The Great Okinawan Nunchaku
Anybody who’s even a casual student of the martial arts has probably seen a pair of nunchaku being used at one time or another during the course of their studying of the martial arts. It may have been in a so-called “karate movie,” or it could have been in the dojo — martial arts school – where you train in your chosen martial art. They’re so popular, in fact, that they’re known in many parts of the world today as “nunchucks,” or “numchucks.”
The “twin sticks” (that’s their meaning when the word “nunchaku” is spoken in native Okinawan), in the right hands, are a whirling blur of motion that can actually be hard for the eye to follow when they’re moving fast enough. And they can pack a seriously hard wallop when they’re used to strike at somebody during close-quarters fighting.
Used alone – as a pair of sticks joined together by a short length of rope cord or chain, usually – or in pairs (one set for each hand), the nunchaku has a long and interesting history, starting from their first appearance on the Japanese-dominated island of Okinawa sometime in the early or mid-1600s all the way up to today, where craftsmen like the ones at Buki Yuushuu turn out modern, customized versions of this classic weapon.
How the nunchaku or “chucks” came to first be seen on Okinawa during that time is still unclear. A popular story was that Okinawan farmers and others on the island took a farmer’s thresher; a handheld tool made up of two sticks joined by a rope, and suddenly with a few short flicks of the wrist became nunchaku masters!
We’re just joking about the “instant master” thing. It took and still takes some time handling the nunchaku (and more than a few hits the head, man that hurts!) before an individual is confident enough to even consider using them in a real life situation.
Most likely the invention of the nunchaku (Nunchuck) never happened that way at all, but that story keeps finding its way in popular culture. In realty, this very popular defensive weapon was probably made for the same reason it is still used today; as a weapon. More and More evidence shows that the Chinese themselves had a weapon that was very close in design to the Nunchuck back even before the 1600s, and that Chinese people whom some immigrated to Okinawa actually brought it with them. Also, the word for “nunchaku” is from the Chinese language, so it makes it that more likely that it really was built to be what we understand it to be today.
To understand why these “two sticks connected by a string” came into being, we should understand that on the island of Okinawa, as with the rest of Japan, most people were forbidden to carry a sword or other bladed weapon. Only Japanese who were of the samurai class, a professional warrior were able to have such things. Native Okinawans, who were not Japanese at all, fell under this same rule. But people being people were just smart back then as they are today, and soon the nunchaku (Nunchuck) began to be used for personal protection and the protection of property against any would be criminals or Japanese samurai who happened to take advantage of their situation.
The Native Okinawans were people who just like most of us didn’t like to be ordered around and being taken advantage of by the samurai who were very good at giving orders and taking advantage of those beneath them. You can imagine the surprise one of these professional warriors felt first time they witnessed one of the local peasants wielding these blazing fast wooden sticks and coming at him.
If you’d like to see what a modern pair of nunchaku look like, go to bukiyuushuu.com and look at all the different colors and personalized options that can be ordered to make a nunchaku truly someone’s personal self-defense weapon.
Come and see the most styles and choices in custom Nunchaku click here Nunchuck
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Tagged with: karate weapons • martial arts • martial arts weapons • Ninja • Nunchaku • nunchakus • Nunchuck • Nunchucks • okinawan weapons • samurai • tournament weapons
Filed under: Martial Arts
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The way I heard they were made was when one guy had his bo staff broken in half, and then they repaired it with a chain.
And they’re the most elegant weapon I’ve seen
they’re fast, and they’re easy on the eyes. For me it was a simple weapon to start learning, I just somehow understood all the physics behind it..
This is actually a really cool post, I like how you got into the peasants’ stories.
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