`    start  Yeah JJL, this is the discussion I anticipated when I made the edits to describe Karate as an Okinawan art, Japanese Karate as a descendent of Okinawan Karate, and to include the info on Korea.  I think this is going to be fairly contentious. You wrote:  * Shotokan is true Karate, and Tang Soo Do is not.  Yes, Tae Kwon Do grew from Tang Soo Do which grew from Shotokan which grew from Okinawan Karate which was a mixture of older Okinawan styles plus Southern Chinese Kung Fu: there's a continuum. But just because everyone uses 'Karate' in the States for its name recognition doesn't make it Karate. I think the Korean systems deserve scant attention here, as they're not Karate but rather arts made from Karate.  (Note I edited that excerpt a little, it's not exactly a direct quote from what you wrote.) Well first let's leave Tae Kwon Do out of it.  The Korean masters made a conscious decision and a concerted effort to move Tae Kwon Do away from Karate after about 1960 or so: they changed their art a lot.  If we want to say it's not ``karate`` anymore, I really can't argue.  It sure is different from what I think of as Karate.  But the statement ``Shotokan is true Karate and Tang Soo Do is not`` is obviously flat-out wrong.  Tang Soo Do basically is Shotokan.  Lee Won Kuk and Byung Jick Ro were students of Funakoshi himself at the Shotokan dojo in Tokyo; when they opened schools in Korea teaching 唐手道 (karate-dō, pronounced tangsoo-do), what else could they possibly be teaching?  Shotokan was their only background; in fact, the name Lee Won Kuk used for his school, ``Chung Do Kwan``, was chosen to show his school as the ``child`` of the Sung Do Kwan (Shotokan) school.  Ki Whang Kim also studied at the Shotokan dojo in Japan.  Hwang Kee states clearly in his writings that he learned Okinawan Karate (esp forms) from a book while working in Seoul around 1939.  That pretty much had to be a book of Funakoshi's; and anyway he was working out in Lee Won Kuk's 唐手道  school for a year or so before opening his Moo Duk Kwan.  How much lineage do we need?    Yes, the Korean Tae Kwon Do masters made changes to their art to create Tae Kwon Do; and Hwang Kee later made some changes and created modern Soo Bahk Do.  But Tang Soo Do still exists.  When we look at modern Tang Soo Do practitioners, we can see they're doing a style that looks like Shotokan, and they're doing many of the Shotokan forms (but often using the older Okinawan names, rather than the names Funikoshi re-christened them with in the 1930s; or else a Korean name).  It looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and its grandparents were ducks.  What else can it be?  Put another way: when we look at the arts themselves, what the practitioners actually do when they train and perform, there is less difference between Shotokan and Tang Soo Do than there is between Shotokan and Goju-Ryu, or between Shotokan and Wado-Ryu, or between Shotokan and the arts as practiced by traditional Okinawan masters.  MUCH less difference.  So when we say Shotokan is true Karate and Goju-Ryu is true Karate and Wado-Ryu is true Karate, and Tang Soo Do is not, what exactly are we saying?  It doesn't make sense.  You also said: * Try starting Tae Kwon Do discussions in the Karate fora at E-Budo and see what they think!   No, I'm interested in a view which is grounded in history or an understanding of the content of the arts under discussion; and as free from bias as is possible.  The E-Budo response would be meaningless on this point.  ``E-budo.com is the Internet's premier bulletin board dedicated to Japanese martial arts and culture. Our moderated forums allow our members to share their interest in the Japanese arts.``  The bias is self-evident, right?  I assume they will think  ``X is not Karate because it is not Japanese.``  Not useful.  Frankly, it's bigotry.  If they're not even going to look at Tang Soo Do to examine the content of the art, then they have nothing to add.  * As to EPAK, Ed Parker himself disliked calling the system 'Karate' and only did it on his studios to bring people in the door. I included a section on it only in an effort to be neutral.  I don't know much about the style: didn't want to say it wasn't karate, without some input from someone who knows something about it.  I did see a reference that Parker wasn't 100% comfortable with using the word ``karate``.  On the other hand, Parker learned from Chow who learned from Mitose, and Mitose was pretty clearly teaching Karate.  I'm not positive where exactly American Kempo changes from Karate to something else; if someone knows something about it and wants to edit, they should go right ahead.  end  N