[K]

Just to drop a line here:

The only difference between martial arts is the situations where they are designed to be good.

For example, kendo takes place in open ground along two axis and so is straight up superior to rapier fencing in an open field or something.

By contrast, rapier fencing was designed so that people could fight duels in alleys on one axis and it is flat out superior to kendo fencing in that situation.

My opinion for why Eastern arts are exoticized is because in the East orders of fighting monks and nobles trained from the age of 6. By the time they were adult they had enough skill that horribly inefficient but nice looking moves were possible with a young adult body and decades of training. Think gymnastics for a Western comparison.

The West never developed the same kinds of arts because of the simple "gun/bow > fists/sword". Heck, the history of the crossbow is fascinating because it was outlawed for hundreds of years because peasants could learn it with little or no training and kill armored knights.

So in a RPG, every martial art should have a situation bonus. Pirate Cutlass fighting should be better on ships and english military academy fighting should be better in closed circles and eastern wakizashi fighting should be better in house-to-house fighting.