Shindo Muso-ryu Jojutsu
神道夢想流杖術The Japanese school of the jō staff and the main root of jōdō. It arose in the early Edo period; its founder's duel with Musashi is legend, not record.
Quick Facts
JapanCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for Shindo Muso-ryu Jojutsu
About Shindo Muso-ryu Jojutsu
Shintō Musō-ryū is the Japanese school of the short staff, the jō, and the most widespread root of today's jōdō. It was founded by Musō Gonnosuke Katsuyoshi at the beginning of the Edo period — the sources place its origin somewhere between 1602 and 1614, and Gonnosuke's flourishing around 1605. A single year cannot be given, and neither his birth nor his death is documented. The founding story is famous, and it is fair to say that it is a legend. By it Gonnosuke lost a duel with Miyamoto Musashi, withdrew to a cave to meditate, and devised staff techniques that defeated Musashi's two-sword method; in the rematch he is said to have won or drawn. There is no evidence for any of it, but the tradition transmits it as its own origin. What is documented is different. Gonnosuke was invited by the Kuroda clan to Fukuoka in northern Kyūshū to teach his art to their warriors, and in that region the school took root and has survived to the present. Technically everything rests on one plain implement: the jō is a staff 128 centimetres long and about two and a half centimetres across, made in the Edo period to suit the height of its bearer. Against a sword it has the advantage of reach, and of having neither point nor edge — it can push, lever, strike and thrust with either end. Five assimilated arts belong to the school: the chain-and-sickle, the short staff, the iron truncheon jutte, rope restraint, and swordsmanship.
Styles & Branches
The Japanese art of the short staff against the sword. Modern seitei jodo has twelve kata, compiled by Shimizu Takaji for the ZNKR in 1968.
The modern form of staff against sword: twelve standardised kata under the All Japan Kendo Federation, studied alongside the original koryū.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.