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Bo (weapon)

Bo (weapon):A bō is usually around six feet long and wielded with both hands due to its weight and size.
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A bō is usually around six feet long and wielded with both hands due to its weight and size.

A bō (棒:ぼう) or kon, is a long staff, usually made of wood or bamboo, but sometimes it is made of metal or plated with metal for extra strength; also, a full-size bō is sometimes called a rokushakubō (六尺棒:ろくしゃくぼう). This name derives from the Japanese words roku (六:ろく), meaning "six"; shaku (尺:しゃく); a Japanese measurement equivalent to 30.3 centimeters, or just under 1 foot; and bō. Thus, rokushakubō refers to a staff about 6 shaku (181.8 cm, about 6 ft.) long. Other types of bō range from heavy to light, from rigid to highly flexible, and from simply a piece of wood picked up off the side of the road to ornately decorated works of art.

The martial art of wielding the bō is bōjutsu. The basic purpose of the bō is increasing the force delivered in a strike, through leverage, and to benefit the wielder from the extra distance this weapon affords. The user's relatively slight motion, effected at the point of handling the bō, results in a faster, more forceful motion by the tip of the bō against the object or subject of the blow; thus enabling long-range crushing and sweeping strikes. The bō may also be thrust at an opponent, allowing one to hit from a distance. It also is used for joint-locks, thrustings of the bō that immobilize a target joint, which are used to non-fatally subdue an opponent. The bō is a weapon mainly used for self-defense, and can be used to execute several blocks and parries. Martial arts techniques, such as kicks and blocks, can also be combined with weapon techniques when practicing this martial art to enhance its effectiveness.[citation needed]

Although the bō is now used as a weapon, its use is believed by some to have evolved from non-combative uses. The bō staff is thought to have been used to balance buckets or baskets. Typically, one would carry baskets of harvested crops or buckets of water or milk or fish, one at each end of the bō, that is balanced across the middle of the back at the shoulder blades. In poorer agrarian economies, the bō remains a traditional farm work implement.[citation needed] In styles such as Yamani-ryū or Kenshin-ryū, many of the strikes are the same as those used for yari (spear) or naginata (glaive).[citation needed] There are stick fighting techniques native to just about every country on every continent.[citation needed] The word "bō" is merely the Japanese word for wooden staff weapons.


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See also Quarterstaff in popular culture

See also


Okinawan weapons
of Kobudo, the "old martial way of Okinawa" (Japan).

Bo staff | Eku | Kama | Nunchaku | Sai | Tambo | Surujin | Tekko | Tinbe-Rochin | Tonfa

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Articles with unsourced statements | Stick fighting | Pole weapons | Weapons of Japan | Japanese martial arts terms

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