Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

zation) politicians. Similarly, ten years later, the 30,000-member organization
Nasrul Haq (NH) was singled out not only for its suspect political
connections, but because of claims that members of NH posed a threat to
the prevailing social order not only by teaching silat and allowing female
participation, but also by practicing magical chants and engaging in
trances. Both practices suggest a connection to martial esotericism. For
Malaysia as a whole, the record demonstrates the reappearance of millennial
and ecstatic Islamic cults during virtually every episode of historical
crisis. It is likely that research would reveal crucial ways in which religion,
silat, and nationalism are intertwined in these movements.
Okinawan martial arts oral tradition depicts similar ethnic and cultural
struggles, supported in similar ways by the esoteric indigenous art of di, or
te (hand). Like all folk histories, these narratives are sometimes at odds with
the written record. Nevertheless, the historical traditions of te trace its development
as an underground art to the conquest of the Ryûkyû Islands by
the Shimazu clan of Satsuma in southern Japan (Kyûshû Island) in 1609. At
this time, the private possession of weapons, banned by Okinawan king Sho
Shin’s edict of the late fifteenth century, came to be more stringently enforced
by the Shimazu, as did prohibitions on the practice of the arts of war. Oral
tradition maintains that Ryûkyûans (Okinawans) continued to practice martial
arts at odd hours and in secret locations to avoid detection, and that for
over three hundred years te was practiced secretly and transmitted orally or
by means of privately transcribed “secret texts.” After the Satsuma conquest
and until the Meiji Restoration (1868), Okinawans were systematically oppressed.
Oral narratives among practitioners of te consistently embody the
theme of turning adversity to strength via martial esotericism, a theme that
is consistent with the situations described above. In addition, these traditions
maintain that the practice of te leads to the development of ki (Japanese) or
qi (Chinese; chi)—a form of intrinsic energy said to ward off blows and increase
the practitioner’s strength to supernormal levels. Te, according to oral
tradition, was used against the Japanese in a guerilla fashion reminiscent of
the strategies described for Indonesia.
Brazilian capoeira constitutes a final example of a connection between
esoteric martial arts, a dominated group, and ethnic conflict. In attempting
to determine the origins of the martial art, J. Lowell Lewis cites a range of
oral traditions tying the development of capoeira to the African Brazilian
slave population; some commentators, in fact, posit an African origin for
the fighting techniques and some of the terminology employed. The early
record (pre-1920) is sketchy and heavily dependent on folk history, but the
relevance of capoeira to the current issue is obvious. Oral tradition connects
capoeira with the fugitive slave “kingdom” of Palmares in the region
of Pernambuco, Brazil. The successful resistance movement by the Pal-
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