The term, "tuite"

Joe wrote:

Interesting, I have heard this before, but looking through my old books, I found an interesting passage in Murakami

Katsumi's 1973 book "Karatedo & Ryukyu Kenpo." In there, he has a chapter about the Tomari Wankan kata and mentions

that some of the apps are reminiscent of the "Tuidi" taught in Okinawa by Higa Seitoku (and by extension, Higa's teacher Uehara Seikichi)... 

When I say that Taika coined the term "tuite," I meant that he was the first one to use this pronunciation and romanization in English of the term. I believe that the kanji characters for this term is "torite" in Nihongo and "tuidi," "tuiti" or some other variant in Uchinaguchi. Taika was the first to take the "tui" and the "te" pronunciations and put them together. The term itself has been around for some time as Taika's teachers introduce the term to him although in their particular dialect, I'm sure. I also think that he suffixed both "tuite" and the term "kyusho" with the term "jitsu" for the first time. 

 

Uehara does teach his own version of this "grappling art" but it is somewhat different from what Taika teaches. Taika did train with Uehara as part of a kenkyukai of sorts. In fact, there was a bit of a controversy started over whether or not what Taika was teaching as "tuite" was Uehara's version or not. Taika sent a videotape of the type of technique that he was teaching to Uehara to clarify that Taika was not teaching Uehara's type of "tuite." Obviously, it could be speculated that Taika knew enough of Uehara's type to justified concern on Uehara's part when he was misled to think that Taika was teaching part of his system without permission.

 

So.........there you have it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

Dale