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Tonfa or Tuifa

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So their are two terms for The wooden rice grinder handle we use today its Tonfa or Tuifa.

Tonfa is what the Japanese call it, and they believe that its the correct term because they think what ever they call something thats martial arts related is correct....well its NOT!.

Then we have the tuifa, the okinawan and chinese term for it, the correct term for it because that is where it originated.

What do you think is the right term for it? The true or the New?

To fear death is to limit life - Xin Sarith Azuma Phan Wuku

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Or, you could go even newer and call it the PR-24 Side Handled Baton :) .

That was the designation that it got a few years back when a couple of DT programs were utlizing it in LE applications. It's since gone by the wayside.

As to your actual question, I have no idea what would be most proper.

  • Author

Oh yah haha I forgot about that one. Lol. Or what someone referred to them at a kobudo seminar....Police Baton...haha

To fear death is to limit life - Xin Sarith Azuma Phan Wuku

Doesnt matter to me what its called, I will say it does hurt (a lot). We would get in the occassional police/statey to train so they didnt have to go to some class they would tell me bout.

I was the guinea pig on more then one demostration on the PR24/tonfa in class.

  • Author

Hmmm but now that I think about it...it does make me wonder what the term Tui means. Because in Chinese Tui means point, such as Tuina training. For the pressure points and massage therapy. And some Okinawan dialect has been transversed to chinese dialect as well.

To fear death is to limit life - Xin Sarith Azuma Phan Wuku

Or, you could go even newer and call it the PR-24 Side Handled Baton :) .

That was the designation that it got a few years back when a couple of DT programs were utlizing it in LE applications. It's since gone by the wayside.

As to your actual question, I have no idea what would be most proper.

Dang shame too, I like training with the tonfa. ASPs and Monadnocks are the in-thing now.

was going through my shortcut links and glad i saved the webpage but this one has a brief but nice description of Tuifa (tonfa)

http://www.weaponsconnection.com/page1.htm

I think the proper name is going to be relative to where you are from, Japan or Okinawa. In the end, we are talking about the wooden handle of a rice grinder, so is it worth that much energy?

  • Author

For a practitioner of the art, it is definately worth the energy, but for those that it isn't worth the energy, should not even look at this thread.

Now whether your from Okinawa or Japan would matter, but Kobudo is an Okinawan art, not a Japanese art, nor an American art.

To fear death is to limit life - Xin Sarith Azuma Phan Wuku

Well, I'm interested to take a look, even though I don't do it.

There are pleanty of things that, to me, aren't worth the energy of doing. Even in my own art. Terminalogy is one, I can't define more than a couple of things by oriental terms. It's a constant source of eye rolling from some of my peers, but it's not worth the effort of learning for me. Practitioner or no.

It's personality, and what you want to focus on or how completely you feel the need to emerse yourself in your art.

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