Hojojutsu (the art of binding with rope)
捕縄術The Japanese art of binding a person with rope. According to Nipponica, it was first practised on the battlefield and later served to detain and escort criminals. A skill, not a school.
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About Hojojutsu (the art of binding with rope)
Hojojutsu is not a separate school but a skill. The Nipponica encyclopedia defines it in its article on Watanabe Ichiro, as the art of capturing a person and binding him with rope, and states that it was also called torinawa, hobakujutsu or rakeijutsu. According to Nipponica, it was first used on the battlefield to bind captured enemies and to stop those who committed violence and plunder from escaping, and later to detain, imprison and escort criminals.
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In the Edo period, according to Nipponica, one distinguished the rope for capture, called hayanawa or karinawa, from the rope for detention and escort, called honnawa, toritenawa or katanawa. Heibonsha gives hayanawa as two and a half hiro long and honnawa as five hiro, and adds that honnawa was used only after the crime was determined. According to Heibonsha, the colour of the rope differed by office: at the northern Edo magistracy it was white, at the southern one dyed kon. According to Nipponica, the manner of binding became fixed in a rule called joho, which distinguished the status, occupation and age of the person bound. Whoever tied a rope against this rule made, according to Nipponica, an error, and for the person bound it was a disgrace. Heibonsha names, as a famous Edo house of binding, a school from the Ozu domain in Iyo Province, which transmitted eighteen methods and had many pupils, and states that Edo officials reportedly practised these complex methods constantly. The Nihon Kobudo Kyokai lists rope binding in the curriculum of Takenouchi-ryu and Tatsumi-ryu, and the koryu.com guide lists it also under Takamura-ha Shindo Yoshin-ryu. According to the Japanese Wikipedia, hojojutsu is today hardly taught on its own and survives only as part of jujutsu and jojutsu schools. Books about it were published in the twentieth century by Fujita Seiko and Nawa Yumio, and after 2000 by Mizukoshi Hiro.
History
The Nipponica encyclopedia defines hojojutsu as the art of capturing a person and binding him with rope, and gives its other names as torinawa, hobakujutsu and rakeijutsu. According to Nipponica, it was first practised on the battlefield: it served to bind captured enemies, to subdue those who committed violence and plunder, and to prevent their escape. Later, according to the same encyclopedia, it was used to detain and imprison criminals and to escort them. The Nikkoku dictionary gives as the first attested example of the word hayanawa a sentence from a work of around 1602, and attests the word honnawa in a play from around 1707. Heibonsha names, as a famous Edo house of binding, a school from the Ozu domain in Iyo Province, which transmitted eighteen methods and had many pupils. The Japanese Wikipedia states that in the Edo period there were one hundred and fifty or more hojojutsu schools and that it was practised as part of torite. Nikkoku attests the word hojo also in a decree on the prison law of 1908.
How it differs
Hojojutsu is a skill, not a school. We found no corresponding modern discipline in the sources, and the Japanese Wikipedia says only that it was dropped from police arrest technique after handcuffs spread. Its distinctive feature is the rule joho: according to Nipponica, the manner of binding had to match the status, occupation and age of the person bound, and a deviation was the fault of the binder and the disgrace of the bound. According to Heibonsha, rope lengths, colour by office and bindings by status and sex also differed.
Technique
According to Nipponica, in the Edo period one distinguished the rope for capture, called hayanawa or karinawa, from the rope for detention and escort, called honnawa, toritenawa or katanawa. The Nikkoku dictionary defines hayanawa as the rope the arresting officer carried to bind the detainee quickly, and the Daijisen and Nikkoku dictionaries define honnawa as the formal way of binding an offender. Heibonsha gives hayanawa as two and a half hiro long and honnawa as five hiro, and adds that honnawa was used only after the crime was determined. According to Heibonsha, the colour of the rope differed by office: at the northern Edo magistracy it was white, at the southern one dyed kon. According to Heibonsha, the bindings differed by status and sex, one for women and another for bushi, and special bindings existed for executions or for loosely tying both hands. Nipponica states that the thickness and length of the rope and the complexity of the binding were adjusted, and that the manner of binding was fixed in the rule joho. The Japanese Wikipedia adds that an iron ring or hook was often attached beforehand to the end of the hayanawa.
Training
Heibonsha states that Edo officials reportedly practised these complex methods constantly, trying to master them. Hojojutsu was taught within school curricula: the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai lists it in the curriculum of Takenouchi-ryu, where according to it a purple rope is used, after the colour of a crown that the second head of the school received from a high court dignitary, and of Tatsumi-ryu, which teaches rope binding alongside sword, spear and staff. According to the English Wikipedia, hojojutsu is often advanced material in jujutsu schools, and the Japanese Wikipedia says hayanawa includes binding after subduing the opponent and fighting with a rope as a weapon.
Today
The Nihon Kobudo Kyokai carries rope binding in the curriculum of Takenouchi-ryu and Tatsumi-ryu, and the koryu.com guide lists it under Takenouchi-ryu, Tatsumi-ryu and Takamura-ha Shindo Yoshin-ryu. No school with hojojutsu in its name is a member of the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai or Nihon Kobudo Shinkokai. According to the Japanese Wikipedia, after Meiji hojojutsu was taught in the police, in the Showa period handcuffs displaced it, and today it is not part of police arrest technique, is hardly taught on its own and survives within jujutsu and jojutsu schools. The English Wikipedia instead claims that torinawa techniques are taught in the Japanese police curriculum, and we could not settle this contradiction from other sources. Fujita Seiko (1965), Nawa Yumio (1964 and 1996) and Mizukoshi Hiro (2000, 2005 and 2013) published books on hojojutsu.
Did you know
According to the Japanese Wikipedia, the word onawa for an arrest comes from hojojutsu. Heibonsha states that the northern and southern Edo magistracies used ropes of different colours, white and dyed kon. A 2022 study in a Japanese journal on the history of sport mentions a pair of tessen and a throwing rope in peasant wrestling around Chichibu.
Frequently asked questions
What is hojojutsu?
The Japanese art of capturing a person and binding him with rope. According to Nipponica it was also called torinawa or hobakujutsu, it was first practised on the battlefield and later served to detain and escort criminals.
What is the difference between hayanawa and honnawa?
According to the Nikkoku dictionary, hayanawa was the rope the arresting officer carried to bind the detainee quickly, and according to Heibonsha it measured two and a half hiro. According to the dictionaries, honnawa was the formal way of binding an offender, and according to Heibonsha the rope of five hiro was used only after the crime was determined.
Is hojojutsu a separate school?
No. It is a skill that the old schools taught alongside other weapons. The Nihon Kobudo Kyokai lists it in the curriculum of Takenouchi-ryu and Tatsumi-ryu, and according to the Japanese Wikipedia it is hardly taught on its own today.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.