That's absolutely right. People shit on various styles of kung fu a lot, for example, but what they don't realize is that for many of them the boxing piece was an afterthought. They were mostly concerned with being good sword and spear fighters, not with empty handed stuff. It would be like if you took Escrima or Arnis and made a system just out of the empty handed stuff: it would look, and be, stupid. Because all of the empty hand stuff is designed to play off the main stick/knife stuff which is the meat of the system. European sword manuals show a lot of grappling, but that grappling wouldn't make any sense outside the context of also having a long sword. You certainly wouldn't expect it to make a sword master effective in a wrestling match against a wrestler. Proper context is really important for assessing the historical worth of various old arts.
please explain!...
Weapons were banned in Okinawa - hence the development of Karate.If you think about it, training hand to hand combat unarmed is probably mostly for ego. People would all be carrying weapons when shit really goes down.
Your boxing ain't going to stop this machete.
Weapons were banned in Okinawa - hence the development of Karate.
Yeah. Alot of them were criminals and gangsters. Not sure why the idea of them being fighting saints came from. Quite a few samurais back then ran protection / extortion rackets when they weren't at war.There is a lot of bullshit though on the samurai in general - a lot of people just lack or simply ignore historical facts. You even get it in karate when ignorant instructors glorify/look up to the samurai and you even get this in other martial arts styles - everyone talking about samurai/bushido and glorifying it without knowing how the history of it and how stupid they sound glorifying something that was very very bad.
I agree and do think that weapons use was an integral part of Tode from the very start. We all know that "kara" in Karate was changed to "empty" (from "Chinese") only to appease the Japanese - so it was never an intentionally empty-handed art.Karate was only novel in name but not in actual existence. We still may never know for sure but from what I understand "Te/Tode" already existed in Okinawa even before the Japanese invasion and subsequent banning of weapons. The same history which makes this claim also says that the indigenous dealt with the banning of weapons by improvising and using various work tools as makeshift weaponry. The nunchaku, sai, tonfa, kama, eku, kuwa, etc. are originally farming or fishing tools. I find this theory somewhat plausible because although weapons were banned for the Okinawans, the Japanese law enforcers wielded katanas. In spite of what the movies portray empty handed combat is a terrible idea against a sword wielder; hence the use of work tools as improvised weapons.
I agree and do think that weapons use was an integral part of Tode from the very start. We all know that "kara" in Karate was changed to "empty" (from "Chinese") only to appease the Japanese - so it was never an intentionally empty-handed art.
For example, wide empty handed blocks (age uke, gedan barai etc.) are the laughing stock of most combat sports but if you grab a pair of tonfa they suddenly make a lot more sense both defensively and offensively.
Thanks man.Completely agree and you make excellent points about the perfect sense that age uke and gedan barai make with a pair of tonfas. We can probably say the same thing about tettsui while holding a kama (or even better, an actual hammer). And great reminder about the change in meaning in the word "Kara". Like you said, it was never intentionally an empty handed art.
For a quite a few reasons I have taken a really big interest in Kobudo and modern weapons as of late and I have recently come to the conclusion that the Kobudo arts are more valuable than I had originally thought.
Yeah. Alot of them were criminals and gangsters. Not sure why the idea of them being fighting saints came from. Quite a few samurais back then ran protection / extortion rackets when they weren't at war.
It's the equivalent of 500 years from now, people romantizing cartel killers because of a "dying like a man" lifestyle.
I think its the romantic tales of the lone good guy ronin that people romanticize.Yeah I know - it baffles me why so many martial arts instructors are enthralled by the samurai.
Sure it’s interesting but not something I think is smart to live by. I mean let’s not forget that the samurai and their code were responsible for a lot of suffering of normal Japanese people during those turbulent periods. Never mind the fact that the same code of the samurai was the hallmark of imperial Japan and we all know of the atrocities they committed.
Yeah except the cartels didn’t cause as much destruction as the samurai/bushido did.
I think its the romantic tales of the lone good guy ronin that people romanticize.
The whole storytelling angle of them fighting in a bamboo forest is a cliche. There's a reason why they did it in an isolated area, them popo would send them up the river if it was in public.I think its the romantic tales of the lone good guy ronin that people romanticize.
The Conor of the dayYeah people romanticise Miyamoto Musashi but conveniently forget that he basically went around goading people into fights and then murdering them. He literally went around killing.
I can’t think of any other mass murderer that is romanticised as much as Musashi is.
I think the Samurai and Bushido code are romanticized more for the ideas of selfless servitude for others and their views about "Honor". The other stuff (as already noted l) is conveniently overlooked and ignored.
They were, but for some reason its kinda of accepted that knights were alcoholics that did douchey things, whereas samurais have this warrior saint image to them still.To be fair, we romanticise knights and chivalry, and they were just as bad as the samurai were.
Shut your whore mouth, "Ameridote" is the GOAT-est of styles. Who the hell wants to learn fighting from a bunch of third world commies and poor people that don't have freedom
They're both snap type kicks. Maybe one has more than the other, but its still within the same boat.