A family art of weapons
Matayoshi Kobudō (又吉古武道) is an Okinawan tradition of weaponry, one of the principal lines through which the island's armed arts have been carried into the present. Its curriculum is unusually broad, embracing the bō staff, sai, tonfā, nunchaku, kama sickle, eku oar, tinbe shield and other implements, and it is counted alongside the Taira and Yamanni lines as one of the main streams of Okinawan kobudō.
Shinkō and Shinpō
The art takes its name from Matayoshi Shinkō (又吉眞光, 1888–1947), who gathered his weapons knowledge both on Okinawa and during long travels on the Asian mainland, and who demonstrated it publicly in the early twentieth century. His son Matayoshi Shinpō (又吉眞豊, 1921–1997) inherited the teaching, organised it into a coherent system and did most to spread it beyond Okinawa, establishing the Kōdōkan dōjō in Naha as its home.
To keep the weapons of Okinawa as a living family inheritance.
A living tradition
Matayoshi Kobudō continues today under the Matayoshi family and the senior students trained by Shinpō, and it is practised across Okinawa and in many countries abroad. Its documented history rests on the well-recorded lives of its twentieth-century founders rather than on any claim to remote antiquity.