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Overview

This text is an authoritative masterwork on Japanese martial culture. It details the secretive field of kakushi buki (hidden weapons). It explores anki (concealed arms) in depth.

The author was the legendary martial arts researcher Nawa Yumio. He served as the 10th Grandmaster (Soke) of Masaki-ryū Manrikikusari-jutsu. This vintage 1977 edition catalogs over 200 secret personal defense items. Samurai, ninja, and Edo police forces relied on these tools.

Standard martial arts manuals emphasize primary weapons like swords. This volume focuses entirely on secondary backup measures. These emergency options were intentionally kept out of public records. The text spans 233 heavily illustrated pages. It blends historical archival evidence with functional combat applications.

Nawa breaks down exact dimensions and construction materials. He shows how to build and hide unique items. These include pocket blades and concealed weighted chains. The pages also cover palm pistols and armored travel garments.

Core Topics Covered

• Concealed Chain Weapons: History of the Manriki-gusari (weighted chain). Details weight variants across various schools (ryūha). Explains specialized concealment methods inside kimono robes and tobacco pouches.
• Hidden Pocket Blades: Structural breakdowns of small utility knives (kogatana). Features specialized palm daggers. Shows spring-loaded self-defense tools (furi-dashi).
• Deceptive Armor & Shields: Analysis of defensively reinforced daily objects. Highlights lacquer-lined traveler straw hats (shingasa). These hidden shields successfully deflected incoming blade strikes.
• Tactical Applications: Step-by-step instructional action photography. Showcases authentic defensive kata sequences. Demonstrates grappling locks and counters against overhead sword attacks.

Notable Curiosities & Author Lore

• The Cinematic Jacket: The dust jacket displays vertical strips of real 35mm film negatives showing color illustrations of Japanese warriors. This artistic design honors Nawa’s career in the film industry as Japan’s top historical authenticity consultant (jidaigeki kōshō) for television and movies.
• The Film Strip Breaks: The clean horizontal lines cutting through the artwork explicitly signify physical breaks and edits in the 35mm film rolls. Because the frame numbers skip and jump around rather than following a continuous sequence, these white gaps visually show where an editor manually cut up completely non-consecutive martial arts scenes and spliced them together onto a single darkroom contact sheet.
• Vintage Stock Markings: To emphasize the raw film aesthetic, the outer borders of the vertical columns retain original analog photography text markings. These edge details include sequential frame numbers alongside factory labels like “KODAK SAFETY FILM” and “EASTMAN KODACHROME” printed directly into the layout margins.
• The “Mistake Hunter”: Nawa demanded absolute perfection regarding historical accuracy. He wrote the famous book Jidaigeki Full of Mistakes (間違いだらけの時代劇). He publicly criticized movie directors for using incorrect armor styles. He caught productions using weapons that did not fit the historical era.
• Private Scroll Access: Nawa was a direct hereditary descendant of an elite samurai family from the former Ōgaki Domain. This lineage granted him access to private family scrolls (densho). Regular academic historians were never allowed to see these papers. The lineage charts inside contain raw source data from those restricted archives.
• The Rare “Self-Defense” Obi: This item retains its original, highly fragile blue promotional belly band (obi). The text frames this historical book as a practical survival guide. It boldly advertises “How to Use 200 Secret Weapons.” The marketing copy promises protection during travel, security duty, or home defense. The reverse side features the pre-ISBN book code (0021–30415–3306), confirming a true 1977 first-edition state.

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