At the Colorado Springs Bujinkan Dojo we do knife a bit more than most. The reasons are twofold.

For one, it is a very useful tool and weapon.

Two, early on in my stay in Japan the teacher I was under explained that he was the best at one thing done in the Bujinkan. He said it was impossible to be the best at everything, but he felt content knowing that he could do one thing better than anyone else. He suggested that maybe we should pick something and do the same as he.

So I chose knife, more specifically tantojutsu as it was taught in Japan. I was already a fan of Marc MacYoung and his works on knives and self defense. And there wasn’t a lot of information available on authentic tantojutsu even in Japanese. So I figured that it would be a good way to challenge myself and unearth a lot of information in my search.

I went to people who knew tantojutsu, and people that had used knives for real. Many people that live in Japan and study Bujinkan give seminars when they go back home. I am guilty of being more selfish in that I wanted to learn from folks more than I wanted to share what I had learned. So I studied under people who had actually stabbed people with knives most of the time I could get back from Japan. I now live 20 minutes South of Marc MacYoung and we have coffee and such from time to time.

This page will highlight several aspects of tantojutsu. Stop back from time to time to see what is new.

First of all, you must realize that much of what you think is tantojutsu is actually other arts passed off as tantojutsu. There are many good knife arts such as kali from the Philippines or the knife aspects to Penjak Silat and Kuntau from Indonesia. Several people have taken half learned lessons from them, put on a Japanese uniform and tried to say they were tantojutsu. Well meaning people have followed their lessons and passed along what they were shown. So now, much of what people think of as tantojutsu is actually bad kali learned off of a video.

This page seeks to correct that. We will start with a video interview I did on the subject.