Hojojutsu (Rope Restraint)
捕縄術The Japanese art of restraining a prisoner with cord, part of official and police training in the Edo period. It has no competition or sparring.
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About Hojojutsu (Rope Restraint)
Hojojutsu is the Japanese art of restraining a captured person with cord. It is not an independently founded school but a technical field taught inside a number of koryu traditions and above all in the training of officials and constables in the Edo period — an age with no handcuffs and no cells in the modern sense, when a detainee had to be moved and displayed by rope alone. The field divides into two clearly different parts. Hayanawa, the "fast rope", is a thin cord three to four millimetres across that a constable carried on him and used to tie a suspect single-handed at the moment of arrest, keeping the free end in his hand. Honnawa, the "main rope", is heavier hemp from six millimetres up and as long as twenty-five metres, applied by four men or more and used for transport, for longer confinement and for public display. What is distinctive about the field is that technique is interwoven with social rule. A person not yet convicted was tied without knots so as not to be publicly shamed; the manner of binding varied with the rank and standing of the person tied and with the nature of the charge. The techniques themselves work with anatomy — they remove leverage, press on nerves and blood vessels, and set the body in a position where struggling does not pay. Hojojutsu has no competition and no sparring, and modern restraints have pushed it out of practical use. It survives inside koryu schools and in part of police training; extensive collections of ties were documented in the twentieth century by Nawa Yumio and Fujita Seiko.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.