Elderly martial arts master Elderly martial arts master The elderly martial arts master is a mentor/teacher stock character in fiction, especially "Wuxia", "Chanbara", and other martial arts films. Typically an East Asian male, he is a near-invincible master of the martial arts, despite being advanced in age and presumably having a decrease in physical strength. Often he possesses the rank of Sensei (or teacher) and is referred to as such by his student. The elderly master most often teaches either generic kung fu or an exotic style specific to the fictional period (see List of fictional martial arts). During the films, the master often
Okinawan martial arts 手 in Japanese and Okinawan for "hand". "Te" often varied from one town to another, so to distinguish among the various types of "te", the word was often prefaced with its area of origin; for example, Naha-te, Shuri-te, or Tomari-te. Shuri-te, Naha-te and Tomari-te belong to a family of martial arts that were collectively defined as "Tode-jutsu" or "To-de." Karate ("Okinawa-te" or "Karate-jutsu") was systematically taught in Japan after the Taisho era (after 1926). is a pre-World War II term for a type of indigenous martial art to the area around Shuri, the old capital city of the Ryukyu Kingdom.