Motobu Udundi (Motobu Palace Art)
本部御殿手Palace art of Okinawa's noble Motobu family, with joint locks, throws, sword and spear. Not a school of karate, though the two merged organizationally after the war.
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Who It Suits
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What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Motobu Udundi (Motobu Palace Art)
Motobu udundi, literally the hand of the Motobu palace, is an Okinawan art of the noble Motobu family. It differs from karate enough that calling it a school of karate is misleading. Besides strikes it contains tuidī, that is, joint locks and throws applied to the wrist and elbow, along with work with the sword, the spear and the naginata; that it works with these weapons alongside the farming and fishing tools of Okinawan kobudō corresponds to the standing of a family entitled to carry them. Movement relies on tai sabaki, evasion with the whole body, and on tsuki uke, in which the same movement blocks and strikes at once; the common karate blocks age uke, chūdan uke and gedan barai are not used in it. The basis of the forms are two kata called motode, one practiced with open hands and the other with fists, to which Uehara added three kasshindī forms. The art was handed down by Motobu Chōyū, the twelfth head of the family, who lived from 1865 to 1928. After the fall of the Ryukyu kingdom his sons left the island, and Chōyū entrusted its transmission to his student Uehara Seikichi, who taught Chōyū's second son Chōmō in Wakayama. Chōmō died in an air raid on Osaka in 1945. Uehara kept looking for a successor, and in 1976 he approached Motobu Chōsei, son of Motobu Chōki; Chōsei accepted the line and formally became its head in 2003. Organizationally the art is today led, alongside Motobu karate, within the association Nihon Karatedō Motobu-kai, founded in 1977.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.