About the project

What Impaku is

Impaku is an encyclopaedia of martial arts available in seven languages. It brings together in one place what is otherwise scattered across club websites, federation documents, specialist books and historical sources — and what, on top of that, is said differently in every language.

The site is free, requires no registration, has no user accounts and carries no advertising. It sells nothing and collects no identifying information about its visitors.

What you will find here

The database currently covers the following — every record exists in all seven languages:

• Over 450 martial arts, styles and their offshoots, linked according to their actual lineage (Shotokan is an offshoot of karate, not a separate entry in a list).
• Over 600 people — founders, masters and figures who shaped the field.
• Almost 600 techniques and over 250 kata and forms, with the original spelling of each name.
• Over 140 weapons and over 300 entries in the glossary of terms.
• Belt and grading systems, including requirements wherever a federation publishes them.
• Films and actors whose connection to martial arts has a documented basis.
• Sources of historical European swordsmanship — manuscripts and treatises with author, date, shelf mark, holding institution and a link to a digitised copy where one exists.

Who is behind the project

The operator and publisher is Petr Drahokoupil, Business ID (IČ) 02245132, registered address Ciolkovského 851/3, 161 00 Praha 6 – Ruzyně, Česká republika. The same person is responsible for the content of the site; full details are on the Site operator page.

The project grew out of a practical problem: information about martial arts is fragmented, often contradictory, and outside English and Japanese there is very little of it. Impaku is an attempt to put it into a single structure in which entries can be compared and their origin traced.

How the content is produced

Entries are compiled from official federation and organisation documents, specialist and academic literature, historical sources and established reference works. The method is described in detail on the Content sources page.

We follow a single rule: what we cannot document, we do not publish. That is why many fields in some records are empty — an empty field is more honest than a probably correct figure.

Machine tools are also used in processing and translation. Responsibility for the result rests with the operator and entries are checked against the sources; technical terms — the names of kata, techniques and grades — are kept in their original transcription and are not translated.

What Impaku is not

It is not a textbook and no substitute for a coach. Descriptions of techniques and kata are there for orientation and understanding, not so that anyone can learn from them alone.

It is not a shop or an intermediary. The site sells nothing and receives no commission for links to the sites of clubs, federations and libraries.

It is not a social network. There is no registration, no discussion and no user content.

Corrections and feedback

Found an error or a missing entry? Write to info@impaku.com. Give the page address, which item is at issue and what you are relying on. Documented corrections are incorporated and noted against the record.