Introduction to Bujinkan Budō Taijutsu

Bujinkan Grandmaster Hatsumi Masaaki

   Previously, I had given you a short introduction to Bujinkan in my post Introduction: Bujinkan at the start of my blog. Indeed that was just for a total beginner or novice to let him/her understand what Bujinkan is and it was also my intention to define the purpose of this blog. Now going more towards the actual business, I am going to post in detail about the structure of the system of Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu i.e its fields, levels, ranks and training methods.
   'Bujinkan' consists of three sub-words: 'Bu' meaning 'warrior'; 'Jin' meaning 'Godly/divine' and 'Kan' meaning 'hall', hence it gives the complete meaning roughly as 'Divine Warriors' Hall'. Similarly in 'Budō', 'Bu' means warrior while 'dō' means 'way', hence, Budō simply means 'way of warrior' or 'martial way'; and in 'Taijutsu', 'Tai' roughly means 'free body' while 'Jutsu' means 'technique', hence, Taijutsu means 'free body techniques'. Now going further into the details, 'Bujinkan' is the name of the system or organization that has collected the arts of ninpō and bujutsu into one curriculum; 'Budō' is the name of martial system(s) in general, while, 'Taijutsu' is a branch or part of it which deals mostly with unarmed combat.
   So Bujinkan as a combination of arts from three ninpō ryū-ha and six bujutsu ryu-ha consists of 9 sub-systems, each from the specific ryū-ha. These are: