Karate in Japan
The sport has declined in popularity and is more popular abroad. Karate at the 2020 Summer Olympics is going to be a debut event at the Summer Olympics.
Tadashi Sawamura
In 1963 there was a competitive match between leading Japanese and Thai instructors, a karate vs Muay Thai tournament. Japan won the series although two of the Japanese participants Osamu Noguchi and Tatsuo Yamada wanted to create a full-contact sport similar to how Muay Thai is a sport in Thailand, and they started to create kickboxing. Sawamura was a young karate sports student at high-school and university who won numerous school championships and thought he was the best. He asked his hero Noguchi what he thought and Noguchi replied that the sports version of karate doesn't have the training to win in a full-contact fight and that he would lose if he traveled to Thailand to compete in full-contact.