Hobakujutsu
| Also known as | Torinawajutsu (捕縄術) or Nawajutsu (縄術) |
|---|---|
| Focus | Weaponry |
| Hardness | Non-competitive |
| Country of origin |
 Japan
|
| Creator | unknown |
| Parenthood | ancient |
| Olympic sport | No |
Hojōjutsu (捕縄術), or Torinawajutsu (捕縄術), or just Nawajutsu (縄術), is the traditional Japanese martial art of restraining a person using cord or rope (said nawa 縄 in Japanese). Encompassing many different materials, techniques and methods from many different schools, Hojōjutsu is a quintessentially Japanese art that is a unique product of Japanese history and culture.
As a martial arts practice, Hojōjutsu is seldom if ever taught on its own but as part of a curriculum under the aegis of the body of study encompassed by a larger school of bugei or budō, often as an advanced study in jujutsu. Whatever their source, Hojōjutsu techniques and methods are seldom demonstrated outside Japan.
The history of Hojōjutsu is varied and obscure. Japanese cultural history has complex and pervasive traditions of wrapping and tying in everyday life that go back for at least a millennium—touching on things as varied as Shinto votive items, the transportation and packing of foodstuffs (as with Furoshiki), and Japanese traditional clothing, which is tied to the body instead of being held with the buttons, pins, and fasteners of western dress. These factors make any meaningful pinpointing of the historical origins of Hojōjutsu problematic.
Although Japan’s often violent history has made the mapping of meaningful changes in areas like armor and weapons technology and technique well-studied, the origins of the formal, studied use of rope for restraint as a technique that is Hojōjutsu remain obscure. Nevertheless, the Hojōjutsu techniques that have garnered attention in the last decade can be said to have flourished as a tool of law-enforcement under the Tokugawa Shogunate.
With Japan divided into individual territories (han), the restrictions on travel already in place under Toyotomi Hideyoshi and strengthened afterwards by the successive Tokugawa reigns of the Edo period (1600–1868) provided a fertile ground for the development of formalized methods of tying prisoners who had to be transported across territories, because of measures then in place mandating that a prisoner had to be handed off from one set of officials to another at the border of each territory, with each law-enforcement group employing a different school's or region's often jealously-guarded methodology.
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Wikipedia