| Summary: | Meyer’s (2012) qualitative research on motivation of German <i>karateka</i> initiated the coordinated research project Why Martial Arts? (WMA) to analyse motives in various martial arts styles, like <i>jūdō</i>, <i>taiji</i>, <i>krav maga</i> and <i>wing chun</i>. In 2017, the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) supported the transposition of the research question to Japanese <i>karatedō</i> and <i>jūdō</i> practitioners. For the German sub-study, 32 interviews were conducted about entry/participation motives, fascination categories, and reasons for choosing <i>karatedō</i>. The design of the Japanese sub-study was based on the aforementioned German study, but due to the higher number of participants (n = 106), a mixed method questionnaire was used and distributed via paper and online versions. The results demonstrate that many motivation categories of Japanese and German <i>karatedō</i> practitioners share similarities in importance and content, although the characteristics of motives can be very different—partly due to cultural specifics.
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