Email: More Data on 'Kakie' - Hokkien! (29.8.2022)

There is Much Research That Needs To Be Carried Out!

​Dear Tony

With regard to the Chinese-Japanese term '掛手' (Gua Shou) 'Hang Hand' - I have just remembered to check the Hokkien (Fujian) pronunciation which is:

1) 掛 = 'Koa', 'kui' and 'khoa'
2) 手 = 'chhui' and 'sui'

This looks like:

Hang - 掛 (gua)

掛 - Japanese = 'ka-ke'
掛 - Hokkien = 'koa-kui' or 'khoa-kui'

Hand - 手 (shou)

手 - Japanese = 'te' or 'shu'
手 - Hokkien = 'chhui' or 'sui'

It looks as if we might be getting somewhere. This would imply, in my view, that Higaonna Kanryo had the Chinese concepts written down (in Chinese script) which he brought back to Okinawa from China, which were then transcribed into similar looking Japanese characters - but Japanese characters that have completely different meanings to the Chinese text they were copying! This fits in with the secrecy that used to exist between styles with only close disciples being told what the Japanese characters really meant in the original Chinese language script (which was probably lost over time). When the Japanese script was encountered without the guidance of the original Chinese script - the meaning was lost. I believe that if a person can read Chinese script - then they can 'see' the original meaning in the Japanese characters:

Then かきえ looks like 力手元! But we also now know that:

かきえ (and its variants) = 'Kakie' or 'kakete' in Japanese phonetics and 'khoakui-sui' in the Hokkien dialect! Whilst my '力手元' (Li Shou Yuan) or 'Power Hand Origin' reads in Hokkien as:

1) 力 = 'lek', 'lat' and 'liak'
2) 手 = 'chhiu' and 'sui'
3) 元 = 'goan'

All grist for the mill!