Why were nunchucks invented

However, some claim that the birth of the nunchaku took place in Okinawa. Fearing a revolt, he prohibited most citizens from owning weapons. Yet nobility, including those who served the government, were allowed to have swords. However, this meant giving up their weapons. Now they had no means to fight thieves or angry neighbors. They grabbed anything they could to defend themselves, including common farm implements.

Connecting two sticks with a rope was how the nunchaku was born. Other story variants hold that the nunchaku were developed by the original Okinawan peasant class, and were, again, based on farm implements.

For women of all ages, especially if living alone. Works for you when fears are aroused. It did not take long before English speakers began coming up with variant ways of saying nunchaku ; by the end of the decade, both nun chuck and nunchuck could be found.

Oddly enough, the earliest citations for these two spellings that we've found come from reports on the Jewish Defense League although it should be noted that is not sufficient evidence to claim that the JDL is responsible for the current spelling of nunchuck.

And their weaponry consists of a motley collection of bats, two-handed flails called nunchucks and a varying mastery of karate. Many of the early printed mentions of nunchucks tended to characterize them as potentially deadly weapons, although in subsequent decades there have not been any reports of significant fatalities from their use.

Nun-chucks consist of two inch-long sticks about an inch each in diameter which are connected by one end by a pair of cord thongs. Wielded by an individual schooled in their use they are capable of inflicting death with a single blow. Consider this your reminder that even though butterfly does indeed come from joining butter and flies , this does not mean that you can then apply the same principles of scholarship to other words which appear to have been formed by combining words.

To me, this is Pei Pei's best fight ever. She's relentless, smooth, and graceful, which is a difficult to do when fighting someone with a larger and heavier weapon. Chia enters the genre like a bat out of hell on a freakazoid chopper high on Meatloaf. In what must be the most men killed by any female star in a kung fu film, the final fight is as mesmerizing as it is relentless.

For nine-and-a-half minutes, Chia is surrounded by knife-wielding warriors and hatchet men trying to feed-frenzy her into oblivion. Ultimately, it is the lady who axes the questions and when they try to lie and cheat her, she becomes the cheetah and makes them lie on the ground. Avenger uses s fight choreography while shooting the action with tight angles that create a strained sense of pugilistic claustrophobia that makes us feel Su-zhen and Chia are both fighting for their lives.

With a wee background in Chinese opera combat choreography and this being Chia's debut kung fu film, it was fitting to not disrupt Chia's expectations of what the fight might look and feel like. During the use of s choreography where hooligans would form tight circles around the hero and the non-attackers would excessively move to add motion and commotion to the fight, Chia was instructed to throw non-stop kicks and punches in all directions while spinning around like a female Olympic skater except to do it with knives and hatchets in hand.

Everybody gets nailed by a sharp hatchet hammer or a pointed screwdriver knife…Su-zhen's tools of the trade. The Mandarin title Ching Wu Men means entering the gate of knowledge of the Ching Wu martial arts school, which was created by Shanghai martial arts legend Huo Yuen-jia. Set during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in , after the Japanese deliver a plaque with the words Sick Men of Asia written in searing black ink and Huo's top student Chen Chen Lee endures ridicule from the Japanese delegation, we're minutes away from a very important moment in fight choreography history; Lee kicking eight different bullies in one unedited shot in a Japanese karate dojo then introducing the world to a nunchaku.

Adding to the scene's steam, a reflection of Lee's disdain toward how the Japanese treated the Chinese during that era, he adds insult to injury by having some Japanese fighters wearing their hakama backwards and at the end of the nunchaku sequence, Lee defiantly poses in front of Gichin Funakoshi's father of Japanese karate portrait.

Yet Lee's ultimate powerful pervasive message of Chinese not being sick people is brilliantly depicted when Lee defeats Japanese thugs in front of Shanghai Park by splintering a wooden sign that read, "No Dogs or Chinese Allowed" with a flying kick it's a sign that never existed.

