Posted by : Moraliss Saturday, November 1, 2014

By Patty Goff


The urban centers of this island, Naha, Shuri and Tomari were then important hubs for goods and thus provided a forum for cultural exchange with the Chinese mainland. This helped transfer Chinese fighting techniques of Quanfa or Kempo to Okinawa, where they mingled with the indigenous fighting system of the Te / De (Ryukyu dialect Ti) and (Todi) or Okinawa-Te (Uchinadi - "Hand of Okinawa "). Te literally means hand in a figurative sense, technology or hand technique (Karate lessons Dallas).

Because the art of writing in the population at that time was not widespread, and it was necessary for reasons of secrecy that few written records were made. It relied on the oral tradition and direct transfers. For this purpose, the master pooled combat techniques in teaching units related to specified procedures or forms. These precisely defined processes called Kata.

To meet the confidentiality purpose of Okinawa-Te invoice, these processes had to be encrypted before introduction in Battle School. They made use of encryption code as the traditional tribal dances (odori) affecting the systematic construction of kata. The efficiency of encryption techniques were the kata demonstration in front of a laity.

For the layman, combat movements seem strange or meaningless. The real significance of hostilities reveals itself only through an intense kata study and the decoding of Kata. This is done in the bunkai training. A Kata is therefore a traditional, systematic military program and the main medium surrounding the tradition of martial arts. Between 1906-1915 Funakoshi traveled with a selection of his best disciples throughout Okinawa Karate and held public demonstrations. In the following years, the then Crown Prince, later Emperor Hirohito witnessed such a performance and invited Funakoshi, the President of Ryukyu Ryu Budokan to form an Okinawan martial art association and also present a lecture.

By the end of 19th century, this discipline had always been practiced in secret and passed only from master to student. During the Meiji Restoration, Okinawa was officially declared in 1875 a Japanese prefecture. At that time of social upheaval, in which the Okinawan population were adapting the Japanese lifestyle and Japan after centuries of isolation opened up to the world, the sport regained public exposure.

Some twenty years passed until the great masters of Okinawa-Te merged to a secret opposition collar and specified that Okinawa-Te only should still be passed to selected people in secret. Meanwhile, developments in the rural agricultural population of Kobudo turned tools and everyday objects into special techniques to weapons. It encompassed spiritual, mental and health aspects, as taught in the Chuan-Fa.

Since the art has Chinese roots, it is also considered like as descendants of other disciplines, such as Chan, Bodhidharma and Shaolin, whose historicity is shrouded in darkness and is controversial among historians. Nevertheless, the portrait of Daruma adorns many a dojo. Martial arts in its present form developed on Pacific chain of Ryukyu Islands, particularly on main island of Okinawa.

This is about 500 kilometers south of main Japanese island of Kyushu between the South China Sea and Pacific Ocean. Today, the island of Okinawa is a part of a prefecture of Japan. Already in the 14th century, Okinawa was the center of an independent island Kingdom of Ryukyu with trading contacts with Japan, China, Korea and Southeast Asia.




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