Kobudo

Group Kobudo lesson are now available on Saturdays. Beginning weapons is at 11AM for students work Bo and Nunchaku. Advanced weapons is at 9AM for students working Bo, Nunchaku, Sai, Tonfa, and more. Kobudo is open to any Sun Mesa Karate student with a Yellow Belt or higher, and provided they have their own weapon(s). Call or Text Sensei on (or before) the days you are planning on attending. 505-610-5708

Times available for this week:

Saturday:

9:00 am Advanced (Bo, Nunchaku, Sai, Tonfa, etc.)

10:00 am Open Empty hand class

11:00 pm Beginners (Bo and Nunchaku)

Kobudo History

The way the story has often been told was that the Satsuma Samurai clan of Japan came down and took over the Ryu Kyu Kingdom of which Okinawa and the rest of the Ryu Kyu islands were a part of. When they did that, they banned everyone from owning weapons. Through influences from the Shaolin monks, the Okinawans then developed fighting styles based around empty (kara) hand (te) techniques or by utilizing farm tools as weapons (kobudo). Modern karate historians have started to call this story into question. Many of the kobudo weapons are clearly tools; like the Kama (sickle), Eku-Bo (boat oar), Kuwa (farming hoe), tekko/kanzashi (stick used to haul in fishing nets). But the others are up for debate as they have been given stories for how they were used as farm tools, but were also based known weapons. These weapons include the sai, the nunchaku and the tonfa. The bo is interesting as it is the most common kobudo weapon, and it clearly has non weapon uses (walking stick, used to carry buckets of water from rivers), but it also has a history of use as a weapon going back thousands of years throughout human history. There is a cool new video at the bottom of the page about this myth.

Regardless, here is the kobudo page. As of right now it will primarily focus on the Kata and Bunkai videos, but at some point I will add in-depth descriptions of the weapons as well the lineage of our weapon’s style, Okinawan Kenpo Kobudo.