In 1429, the three kingdoms on Okinawa unified to form the
Kingdom of Ryukyu. When King
Shō Shin came into power in 1477, he banned the practice of martial arts, due to fears of the widespread teaching of the art of deception. Tō-te and Ryukyu kobudō (deception) continued to be taught in secret. The ban was continued in 1609 after Okinawa was invaded by the
Satsuma Domain of Japan. The bans contributed to the development of kobudō which uses common household and farming implements as weaponry. The Okinawans combined Chinese martial arts with the existing local variants to form , sometimes called . By the 18th century, different types of
te had developed in three different villages –
Shuri,
Naha and
Tomari. The styles were named Shuri-te, Naha-te, and Tomari-te, respectively. Well into the 20th century, the martial arts of Okinawa were generally referred to as
te and
tii 手 in
Japanese and
Okinawan for "hand".
Te often varied from one town to another, so to distinguish among the various types of
te, the word was often prefaced with its area of origin; for example, Naha-te, Shuri-te, or Tomari-te. Shuri-te, Naha-te and Tomari-te belong to a family of martial arts that were collectively defined as
Tode-jutsu or
To-de. Karate (
Okinawa-te or
Karate-jutsu) was systematically taught in Japan after the
Taishō era (after 1926). ==Shuri-te==