this is the biggest myth in karate once upon a time on the island of okinawa there was a peaceful farmer working on his land suddenly a japanese samurai warrior appeared luckily the farmer had developed a deadly martial art that allowed him to defeat any opponent using his empty hands [Music] sometimes his fists were not enough that's when he used his farming tools as secret weapons although the story of the oppressed okinawan farmers is romantic it is not true and the reason it exists is because of something that happened in 1879 check it out [Music] we
all know that okinawa is the birthplace of karate but before it was called okinawa it was known as the uku and it was its own kingdom and that's why it's so unique because it is nothing like mainland japan even the king's castle looks completely different compared to japanese castles in fact it looks much more chinese and that's because the okinawans loved everything that came from china in fact china was considered so important that all the upper class nobility and aristocratic families spent their entire days studying everything that came from china they even went to china
to study on scholarships this included literature calligraphy history confucianism and of course the martial arts look at this list of legendary okinawan martial arts masters and you will notice that they all have a class attached to their name because ryukyu kingdom had a complex caste system of dividing people into different social status and all the karate masters were at least six levels higher than the regular farmer or peasant the only people who had the luxury of studying martial arts were upper class aristocratic nobility and they are the people who lay the foundation of what would
love of what would later be known as karate and kabuto you see the taxes that those lower people paid actually paid for the education of the upper class in turn that's what made them into the martial arts masters they could become because they didn't have to work in a field all day a farmer in the uq kingdom had to work about 18 hours a day just to pay those taxes and put food on the table they didn't have the time ability or the economic means to actually practice any martial arts but everything changed in 1879
when the meiji rulers of mainland japan came and demanded that the ryukyu kingdom would be changed to okinawa prefecture and become a part of japan instead of having any ties to china when the uq kingdom fell the class system was abolished that led to 2 000 aristocratic families and 300 lords plus the king being kicked out of their fancy mansions and castles and forced to live on the countryside with farmers and peasants and this is where the myth began you see all these upper class warrior cast nobility people had left were their skills and talents
because they lost their stuff let me just show you something right this right here is known as a muge and it's supposed to sit on the face of a horse either this way or that way i'm not sure i only kick like a horse i don't actually ride horses and i got this when i was in okinawa but these people now had to repurpose their everyday tools like a muge for weapons they had already learned that originally came from china like the nunchuck which is nothing but a war flail it's definitely not made for harvesting
rice which is what a lot of people falsely think or let's take the sai which was actually used by law enforcement in china originally and it was not a farming tool and the same goes for the tonfa which a lot of people think is the handle of a mill that broke loose and they started using it to defend against the samurai when in fact it was also a chinese weapon from the beginning that these aristocratic warrior class people learned and as a result people now think that both the armed and unarmed martial arts from okinawa
came from the farmers when in fact they were way too busy trying to survive than to develop highly sophisticated martial arts look i don't have anything against peasants or farmers half of my family is actually that and after a long day in the fields all they want to do is chillax have a cold one maybe jump in the lake or go to the sauna they don't have any interest in exercising and especially not the martial arts because they know if a samurai would show up they don't stand a chance anyway unfortunately this romantic myth of
the oppressed okinawan farmer has kept spreading even until this day so much so that a lot of people think that jumping kicks were developed to kick samurai off their horses karate and kobuto are highly sophisticated systems of martial art which means that we need to stop believing in that romantic story of the oppressed farmer and start believing in facts because only then can we penetrate the ignorance surrounding this beautiful art and if you agree please send this video to somebody who practices karate so they can learn the truth as well thank you so much for
watching train hard good luck and have fun wait so you're saying it was all fake damn that was such a good story i guess it was too good to be true anyway do you want me to say something else or is the video finished now oh i probably shouldn't be recording this bye
