You can kick me in the head if you like, but please stop looking at me with your death-ray eyes.

I always thought martial arts became popular in the U.S. in the 1970s because of the TV series Kung Fu. But according to an article I found in a 1968 Life magazine, a different martial art became popular the previous decade. “Karate: New Tough-Guy Cult” examines the sport’s nascent popularity in America. An excerpt from the article’s opening:

“The worried looking would-be strongman, the one who looks like Woody Allen–that crack in the gut is only a sample of the trouble he’s on for. The oddly dressed platoon on its knees in the rain, they are there because rain, like an occasional thrashing with a bamboo pole, builds character. These particular character-builders are members of Brooklyn’s School of Scientific Karate and part of a growing army of U.S. devotees of the muscular cult. Inspired by the manly mayhem of film heroes–the Sinatra who split a table in The Manchurian Candidate, the Spencer Tracy who splintered a bad guy in Bad Day at Black Rock. Americans have made karate a national sport in less than a decade. The School of Scientific Karate (250 students) is only one of 750 karate schools scattered around the country. A dozen years ago there were none.

Developed in China and systemized in Japan, karate (which means “empty hand” in Japanese) is designed to kill or maim. But karateists like these Brooklynites are not aggressors. They practice a year to smash the edge of a hand into a brick, not a solar plexus. In practice they learn to pull their punches. Much of their practice is in pulling punches. And ultimately, according to practitioners, they get from karate the confidence–and the placid equanimity–that less determined souls find in religion.”