Sura-te: Ancient Okinawan Kiai

 https://medium.com/@motobu715/sura-te-ancient-okinawan-kiai-a6693d987b12

By Motobu Naoki

Shuri Castle. Photo by Motbu Naoki.

In my previous article, I wrote about the kiai that is performed during kata demonstrations. This kiai is probably a postwar tradition that began to be used in kata competitions.

By the way, in old Okinawa, there was a unique technique called sura-te (スラ手), similar to kiai, which was used in actual fighting. Uehara Seikichi’s Bu no Mai (Martial Dance, 1992) describes it as follows:

Sura-te

Sura-te is a technique used in bare-knuckle fighting to surprise the opponent by striking a part of one’s own body at the moment of attack to generate a sound, or by emitting a strange sound from the mouth to mislead the opponent. (p. 66)

Sura-te is not a shout uttered in kata, but only a sound uttered in actual fighting. It also includes not only shouts but also sounds made by striking one’s own body or kimono.

Jigen-ryu swordsmanship of Satsuma, which was also practiced in Ryukyu, has a unique vocalization called enkyō (猿叫, literally monkey shout).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfAaAdzmF7o

Enkyō is a high-pitched shout, and rather than kiai, it might be more appropriately called kisei (奇声, strange sound) in Japanese.

According to Uehara Sensei, Motobu Chōki also excelled at sura-te. He probably used it a lot in his younger days in actual fighting (kakedameshi).

Uehara Sensei learned sura-te from Motobu Chōyū in the Taisho era (1912–1926), but I have not found any references to it in other karate literature, so it may have already fallen into disuse by that time.

Thus, kiai, which is considered traditional in karate, is not that old, and most people do not know the old Okinawan sura-te that was truly traditional. We should always keep this in mind when researching history.