Bojutsu
Bōjutsu, translated from Japanese as "staff technique", is the martial art of using a staff weapon called bō which simply means "staff". Staffs are perhaps one of the earliest weapons used by humankind. They have been in use for thousands of years in Eastern Asia. Some techniques involve slashing, swinging, and stabbing with the staff. Others involve using the staff as a pole vault or prop for hand to hand strikes.Bojutsu involves threatening the opponent by twirling the staff at high speeds. Once the opponent is off guard, the person who wields the staff may begin to use the momentum of the spins to strike.
Today bōjutsu is usually associated either with Okinawan Kubodu or with Japanese koryū budō. Japanese bōjutsu is one of the core elements of classical martial training.
Thrusting, swinging, and striking techniques often resemble empty-hand movements, following the philosophy that the bō is merely an "extension of one’s limbs". Consequently, bōjutsu is often incorporated into other styles of empty hand fighting, or karate. Traditionally this was mainly true for the Okinawan styles, such as Shōrin-ryū, but Hirokazu Kanazawa, 10° Dan Shōtōkan-ryū, created two kata of his own in the 1970s (which he published on DVD in 2009) and regularly teaches bō seminars worldwide. With these kata he is the first master to crate Shōtōkan-ryū bōjutsu. Stan Schmidt, Chief Instructor South Africa JKA, writes:
"Master Kanazawa has realised the benfit of weapons training and thus extended The Art of The Empty Hand to include weaponry as natural extensions of karate techniques. All leaders of Karate should seriously consider that their advanced students would be a whole lot better off for having some insight into weaponry such as the Bo, as an extension of Karate-do"
In the Okinawan context, the weapon is frequently referred to as the kon.
