Every city that hosts the Olympics pushes for events popular in its country to be included in the program, and Tokyo is no different. The Japanese organizers successfully lobbied for baseball to return after an absence of a dozen years and for surfing to make its debut.
The International Olympic Committee also signed off on the Japanese organizers’ request to include karate as a medal sport, an upgrade from the cameo it made as a demonstration sport at the 1964 Tokyo Games.
Thanks in part to Hollywood movies, karate is perhaps the best known of the martial arts. It forms the basis of numerous other martial arts, including taekwondo, and has a wide following across the globe.