05/20/2025
(Approx 2 minute read)
Recently, I wrote an article asking whether karate builds character. We’re often told it does.
It’s a phrase passed down from instructor to student, repeated so often it becomes accepted as truth. It’s written on dojo walls, part of the budo creed.
And maybe - at times - it does. But the longer I’ve been involved in martial arts, the more I’ve realized this: it’s not always the case.
Recently, I found myself accused - without warning and behind my back - by someone I once considered a friend. Not just any practitioner, but a senior instructor. A 10th dan. Someone older, and supposedly wiser.
He reached out to a mutual connection - someone I deeply respect - and quietly dropped poison into a private message to him, designed to damage, designed to undermine me from the shadows.
It made me reflect on what we say karate does - and that article I wrote. Does it really build character? Or does it just give people a platform to perform it?
We like to believe that years of training forge humility, respect, and integrity. But rank alone doesn’t build those qualities. Time on the mat doesn’t guarantee them either. What it does is reveal what was there to begin with.
Karate is a tool. For some, it sharpens good values. For others, it sharpens control, ego, and the appearance of honor.
I’ve seen people with high rank treat others with compassion and fairness. I’ve also seen others use their position to manipulate and divide.
Character isn’t built by belts. It’s built by choices.
It shows in how we handle disagreement. In whether we talk to people - or about them. It shows when there’s nothing to gain and no one to impress.
I still believe karate can build character - but only if it’s taught that way, and more importantly, if it’s received that way. It must be taught with honesty, and taken in with humility. Without that, the art becomes just another tool for power.
In the end, the hardest lessons don’t always come from kata, sparring, or drills. Sometimes, they come from people we once trusted.
Karate does not build character automatically:
Rank doesn’t equal character.
Time doesn’t equal wisdom.
Karate doesn’t shape you unless you let it.
Sadly, I’ve seen people at the highest levels behave in ways that contradict everything karate is supposed to teach. That’s when you realize - it’s not the art that builds character, but the person’s intent in how they walk the path.
But for you and me, in time, we come to understand: even the noise others make, the mask they wear, doesn’t deserve a place in our thoughts. Let it pass. Some things only matter if we let them. And not everything is worth carrying.
Written by Adam Carter
