perform various te movements. When he was finished and the two execu-
tioners approached him to fulfill the death sentence, Jana grabbed them
both and plunged into the vat of boiling oil. The bodies of the three men
(in death resembling three linked commas) floated to the top of the vat and
began to swirl in a counterclockwise direction.
The significant influence of exogenous Chinese combative disciplines
on the development of Okinawan civil combative styles may be observed
in the use and evolution of the term karate. The use of the term karateit-
self, however, indicates a distinction between the styles. In its original form,
tôte(Japanese; in Okinawan, toudi) karate was written with the Chinese
characters, indicating that the art had been significantly influenced by the
fighting arts of Tang China. Toudi may be translated as “Tang hand.” One
of the earliest significant exponents of combative arts in Okinawa was
Kanga Teruya, also known as Sakugawa Toudi. That Sakugawa studied
Chinese forms is evidenced by the appellation Toudi (Tôte). If he had been
known for his skill in indigenous forms, one would surmise that he would
have been known as Sakugawa Te.
The kanji character for tô(Tang) may be pronounced kara, which
happens to be the same sound as a different word, kara,which means
“empty.” In the early 1920s, Okinawan master Funakoshi Gichin sug-
Karate, Okinawan 241Sensei Ty Yocham of the Texas Okinawan Gôjû Kai Federation demonstrates bunkai from Seiyunchin Kata of the
Gôjû-ryû. (Courtesy of Ron Mottern)