Kobudo

My Kobudo class meets once a month. Kobudo is a martial art based on Okinawan weapons. This month we learned our second bokken form. The bokken is not an Okinawan weapon, but it was the weapon that Kobudo was created to defend against. We have to learn a little bit about the sword if we are to learn how to use the Okinawan weapons against it.

There are some things in Kobudo that are similar to empty hand martial arts like Karate or Tae Kwon Do – lessons on balance, small-circles, and power coming from the hips. Even some of the movements are familiar when blocking or striking. There are also differences – the stances are much narrower so that you don’t hit yourself with your weapon. It’s inherently more dangerous than empty hand as well – you’re swinging hard, pointy objects around. That’s why we spend a lot of time on reishiki, or formal etiquette to show courtesy and respect.

Bokken has been different from the first weapon we picked up, which was the bo – a six foot staff. The bokken is an offensive weapon so you always want to be in a neutral or forward stance, never in a back-weighted stance. Flow and speed are much more important than power with the bokken – you can’t hack away like it’s an axe; you have to let the sword do the work for you. If you tense up and try to chop at your opponent, you are going to be slow. Which led to an interesting statement by our instructor this month – sometimes women have an easier time when starting to learn bokken, because they are less likely to try to use brute force than the men.

We have two more months to work on the bo and bokken before we test for Brown Belt in December. After that, we will be learning three more weapons: the jo, the sai, and the nunchaku. The class is very fast paced, and I’m glad that my TKD school has several people attending, and several more that have been through it. That makes it less intimidating and a lot easier to practice.