This weekend a friend of mine and I are going to be training with kunai, I am curious about the historical significance of this weapon. it's obviously a very ancient form of a knife/axe/shovel. nearly every culture in the world has a knife or weapon that resembles it in some way or another. specificly one I know of is the bassa(spelling?) tribe in africa. They use a knife shaped very similar to help in the shooting of their bows. it is held in the arrow hand, with the blade down, with the base of the pommel near the index finger and thumb. the string is pulled by the pommel and the arrow is held in a "pinch" type grip. anyway a free african archery lesson on a bujikan site! heh heh anyway does anyone have any input on the history of this lovely weapon?

I hate to answer my own posts but I found this article on kunai on wikipedia.com for thoes who are interested in this sort of thing:

A Kunai is an ancient kind of trowel from Japan. The kunai was normally made of iron, not steel, cheaply forged and unpolished. The kunai was used by common folk as multi-purpose gardening tools and by workers of stone and masonry. The kunai is not a knife, but something more akin to a wrecking bar. The blade was soft iron and unsharpened because the edges were used to smash plaster and wood, to dig holes and to pry. Normally only the tip would have been sharpened. The uses to which a kunai was put would have destroyed any heat-treated, sharpened tool like a knife.

Contrary to popular belief, they were not meant to be used as throwing weapons. They normally had a double sided blade and a handle with a ring attached to the end for attaching a rope. This would allow the kunai to be strapped to a stick as an expedient spear, to be strapped to the body as a hidden weapon, or to use as an anchor or piton of some kind.

Sizes ranged from 20 cm to 60 cm, with the average at 40 cm.

Good second post, Alan. How'd your training go with the kunai? I remember Sensei once had someone attack him with a do geri and he had hidden the kunai under his clothes. What a shock!!
Barry

The kunai is a precision-made ninja throwing and killing knife, with sharp triangular egdes. The ninja usually carries several of these and can throw them great distances with extreme accuracy.

The shuriken and the kunai is the ninja's principle weapons unless he carries with him a huge cord of sand which he can manipulate with ninja magic.

Further, the ninja's favorite meal is cup ramen though he hates waiting the three minutes for the boiling water to work it's magic.

thanks for the input guys!

it's good to know that my research was so wrong damn raman! lol!

seriously though the kunai training was good, as with all things everything we did seemed to go back to the kihon happo! imagine that huh?!? it was a good time!

HEHEH Antizen, you sound like describing Naruto.... Anyway, Kunai (苦無); [suffering; trial; worry; hardship; feel bitter; scowl]+[nothingness; none; ain't; nothing; nil; not]. Suffer not, worry not

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You spend way too much tme on your playstation. I trust this was a joke