Story From My Youth

When I was a teen, nunchaku was not illegal, in fact, it was barely known, being before the Bruce Lee movies. I made my first pair of nunchaku in Junior High School wood shop class. One day, I was practicing in a local park, swinging and twirling away. Some old guy (old guy - he must've been in his 30s, but to a teenager, that's old) came up to me and asked why I kept missing my target. I said he doesn't know what he's talking about, in fact he probably doesn't even know what I'm doing. He then insisted that I'm missing my target. After a little banter back and forth, he suggested that I go over and hit that tree with my nunchaku. I did, and the stick rebounded off the trunk and smashed into my funny-bone. While I rubbed to try and regain some feeling in my arm, he explained all my twirling meant that I missed my target; that an actual strike rebounds back, making all that twirling senseless. A nunchaku has two handles and is meant to be swung and caught, or used two-handed to trap and break. I never forgot that lesson.

In the 1980s, at a Miyazaki Invitational Championship, some young Black Belt gave a demo using two nunchakus. The audience ooh-ed and aah-ed as he twirled away. Some seniors in the crowd yelled 'Osu!' when he dropped one of his weapons, but overall, the demo was met with loud cheering. I realized the limited martial value of what he was doing, even though it was a spectacular performance.

A former friend of mine came to visit my dojo shortly after Sensei Takahashi came back from Japan and taught all those in attendance a new nunchaku kata he just learned - 'Sokan'. I even got it on video. It was a nice enough kata, nothing spectacular, but very traditional with strike-catch moves, trapping and breaking moves, and lack of twirls. My students and I found it interesting, but too much for me to learn in a short time. I thought about it that night, and realized I could do all the same movements by combining the top bar of Heian Nidan, Heian Godan, and the rest from Heian Yodan. The next day I went to the dojo and worked out the kinks, called it 'Pinan no Nunchaku' (giving it a more Okinawan flavor, as nunchaku is an Okinawan weapon), and showed it to some of my senior students. The next week when my friend came to visit he showed me Sokan again, I showed him Pinan no Nunchaku, and we were both impressed. From then on Pinan no Nunchaku became a kobudo requirement for Ikkyus and above in Dō Gakuin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVG1vHBhqBg