is a Japanese

manga Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is use ...

drawn by Jirō Tsunoda and Jōya Kagemaru, with the story written by Ikki Kajiwara. The story was inspired by the life of the real-life

karate (; ; Okinawan pronunciation: ) is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Kingdom. It developed from the indigenous Ryukyuan martial arts (called , "hand"; ''tii'' in Okinawan) under the influence of Chinese martial arts, particularly Fuj ...

martial artist

Mas Oyama , more commonly known as Mas Oyama, was a karate master who founded Kyokushin Karate, considered the first and most influential style of full contact karate. A Zainichi Korean, he spent most of his life living in Japan and acquired Japanese ...

. The manga was published in ''

Weekly Shōnen Magazine is a weekly ''shōnen'' manga anthology published on Wednesdays in Japan by Kodansha, first published on March 17, 1959. The magazine is mainly read by an older audience, with a significant portion of its readership falling under the male hig ...

'' between 1971 and 1977, and accumulated in 29

tankōbon is the Japanese term for a book that is not part of an anthology or corpus. In modern Japanese, the term is most often used in reference to individual volumes of a manga series: most series first appear as individual chapters in a weekly or m ...

volumes. It was adapted into an

anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...

television series from 1973 to 1974, and a live-action film in 1977.

Anime and film adaptations

The

television series was produced by Tokyo Movie and aired Wednesdays, from 19:30 to 20:00, on NET from October 3, 1973 to September 25, 1974, totaling 47 episodes. The manga was first adapted into a live-action film by Toei as ''Karate Baka Ichidai'', which was released on 14 May 1977 (the English release title was ''

Karate for Life Karate for Life ( ja, 空手バカ一代 ) is a 1977 Japanese martial arts film about the martial arts master Mas Oyama starring Sonny Chiba. It is to Champion of Death and Karate Bear Fighter and is the third part in the , a series of movie ad ...

''). It was directed by

Kazuhiko Yamaguchi is a Japanese film director. Career Born in Nagano Prefecture, Yamaguchi graduated from Waseda University and began working at the Tōei studios in Kyoto. He directed a number of action movie series in the 1970s and has also helmed many TV m ...

and starred Shin'ichi ("Sonny") Chiba. The two-part film, ''Shin Karate Baka Ichidai: Kakutōsha'', which was directed by Takeshi Miyasaka and released in 2003 and 2004 to commemorate the seventeenth anniversary of Kajiwara's death, is often treated as an adaptation of the manga, but its direct source is a book by Hisao Maki, Kajiwara's younger brother. The anime is now available on

Hulu Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television seri ...

(in the U.S.) under the name ''Karate Master''.

Discotek Media Discotek Media is an American entertainment company based in Altamonte Springs, Florida, focused on distribution and licensing Japanese anime, films, and television series. Formed in 2005, Discotek primarily focuses on licensing retro titles f ...

has licensed the anime for home video release in North America.

Reception and legacy

The success of the manga and the anime are often credited for producing a "karate boom" in Japan in the early 1970s. Video game artist

Keiji Inafune is a Japanese video game producer, illustrator and businessman. Starting his career at Capcom in the late 1980s, his job was as an artist and illustrator. The first two games he worked on were the original ''Street Fighter'' and ''Mega Man'' in ...

drew inspiration from ''Karate Master'' for several character designs in the arcade

fighting game A fighting game, also known as a versus fighting game, is a genre of video game that involves combat between two or more players. Fighting game combat often features mechanics such as blocking, grappling, counter-attacking, and chaining atta ...

Street Fighter , commonly abbreviated as ''SF'' or スト (''Suto''), is a Japanese media franchise centered on a series of fighting video and arcade games developed and published by Capcom. The first game in the series was released in 1987, followed by six ...

'' (1987).

References

External links

''Karate Master'' on TMS Entertainment's website

''Karate Baka Ichidai'' on TMS Entertainment's website
* * {{TMS Entertainment 1971 manga 1973 anime television series debuts 1974 Japanese television series endings Anime series based on manga Discotek Media Fuji TV original programming Japanese television series with live action and animation Karate in anime and manga Kodansha manga Live-action films based on manga Manga adapted into films Shōnen manga TMS Entertainment