Kuji Kiri in martial art

Nine hand seals, nine syllables and nine cuts through the air. In anime and ninja films, Kuji Kiri 九字切り often appears as a spectacular fighting move. Its real background is less spectacular, but much more interesting. Kuji Kiri is a protective ritual that sharpens the mind, gathers the body and connects the practitioner with spiritual powers, and that's exactly why it found its way into the martial arts.

The roots 根源

To understand Kuji Kiri, you have to look further back than the ninja. The first sources come from China. From there, Kuji Kiri came to Japan in several waves over the centuries through the exchange with China, and in Japan it developed over further centuries into a system that exists in this form only there, a combination of Daoism, Japanese folk magic and Shingon mikkyō. The mountain ascetics (yamabushi) of Shugendō 修験道 played a big role in this, because they combined it with their own rites of purification and protection in the mountains.

The nine characters are 臨兵闘者皆陣列在前, read rin, hyō, tō, sha, kai, jin, retsu, zai, zen. Read as a sentence, they mean roughly "May those who face battle all stand in formation before me," which already shows the protective character of the formula.

The connection with the ninja is more difficult to pin down historically, because there are few reliable sources on the ninja themselves. What's certain is that Kuji Kiri was widely known among warriors and mountain ascetics, and that it's handed down in several martial arts traditions to this day. As the successor of Grandmaster Taguchi Sensei in Ninjutsu, I see it as a natural part of spiritual martial art.

Why warriors practiced it 儀式

It's easy to understand why warriors in particular were drawn to such a ritual. Before a dangerous situation, the body is tense and the mind is racing. In esoteric Buddhism, the three mysteries of mudra, mantra and contemplation work together, and that's exactly what Kuji Kiri does. The hands form the seals, the voice speaks the syllables, and the mind is directed. Many people describe that this makes them calmer and at the same time more awake. In my experience, fear gives way to clarity rather than to numbness.

The nine qualities 九字

Each of the nine characters is connected with a quality and with one or more protective beings, among them Bishamon-ten, Fudō Myōō and the Heavenly Kings. In my Kuji Kiri 4, the nine characters are deepened through their mantras, and each one has its own meditation:

Rin stands for strengthening body and mind, hyō for directing the energies, tō for harmony with the universe, sha for regeneration for yourself and others, and kai for intuition and sensing danger early. Jin stands for access to spiritual knowledge and for perceiving the thoughts of others, retsu for perceiving space and time, zai for the elements, and zen for gradual awakening, wholeness and what the old texts call "invisibility."

"Invisibility" here doesn't mean a superpower. It means being inconspicuous and unassailable, especially for people who mean you harm. And of course these qualities are described as possibilities that can develop through practice, not as promises.

The protective ritual of the nine cuts 護身

The best known protective ritual of Kuji Kiri is cutting the grid. With the nine syllables, horizontal and vertical lines are cut into the air in turn, forming a grid of nine cuts. This grid is understood as an energetic barrier that protects the practitioner. In my Kuji Kiri path, this actual ritual of the nine cuts comes in Kuji Kiri 2, together with Fudō Myōō as the main power. Kuji Kiri 1 lays the foundation with meditation, purification and the protective practice goshinbō. How the ritual is performed is passed on in the initiation, not in a blog article.

Alongside Fudō Myōō, Marishi-ten 摩利支天 also plays an important role, the heavenly protector of warriors, who was called upon to remain unseen and unassailable. In Kuji Kiri 3, she comes in together with the nine hand seals.

What this means for you 道

You probably aren't going into battle with a sword. But you know moments in which a lot is at stake, a difficult conversation, an important decision, a situation where you need clarity and only find noise. That's where the same principles come into play. Kuji Kiri works with body, voice and mind, and these haven't changed since the time of the old warriors. Which of the nine qualities would you most like to develop?