Black Tavern is the best whip movie in the history of whip-moviedom. My mouth was so agape watching this film that I swallowed a thousand flies. Whip master Zhang Ku Feng is like a flamethrower full of rocket fuel. It's on the list not for the story, but for the fight scenes that are cooler than liquid nitrogen freezing the Terminator, which includes the whacked out, Viking-helmeted, villain Hu terrorizing the Inn like an enraged bull in a ring filled of blind matadors who forgot their capes and swords.

The story opens when after a drunk monk performs shu xiao ban 11 th century Chinese rap music to an inn full of vagabond, thieves, and a cryptic swordswoman that a treasure chest is heading to Black Tavern, all the rascals leave the inn with brains wrapped in greed. At the tavern, all hell breaks loose as the menagerie of Chekhovian pseudo-heroes, back-stabbing villains, zombie men, ghosts, leopard-skin lackeys, switched women and Hu partake in increasingly lethal and inventive death scenes.

Ku's choreography goes far beyond simple whip twirling circles and figure eight motions that inject a whip crack or two. He's Quisp and Quake, and the continued use of cool sight gags stupefy our brains like how his whip uniquely beheads a woman, and when Hu attacks Ku with a pole, what follows is an outlandish kooky fight sequence featuring a wicked reverse-angle point-of-view shot of Hu holding onto his weapon for dear life while he's being lifted skyward, travels in an overhead semi-circle, lands on his back, while his face grimaces into camera the whole time, then ends up being whipped into a coffin and dragged across the ground toward several swords.

The night fight in a snowstorm between the swords-woman and Zhang is a combo whip-in-a-whip-in-a-whip crescendo with a headless horse and carriage as a wayward rolling wheel tries to crush them. The Japanese dojo challenges the Chinese guan to a competition to draw Liang out of hiding. He complies and the dojo pays a dear price for their misplaced loss of face. Choreographer Lin You-chuan was known for creating relentless, fast-paced fights that didn't rely on perfect technique, posture, or real kung fu fighting.

My hat goes off to Wen. In earlier films, he put his body on maniacal overdrive and just kicked and scrapped his way all over the screen, not caring about what other kung fu stars thought of him. When he takes on multiple attackers in this film, each shot is pure mayhem.

He's as intense as he's fun to watch, regardless of the choreography's haphazard nature and the somewhat sloppy kung fu. The key to Lin's choreography was having Wen throw his leg in the direction of an attacker and the stuntman would react to his leg placement.

As a result, Wen's not kicking at anyone, he's rapidly lifting his leg in many directions. It's flail-on-flail choreography with animalistic luster. Wen mimicking Lee's nunchaku dojo sequence with a piece of rope is so blatant that you've got to admire his audacity. Wen's rope has the same sound effect, Wen copies Lee's nunchaku movements and the fight is shot using the same camera angles.

Wen kicks the karate dojo sign like the Shanghai Park sign and a brief Bruce Li moment is a sign of things to come. The film follows the path of jujutsu expert Uyeshiba Jiro Chiba losing fights to karate expert Natori Shinbei Sonny Chiba; Jiro's brother and to the bokken -wielding sword master Okita.

Uyeshiba thus learns karate from Soubei Honda. Armed with newfound skills, Uyeshiba revenge fight plans go awry causing Shinbei' brother to commit suicide setting up a superbly orchestrated fight between two real brothers, Chiba vs. Chiba, with a hard-style karate vs. Though the fights are intensely riveting, it's the displays of true karate morality that is most memorable. When Honda presents Uyeshiba with a teacher's certificate and Uyeshiba declines it because he can't afford it, Honda replies, "I don't take money when I give lessons to a man I trust.

Though I can sell my skills, I can't sell my marital heart. Jiro Chiba's portrayal of Uyeshiba's martial transformation is transcendently dynamic as to how he adjusts his martial movements from one teacher and fight scene to the next. His techniques subtly change and improve over the film's duration, which shows how Uyeshiba's aikido evolves from Japanese jujutsu to aikido's basic hand guard, fight-ready position that is modeled after the way a samurai holds his samurai sword during battle.

