Ryūkyū Kobudō (琉球古武道) is the collective name for the weapon arts of Okinawa, practised alongside the empty-handed art of karate. Its weapons include the bō or staff, the sai, the tonfa, the nunchaku, the kama or sickle, the eku or oar and others, several of which began life as farming or fishing tools.
Not a single school
The term covers a body of related practices rather than one lineage. Different villages, families and teachers preserved their own kata and favoured their own weapons, and the modern label kobudō, meaning old martial way, was applied to them largely in the twentieth century. Treating Ryūkyū Kobudō as one unified system would flatten a genuinely varied tradition.
Everyday tools, practised seriously, become a curriculum worth preserving.
The tools of Okinawa
Many of the weapons have everyday origins, and this has given rise to a romantic story that Okinawan farmers, forbidden ordinary arms, turned their tools into weapons. The reality is more complicated and is debated by historians: some implements have clear agricultural roots, while others reflect older fighting tools and outside influence. The honest picture is a mixed one rather than a single tidy legend.
Systematisation
The scattered practices were gathered and organised by twentieth-century teachers, above all Taira Shinken (1897 to 1970), who collected kata from many sources and founded a preservation society for them. Earlier, Yabiku Moden had begun similar work, and Mabuni Kenwa also recorded kobudō. These efforts shaped the organised curriculum taught today.
Honesty note
The older weapon practice of Okinawa is real but thinly documented, whereas the systematic, named kobudō of the present is a modern achievement that can be traced with much more confidence.