Okinawan Sumo and Karate

 

 

If you're interested in what Okinawan Sumo tradition really is, outside of a chapter in Nagamine's book go to You Tube and you can watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjVY9JQhpC8

 

 

The other day I shared a link with OkinawanBBTV that containa a link to an Okinawan Sumo competition.

 

I'm not sure whether anyone has taken the time to look at it or not, but I shared it because it is an extremely valuable link to the past and the development of Okinawan Karate, IMO.

 

I was unaware of this Uchinadi Sumo tradition until I read Nagamine Shoshin's "Tales of Okinawa's Great Masters" and discovered an entire chapter on this wrestling tradition. From that description this streaming video seems directly out of their past (with perhaps the uniforms being updated to a modern martial concept). Certainly more discrete from the Japanese Sumo tradition satorially speaking.

 

Where this ties together is if we take a brief trip back say 150 years in Okinawa's past. It was about that time a very private tradition that became karate seems to have jelled (based on the 'histories' we read), but there is only oral history and a few concrete facts to draw on.

 

Nobody has really intimated that Okinawa was a dangerous place in those days. Sure kids goofing, and waterfront bars existed, but from what I've seen there is no evidence that Okinawa needed a street fighting solution.

 

In turn, in those days Karate developed, not for the masses, but more for some of the elite.

 

It didn't develop for martial purposes. The rapid Japanese defete of Okinawa's guard about 400 years ago seems to have eliminated a military art tradition.

 

But the common folk, had their Sumo wrestling tradition, or the larger martial tradition of the island. Sumo for the hearty, and note how the larger in the streaming video seem to defeat the smaller (no surprise at that is there).

 

About whether the Motobu tradition of Ti developed for the King's body guards (which were likely not really needed either).  This tradition may or may not have had an influence on the developing karate after all.

 

Of course our own Joe-san has contributed to give us some insight to the modern Ti traditions with his translation of Soken's "The Secret Royal martial Arts of Ryukyu". And for some there are videos of those traditions too.

 

So against a background of some ti tradition, and of a common wrestling tradition (which every society on the world has had), karate found a nitch and began its ongoing development.

 

I think this is exciting to reflect upon, and might help us understand why karate developed as it did.

 

But an even more insightful glimpse can be found in the writings of Motobu Chokoi.  I've only started thinking about this, but the techniques he demonstrates do appear to be more counters against grappling.

 

In Sumo they begin both people holding each other, but in reality they would first go to grab. And that action is very similar to the attacks Motobu is demonstrating against.   [There are various versions of Motobu's books, such as Patrick McCarthy's translation "Motobu Choki Karate My Art', and even Japanese versions of his books showing the techniques (as well as his son's video tapes).

 

I think there might be some interesting research there to be done.

 

But even more interesting is where do we find our own answers to those grappling attacks in our kata.

 

I'm sensitive to some answers from my study with Harrill Sensei.  Motobu shows an Patsai answer (found in SunNuSU), and there are various ansers throughout the Isshinryu kata, as well as other Okinawan kata too.

 

No doubt the developers of Karate knew this grappling existed (and may have experienced it themselves as Nagamine seems to reference it as a common youth activity, like today's little league).

 

So there is no question the kata they developed has uses against those Sumo techniques too, again IMVHO.

 

Folks, I'm only making suggestions, but I think there is aline of inquiry to follow that many might find factinating. By using the sources that are slowly being developed we can think about all karate's origins a little more focused.