Tekko

Origin

There is no single answer settled in scholarship for the origin of the tekko, and the most often heard view is that its shape and weight were taken from the iron shoe of a horse's hoof or the stirrup. In the Ryukyu kingdom (1429-1879), from about the reign of King Sho Shin who took the throne in 1477, the bearing of arms by noble and peasant was more and more strictly held, and in 1609 the Shimazu of Satsuma invaded Ryukyu and set themselves as its overlord in fact, and the ban on arms was tightened once more. In this current the martial artists of Ryukyu polished a path of drawing the work of an arm from the tools of the farm and the everyday, and as the fruit of it, the tekko took its place as one of the six of Ryukyu kobudo alongside the bo (long staff), the sai, the tonfa, the nunchaku, and the kama (sickle). Its Hanja 'iron armor' is a separate piece from the wrist armor of mainland Japan written with the different Hanja meaning 'hand armor', though both are read tekko, and it is right not to bind them together.

Features

• Flat metal plate covering the back of the fist in a single face
• Two short bars within for the fingers to grip between
• Borne in a pair, one in each hand
• Small size that is easy to hide in one hand
• A reinforcement that adds the weight of metal to a single blow of the fist
• Kata still kept and passed on in Ryukyu kobudo schools such as Matayoshi and Yamane-ryu

Stories

The first use of the tekko is to give weight and hardness to a single blow of the fist. With the flat metal plate covering the back of the hand, when the man closes his fist and strikes, both the finger joints and the back of the hand are guarded, and the weight of the same blow is much greater than that of the bare fist. The second is to ward. When a sword or a staff comes down from above, the plate of the tekko covers the back of the hand to receive it, and the same hand strikes the enemy in the next motion, and this single flow of warding and striking is often seen in the tekko kata of Ryukyu kobudo. The third is to seize and twist, for the ends of the plate above the back of the hand and the bars within are also used to catch the enemy's wrist and the hem of his robe and twist them. Maezato no Tekko, the kata handed down in the Matayoshi line of kobudo, is a good example of bearing one tekko in each hand and weaving ward, strike, seize, and twist into a single line.

Weakness

The weakness of the tekko lies above all in the narrowness of its cover. As a piece that covers one face of the back of the hand, it leaves the head, the chest, and the legs of the same man wholly bare, and so the tekko is not an armor but stands always as a small auxiliary arm. The weight of metal laid on the back of the hand also dulls the quick play of the same fist somewhat, so the tekko suits the place where one closes in to strike a single heavy blow, but does not suit the place where one steps fast to keep distance from afar. Its small form, easy to hide in the hand, is also a hindrance, for before a long arm it is pushed out of reach and the man cannot even close to land a blow. So in Ryukyu kobudo, the tekko was always set as a tool to be learned together with a long arm such as the bo or the sai, and the place where it was used alone was very narrow.

Cultural Significance

The tekko is one face of the martial art that the men of the Ryukyu kingdom drew from the tools of the farm and the everyday in an age when sword and spear were taken from them, and it is named one of the six of Ryukyu alongside the bo, the sai, the tonfa, the nunchaku, and the kama. Its form and use are small and simple, but the story behind it touches the great question of how the men of a small kingdom guarded themselves in an age when they could not bear arms. So today the schools of Okinawa such as Matayoshi kobudo, Ryuei-ryu, and Yamane-ryu pass on the kata of the tekko with care as a node of their own tradition, and in the karate dojo of mainland Japan and abroad the tekko stands as one of the arms of Ryukyu learned together with karate. The Hanja that name it would read straight as 'iron armor', but the tekko in truth is a small piece that covers only the back of the hand, so there is a quiet, friendly gap between the dignity of its name and the smallness of its actual body.

In Popular Culture

The tekko can be met most clearly in documentaries and martial arts films about karate and Ryukyu kobudo. In the demonstration footage of well-known Ryukyu martial artists such as the Matayoshi line of kobudo, the kata of the tekko borne in each hand can be seen, and in karate films of the Best of the Best and Karate Kid kind a brief glimpse of the tekko also appears. In fighting games, fighters bearing a knuckle guard of the tekko form often appear in SNK's Samurai Shodown and Capcom's Street Fighter series, and the knuckle guards seen in the manga Baki and the film Dredd (2012) are close to the form of the tekko. Films, however, often bind the tekko together with the Western brass knuckle and draw them as one, so the difference of the two in form and use is often blurred.

Trivia

• There is no single answer settled in scholarship for the origin of the tekko; the view most often heard is that its shape and weight were taken from the iron shoe of a horse's hoof, but views that take the stirrup or a tool of the farm as its parent also hold their own place.
• Read straight, the Hanja name of the tekko would mean 'iron armor', which is easily mistaken for the wrist armor of mainland Japan written with the different Hanja meaning 'hand armor' though both are read tekko, but the two are separate pieces in form and use, and the tekko of Ryukyu is at heart a small arm that covers the back of the hand and gives the single blow of the fist a greater weight.
• The tekko is named one of the six of Ryukyu kobudo alongside the bo, the sai, the tonfa, the nunchaku, and the kama, and kata such as Maezato no Tekko of Matayoshi kobudo pass on the hand of the tekko to this day.