fought Ray Mancini for a lightweight title in Las Vegas. The bout was scheduled for 15 rounds and was shown on national television. Kim was knocked out in the 14th round. He died from a brain injury four days later.

The death set off public debate about safety in boxing. The World Boxing Council, one of the sport’s sanctioning bodies, soon shortened its title fights from 15 rounds to 12. Other major sanctioning bodies made the same change over the following years. Twelve rounds became the standard length for world title fights.

Kim’s name is rarely on gym walls, yet his death changed the rules every champion since has followed. His mother and the referee of the bout both died by suicide within the following year. Historians tell such tragedy plainly, with dates and consequences, because it explains why the rules look as they do.

Korea has been divided since 1945, and the Korean War of 1950 to 1953 ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. Taekwondo divided too. South Korea backs World Taekwondo and Kukkiwon. North Korea hosts a branch of the ITF, the federation of Choi Hong-hi.

In February 2018, South Korea hosted the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. North and South Korean athletes marched together at the opening ceremony. Around the Games, a World Taekwondo team and an ITF team from North Korea gave joint demonstrations in South Korea. In April 2018 the World Taekwondo team performed in Pyongyang.

The events did not merge the two federations. They showed that taekwondo carries the memory of a divided nation. Each side’s version grew from the same postwar roots. A reconciliation on stage can honor that shared past without settling who owns the name.

Every serious school of martial arts puts safety before skill. Judo’s Kodokan, founded in Tokyo in 1882, has long taught students to fall safely before they learn to throw.

1. Make sure a grown-up knows you are practicing. Clear a space two big steps wide all around, with a dry, flat floor.

2. Warm up for five to eight minutes with moving stretches: jogging, leg swings, hip circles, arm circles.

3. Watch the move in the Dojo. Break it into its steps and practice each step slowly.

4. Add speed only when every step is steady. Stop each move just short of locking the elbow or knee.

5. Cool down afterward with gentle held stretches.

What helps: practice both sides, keep sessions short, and come back to it on a new day. Filming yourself, or watching in a mirror, gives you clear feedback.

Stay safe: solo and into the air, never at a person. Kicks stay at knee or belly height until your balance is steady. Falls only on a mat or soft grass. Stop if something hurts.

Brazil’s 1890 Penal Code made capoeira a crime. Decades later the art became a national symbol, and in 2014 UNESCO inscribed the capoeira circle on its list of intangible cultural heritage. The ginga, its constant swaying step, is the movement every player learns first.

1. Stand with feet wide, knees bent, weight centered.

2. Step the right foot back on a diagonal; the right arm rises in front of the face.

3. Return to the wide stance.

4. Step the left foot back on a diagonal; the left arm rises.

5. Repeat in a steady three-count rhythm, keeping your center of mass low and moving.

What helps: a moving body is harder to predict. The triangle path keeps the base wide even while the feet move.

Stay safe: clear a wide space on a non-slip floor. Rest if your legs tire.

Taekwondo calls it dollyo chagi, karate mawashi-geri, and Muay Thai lands it with the shin. Who owns a kick? The roundhouse kick is a good case: the physics is the same in every gym, while the names, rules and stories differ.

1. Start in a guard with space all around.

2. Pivot on the ball of the standing foot until its heel points toward the target.

3. Raise the kicking knee to the side, belly high.

4. Rotate the hips over and swing the lower leg through the air at knee or belly height.

5. Retract along the same path and return to your guard. Switch sides.

What helps: power travels up the kinetic chain, from the floor through the standing foot, hips and trunk into the leg. The pivot lets the hips turn fully.

Stay safe: low kicks into the air only. Stop if the hip or knee complains.