Dr. Kevin Tan writes, "Any scholarly attempt at retracing a history of karate must therefore require a non-insular and less exclusive defi- nitions of terms such as Japanese history, Japanese culture, and martial tradition. This is because any thorough reconstruction of karate’s history must inevitably require, as will be shown in this article, the necessary inclusion of a complex interplay of Okinawan, Japanese, Chinese, and Western colonizing discourses, all which play"