Old Shuri and Stick High Flying

 

Translated with the assistance of Bing Translate, and with honesty Bing did all the work.

                                                   

  

The photo below is titled "Shizoku Town", published in "Travel House and Travel Souvenir" 1901. Shizoku Town is a shuri.

 

 

 

Mitsumura Photography Company Published by Mitsumura Photography Company

"Travel House and Travel Souvenir" from 1901. Collection of Okinawa Prefectural Archives

 

As shown in the picture above, the old shuri was a quiet city lined with shizoku residences. And, each residence was surrounded by a high stone wall. The houses in the picture above are so splendid that they are probably the residences of royalty and aristocrats such as The Palace (Udun) and The Temple (Tunchi). The exact location is unknown, but it is probably around Tounokura, Akahira, and Gibo.

 

If you're walking in a place like this and you're attacked by an enemy, it's hard to get away. You have to get over the stone wall. To tell the truth, there was a practice which overcame the stone wall in Motobu Udundi. Kiyoyoshi Uehara: Uehara Seikichi, Martial Dance, 1992, has the following descriptions:

 

Pole vault

 

As a way to escape when surrounded by enemies, we used bamboo sticks to jump from the wall of the stone wall to the wall, or jumped on the back of the tile roof and turtle armor tomb (page 59).

 

If you don't look at the pictures above, you might not believe the story that such a lesson existed. In order to understand the old martial arts, you need to understand the old city.

 

* In addition to english, Roman characters, and supplementary words, there are parts that supplement the language so that it is easy to read by machine translation.