was an

Okinawan martial arts Okinawan martial arts refers to the martial arts, such as karate, tegumi and Okinawan kobudō, which originated among the indigenous people of Okinawa Island. Due to its central location, Okinawa was influenced by various cultures with a long hist ...

master who formed Yamani ryu. He taught

Bōjutsu , translated from Japanese as "staff technique", is the martial art of stick fighting using a bō, which is the Japanese word for staff. Staffs have been in use for thousands of years in Asian martial arts like Silambam. Some techniques involve s ...

privately at his home in the village of Tobaru, in

Shuri, Okinawa ''Sui'' or ''Shui'', Northern Ryukyuan languages, Northern Ryukyuan: ''Shiyori'' is a district of the city of Naha, Okinawa. It was formerly a separate city in and of itself, and the royal capital of the Ryūkyū Kingdom. A number of famous his ...

Life

Like many martial arts masters Chinen had been a policeman. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he lived with the martial arts master Horoku Ishikawa in

Tainan Tainan (), officially Tainan City, is a Special municipality (Taiwan), special municipality in southern Taiwan facing the Taiwan Strait on its western coast. Tainan is the oldest city on the island and also commonly known as the "Capital City" ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. He also worked at the Shuri City Hall in

.Interview with Teruo Chinen on May 31, 1997 (Masami Chinen's grandnephew).

Yamani Ryu Bōjutsu

Chinen named the style after his father Sanra Chinen who was also a teacher of Bōjutsu and known as Yamani ''Usumei'' and Yamane ''Tanmei''.In Okinawan dialect of Naha area, when referring to a man older than you, ''usumē/usumei'' was used for a commoner meaning uncle, grandpa or old man. Originally, an older person from a family with traditional Ryukyu Kingdom rank had been called ''tanmē/tanmei'', which has been applied as a honorific meaning sir or grandpa mainly on Okinawa island.

Legacy

Although the style ceased to exist after his death, some of his katas were preserved by Seitoku Higa of the Bugeikan and

Shūgorō Nakazato was an Okinawan martial artist. Described as a "one punch artist" by some of his American students, Nakazato developed his karate sparring into "a fine fighting art". He gave many demonstrations in Japan as well as abroad and had "many well-kno ...

Shōrin-ryū Shōrin-ryū (少林流) is one of the major modern Okinawan martial arts and is one of the oldest styles of karate. It was named by Choshin Chibana in 1933, but the system itself is much older. The characters 少林, meaning "sparse" or "scanty ...

. Another student of Chinen's, Chōgi Kishaba and his student Toshihiro Ōshiro also privately practised Yamani Ryu katas. Ōshiro teaches

today, and so does Chinen's grandnephew

Teruo Chinen was a prominent Japanese master of Gōjū-ryū Karate.Pereira, L. (c. 2007)Teruo Chinen Shihan: Jundokan Goju RyuRetrieved on April 6, 2010; link has expired, as at July 21, 2011. He founded the Jundokan International karate organization and hel ...

References

External links

Interview with Teruo Chinen (Masami Chinen's grandnephew)
(as of May 21, 2018.)
Chinen Masami and "Sakugawa no kon" (bojutsu)
archived February 17, 2015. Okinawan male karateka 1898 births 1976 deaths Ryukyuan people Shōrin-ryū practitioners {{Japan-karate-bio-stub

Life

Yamani Ryu Bōjutsu

Legacy

See also

References

Further reading

External links