Matayoshi Kobudo
又吉古武道The Okinawan kobudo line with the widest armoury, working with some twenty weapons. The father gathered them; the son made a system of them.
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About Matayoshi Kobudo
Matayoshi kobudo is one of the main lines of Okinawan weapons practice and at the same time the one with the widest armoury. It grows out of two generations of the same family. Shinko Matayoshi, who lived from 1888 to 1947, gathered weapons knowledge not only on Okinawa but also during stays in China and Manchuria, from where he brought techniques that Okinawan kobudo had not known before. The system was arranged into its present shape, named and spread only by his son Shinpo Matayoshi, who lived from 1921 to 1997; he also opened the Kodokan dojo in Naha as a memorial to his father and in 1972 founded the umbrella organisation Zen Okinawa Kobudo Renmei. Breadth is what defines the school. The curriculum works with roughly twenty weapons: the bo staff, sai, tonfa, nunchaku, the three-sectional staff sansetsukon, the eku oar, nunti-bo, the tinbei shield with the seiryuto blade, the kama sickles, the weighted rope suruchin, the kuwa hoe, the jo stick, tekko, tecchu and kurumanbo. For the last of these the Matayoshi line is often the only one that transmits them at all. The catalogue entries need correcting: Shinko Matayoshi died in 1947, so the year 1960 cannot refer to him — it belongs to his son's organisational work.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.