Scott Bush

My Saturday evening was spent sweltering in the 88-degree heat of the NW Martial Arts dojo. What possessed me to do such a thing? The jō. Not this Joe, or this Joe, or even this Jo(lene): this jō. The dojo held a seminar on it.

The jō, or short staff, is a great weapon. It’s certainly not the deadliest (that honor probably goes to the sword) or the most menacing (I’d nominate the kusarigama for that). In fact, it’s because of its simplicity that gives it its utility. When’s the last time you were walking around with a sword or pair of nunchaku? Probably not recently (if at all). But a jō is really just a walking stick… no one would question you walking around with wooden stiff about an inch in diameter coming up to your armpit.

In the seminar we learned the aikido kata (unimaginatively) called “Jō 1.” It consists of twenty-two steps and it really is simple. Like all kata, though, there is an amazing amount to learn and practice and apply from the kata. I was treated to two excellent practitioners of the weapon performing the kata and man, does it look great. The timing of the counting (in Japanese of course) sounds equally cool.

The jō is a relative of the spear, and so many of the techniques are thrusts as though it were topped with a deadly point. We worked on ways to use the jō. The simplest was as regular upper block where the jō is held outward with an “unbendable arm”—trust me, punching into that a few times will dissuade an attacker. More complicated techniques included a judo-style throw where the jō is grabbed by the attacker; you then step forwarded to break their posture, place it behind their knee, and throw to where the attacker is now weak (it’s definitely easier to understand visually instead of verbally).

I’ll try and post more about my martial arts study, as it really has been a large part of my life for nearly a year now.