On the surface, the movie appears to be a run of the mill, topsy turvy, grittily and cheaply made early '70s Taiwanese kung fu flick; yet it balled me over. Imagine Led Zepplin meets Def Leppard ala Deep Purple wrapped into one group and their sole song's music is translated into the sensibility of the final fight scene. When Zhen Zheng Jiang Bin returns home, he's called a traitor, ostracized by his village and his girlfriend forsook him as his brother, a turncoat that mines red sand from a river for the Japanese, who use it to forge steel to make guns to kill Chinese.

Though the early fights resemble out-of-control windmills, they're raw and you watch them to the point of mental fracking. They're filled with unabashed desperation and overblown fantastical facial expressions associated with silent-film stars. It's like female fans of Rod Stewart saying he's so ugly that he's cute, Jiang's fights are so sloppy that they're great.

Just when you think Jiang can't get any worse the attack ante rises as Yasuaki Kurata skulks onto the screen as the nefarious nemesis from Nippon, who oozes the animalistic intensity that Sonny Chiba brought to his Street Fighter films, yet Kurata's hapkido kicks elevate the film's frays and makes Jiang look like a 20 th degree black belt in everything.

Midway through the finale, Zhen taps into his Buddha Prayer Fist, a cheesy and effective turning point in the fight as they begin battling on a fast-moving freight train with the frenzied intensity of Lee Marvin vs.

Ernest Borgnine in Hitchcock's savage barreling train skirmish in Emperor of the North The emotional sacrifice of breathless intent behind the assault asphyxiates every moment of the fight for them and us. This was a rare accomplishment in Chinese kung fu films that also featured the bewitching soundtrack of Black Magic Woman by Santana. Overall, the fights in The Gallant are intense and well-choreographed, and Wang portrays each character and their fighting skills with dexterous prowess and violent acumen.

In The Stranger , a trapped woman flees from an abusive Triad into the arms of a man Wang that's part James Bond and knight in shining armor. He doesn't use a gun or sword instead he's armed with flaming fists and combustible kicks, and fights with tiger intensity soaked in an avalanche of bowling balls that uses up to 25 technique per shot to destroy the kingpin. The somber Stranger Attending the Tomb features Wang as a heavy-hearted prodigal son who while guarding his father's grave laments on his own sinful past, while his sister believes her brother is the last bastion of goodness in the world.

When she's threatened by a gang of grave-robbing rebels that want to loot the father's grave, with snapping dragon fists, and a pitchfork and shovel, Wang goes more berserk than Billy Jack at an OK Corral spree that is filled with wretched revenge and insane disdain. In The Avenger , a man Wang returns home from prison after taking the rap for a treasure heist to protect two accomplices, his father-in-law, and the double-crossing Li San.

While the man was away, San killed the father-in-law and heinously coveted the man's wife. With two daggers in hand, it's time to unleash a whirlwind of steel-slashing bewitchment upon San and his clan.

Never say, "Cut it out," to a former inmate with blades. However, when Ben and father use arnis to thrash two cowardly sons of the Philippines' first colonial governor Legazpi, and stop them from raping his mum, Legazpi retaliates by killing Ben's father, raping then killing his mum, and shipping Ben to Los Mananos to be executed. Desperate to escape the storm-ravaged sinking ship, when forced to kill the captain and conquistadors blocking his way, Ben is mortally wounded.

May 18, Karl Smallwood 9 comments. Colin O. Enjoy this article? Answers Articles History. Thankfully, I never had to pull them to defend myself. Adam May 19, am. Your Friendly Neighbourhood Proofreader May 20, am. AK May 20, pm. ALso, now I know whey there was a rash of grappling hook robberies in the UK in the 90s.

Malcolm Smith May 20, pm. Gato May 24, am. A similar weapon of the West is the Flail. Ben June 26, pm. DG Hammer October 8, pm. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.