About This Site

kobudo.fi is a research resource documenting the weapon-based martial arts of the Ryukyu Islands, covering their history, lineages, tools and kata, with an emphasis on verifiable sources and cross-style comparison.

Purpose

The site exists to:

• Provide a structured reference for practitioners and researchers studying Ryukyu kobudo
• Map kata name families across different organizations, showing shared roots and divergent branches
• Present historical context from the Ryukyu Kingdom era through modern transmission
• Catalog Japanese-language primary and secondary sources for further research

Scope

The primary focus is weapons-based Ryukyuan martial arts (古武道 / 古武術), particularly the Taira Shinken lineage (Ryūkyū Kobujutsu Hozon Shinkōkai), Matayoshi Kobudo, and Yamane-ryū. The site does not attempt to cover empty-hand Okinawan karate except where it directly intersects with weapon transmission.

The site is intentionally extensible: each section is designed as a starting point with room for sub-sections, detailed kata analyses, teacher biographies and source comparisons to be added over time.

Language

Content is currently in English. Finnish-language versions of all pages are planned and will be added progressively. The site URL is kobudo.fi, a Finnish-registered domain, and the default language for visitors without an expressed preference is Finnish.

Contributing

If you notice an error in kata names, lineage details, or bibliographic information, or if you have sources that would improve the coverage, contributions are welcome.

Please raise an issue or pull request in the project repository. All contributions should cite sources; unsourced claims will not be added to the content pages.

Technical

The site is built with Docusaurus and deployed as a static site hosted at kobudo.fi. Content is authored in Markdown and MDX. The UI framework is React, with styling powered by Tailwind CSS. Build tooling uses TypeScript on Node.js.

Full-text search is provided locally via docusaurus-search-local, requiring no external search service. The design targets WCAG 2.2 Level AAA accessibility compliance throughout.

Selected site images are generated locally with ComfyUI using the z-image-turbo model workflow. Running generation locally keeps prompt iteration fast, makes outputs reproducible, and avoids third-party image API dependencies for visual assets.

This site was last built on 20 March 2026.