> The kara comes from a country name and refers to a style of cooking
My understanding is that the exact etymology is unknown. It's often written with the letter that references the tang dynasty, but the thing is there's no particular reason to think the Chinese introduced the style of cooking to Japan - although it is true that there was such a thing as fried chicken in 7th century China!
Another kanji-ization of the word uses the kara from karate (meaning air or empty, in karate it's "empty hand") and I find this equally plausible as karaage is fried with a very small amount of batter ("in air").
Either way they're both essentially competing "kanji backronyms" seeking to retcon an existing word as spoken; there's no real right or wrong answer.
My understanding is that the exact etymology is unknown. It's often written with the letter that references the tang dynasty, but the thing is there's no particular reason to think the Chinese introduced the style of cooking to Japan - although it is true that there was such a thing as fried chicken in 7th century China!
Another kanji-ization of the word uses the kara from karate (meaning air or empty, in karate it's "empty hand") and I find this equally plausible as karaage is fried with a very small amount of batter ("in air").
Either way they're both essentially competing "kanji backronyms" seeking to retcon an existing word as spoken; there's no real right or wrong answer.