BO, Jo and quaterstaff ====================== From: Damien Morton ----------------------------------------------O >>Not the way we practice it. I used to think like this also, but >>sensei convinced me that jo is too short for what we do. Also, aikijo >>is much more triangular than aikibo, at least in my experience. > > J. Toman > > > >Can anyone tell me more about the difference between >aiki jo and aiki bo - besides the length of the stick? >Tricia Ive never heard of AIki-bo, but the problem of the Jo being too short is commonly found in westerners. It was shown to me once that the JO should be an arm-span long, that is you should be able to stand with arms wide apart and hold the Jo by turning your hand inwards and pressing with your palms. The purpose of that length being: you can change grips by going over the end of the Jo whilst holding the other extremity. There are a number of moves in which this is usefull; i just find it too hard to describe in words properly. Trust me, most Jos are too short for 6' tall westerners. From: This space intentionally left blank ----------------------------------------------------------- Just an interesting note: the distance between the tips of the fingers, when the arms are held straight out to the sides, is usually the same as the person's standing height. This may vary slightly from person to person, but is true for the vast majority of people. >Hear! Hear! I'm not huge by U.S. standards, but I would be huge by Japanese >standards. I have found a local woodworker to make custom jos for me so I >can get one the right length. I had him make half a dozen, then I took the >extras to the dojo, along with a saw and a rasp, then I custom cut them to >length for some of my friends. Now the folks I do jo work with the most all >have jos that are the right size for them. (we lopped 'em off just below the >armpit, then I used the rasp to bevel the end). > >Hal Davis It seems the "correct length" varies from place to place. You make them armpit height, while the person quoted above makes them a bit taller, probably chin height (arm-span minus the distance from wrist to fingertip times two, noting that tip to tip armspan is standing height). The difference in these two for me would be about 10" (I'm 6'6"). From: joseph toman -------------------------------------------- The aikibo that we practice is a non-tapered staff that is somewhere between ground to chin or eye height. Our style of bo came from Hikitsuchi Sensei, who, according to one video tape I have, was given a "scroll of perfect mastery of the bo" by O-Sensei. Technically, because of the added length, a lot of the short & tight movements you can do with the jo cannot be done with the bo. Shomen-uchi is usually a bad idea when you're moving all that lumber, for example. The solo bo kata that we practice are very obviously derived from spear. I used to put tape on one end of my bo to represent the tip of a spear, and every time a slashing or cutting move came up in the katas, it was the end with the tape on it. From my limited experience with jo work, the jo does double duty as half-of-a-quarterstaff and a very long bokken where it's not bad form to grasp the blade. The bo is too long to be either of those things. More than you ever wanted to know? I could write more, bo has become the weapon of choice in our style. From: Eric Kammerer at Sac Net -------------------------------------------------------- > -- Mike "I like English quarterstaff: ground to top of head + a bit" Bartman The Korean forms I learned used a "long stick" with the length defined as your height plus the length of your index finger. The "medium stick" forms used a stick that reached from the ground to your solar plexus. For me, that makes the two sticks about 76 and 48 inches. The Japanese jo was defined to me as ground to armpit. I haven't been given a formal definition for the length of a bo. btw, what is a good definition of a quarterstaff? From: Douglas Peelle ---------------------------------------------------- The thing I like about the jo is that it's about the same length of a good walking stick. I was window shopping at a sporting goods store recently and happened a display of the same. I picked one up and had to fight myself to keep from practicing jo kata right then and there. > btw, what is a good definition of a quarterstaff? > > > One fourth of a whole staff??? :) From: Hal Davis ------------------------------------ >-- Mike "I like English quarterstaff: ground to top of head + a bit" Bartman -- A fell weapon, that, but it's not a jo. I'm not ranked in any jo art, but here's what I remember being taught about the proper length of a jo. A Bo (staff, about as tall as the user) is great. But the advantage of a jo over a bo is its deceptive and changing ma'ai. A bo is always operated from the center (I think). But a jo is operated from the center or from either end. It is always changing from a short weapon to a long weapon and back again. It needs to be long so that it can be long (uh, could you repeat that?). However, it needs to be short enough that you can grasp it with a hand on each end at the same time. It also has to be shorter than that, so that you can hold it over your head with a pinkie dangling off each end (and without entering one ear and exiting the other). So, our rule of thumb is to hold the jo with the pinkies dangling off each end and the center of the stick an inch or two over one's head. If the stick is more than a couple of inches above your head, the stick is too short for good reach. If the stick keeps bonking your forehead, you've got the opposite problem. It happens that for most folks this is about the same length as floor to armpit. I'm really interested in the response to the above from someone who is actually ranked in a jo art (NO sarcasm intended). From: Erkki Hakala ------------------------------------------- Hal Davis whote: > A Bo (staff, about as tall as the user) is great. -snip- > A bo is always operated from the center (I think). The problem about talking bo seems always be that, when someone says bo, people things about okinawan bo and the way that (mostly) karatekas use it. The bo we use in aikido (masakatsu bojutsu - as it should be called) have length from ground up to your nose and diameter about 26 mm. In japan use of bo have never been operated only from center instead it is operated mostly from the end to get an advantage of the length of the weapon. The major differs between use of jo and bo in aikido are (at least what comes to my mind): - kamae: with jo you have your elbows contact with your body and the weapon is in front of you. With bo the end of the weapon (or the fist that is at the end of the weapon) is on your hip, exactly where your put your hand when doing torifune. Also the front hand is with jo above the weapon and with bo is is under the weapon. - In tsuki with jo you usually slide the weapon and again the weapon is off from your body. With bo you don't slide the wepon and the end of the weapon have always in contact with your body. - with bo you don't do Shomen uchis (at least at my experience) I think that differenses comes mostly from the weigth of the weapon and above all the place of the weigthpoint witch is more front with bo than with jo. Also the bo forces you use more yor body than jo. And That is the one of themain raesons bo is practised, the another is (and it is somehow paralel with the formar) that we can find all the footwork we use in aikido from masakatsu bojutsu. From: "John R. Murray" ------------------------------------------------------ I believe Joseph is talking about the short bo. It really is longer than you can comfortably wrap your hands around (as you describe above). I do also find some differences between jo and bo. I don't think I've practiced enough bo to say very much, but I will say that the surprising difference in the feel of a short bo ("gee, it's the same as a jo, only with about 9 inches added on" - well it is, but it isn't) prompted me to work with a much larger variety of weapon sizes, from around 5 feet to 2 feet. If I ever get the chance to do some Naginata or Yari training, I will definitely do so. From: Hal Davis ------------------------------------ Hear! Hear! I'm not huge by U.S. standards, but I would be huge by Japanese standards. I have found a local woodworker to make custom jos for me so I can get one the right length. I had him make half a dozen, then I took the extras to the dojo, along with a saw and a rasp, then I custom cut them to length for some of my friends. Now the folks I do jo work with the most all have jos that are the right size for them. (we lopped 'em off just below the armpit, then I used the rasp to bevel the end).