Q: I have a question about horizontal throw technique. There is a method of throwing playing cards with a certain flick of the wrist, that one the wrist is built up and the accuracy honed, can actually impart considerable kinetic force into the card through spin.

There is a method of throwing coins in a very aggressive manner that also utilizes the wrist to impart a lot of spin. It is said that when a man could throw a coin into a clay wall, then he was quite skilled.

In looking at the postures of the horizontal throw for hira shuriken in some of the photographs, it occurred to me that the spin upon the projectile could facilitate aggressive cutting. Do you think that there is some common ground to the horizontal throw for hira shuriken and the methods of throwing coins and cards?

Thank you for your time and efforts to help share information about this fascinating subject.
A.G.

A: I have also heard that about throwing coins into a wall, and I have seen some pretty impressive card throwing on TV. The throws certainly do appear to be similar, although I have not examined the card throwing method closely enough to say for sure whether they are in fact identical.

I would definitely support the notion that the horizontal throw for hira shuriken evolved from that of throwing coins. A number of writers, mainly Chinese, have suggested that coin throwing was used as an effective tactical manouver in physical confrontations. Not only is there similarity between the coin throw and horizontal throw of hira-shuriken, there does seem to be some historical connection between the two. The diamond shaped Japanese shuriken called hishi gane were in fact old coins, thin and flat like the round Chinese Lo Han Jin, and sharpened to an edge, although were not round. They were sometimes held on a string, or a stick through the central hole, much like coins were, and thus as a weapon, would tend to go unnoticed when stacked together with normal coins.

From the literature available, there does not seem to be any evidence to suggest that shuriken were intended to cut laterally as they pierced the target. Of the 10-12 or so hira-shuriken shown in Fujita Sensei's "Zukai Shurikenjutsu", no more than half of them would have any sort of sharpened edge along the sides of the radial arms of the blade, mostly they are sharpened only on the points, which makes them solely a piercing weapon. The hishi-gane blades are diamond shaped and had sharpened edges, and no doubt they would have some "sawing" action as they embedded into the target. The senban shuriken, the four sided flat plates, while the edges were also sharpened, they curved in such a way as to accentuate the point, thereby appearing to be more of a piercing weapon than one that gave a saw effect.

So, for lack of written materials on the subject, and thus falling back onto personal experience with a 4 pointed shaken, with sharpened edges and points, I find that they give more of a piercing action than a sawing one, even against watermelons, (my main target at the moment is the stacked ends of blocks of wood) . Glancing blows *DO* slice the surface of the melon, but the cuts are pretty superficial. The force imparted on the blade in a horizontal throw, despite the heavy rotation of the blade due to the wrist snap, is still more in the forward trajectory than in the rotation, therefore would do more damage to a target by piercing than sawing. Any lateral cutting effect caused by the blade's rotation would do no more than facilitate deeper penetration of the point into the target. The main purpose of the rotation of the blade is to aid stability in flight more than anything else, and the further the throw, the more spin needed in the throw to maintain flat and level flight.

If you are alluding to the claim on Wikipedia about the sawing effect for cutting tendons, I think this is pretty far-fetched, for a number of reasons. Shuriken would not be able to penetrate very deeply through clothing, especially a lateral cutting motion, and furthermore, anatomically the tendons are generally well protected from a frontal attack, being at the back and sides of the legs, under the arms etc. Traditional Japanese clothing pretty much covered up the body from ankle to neck (kimono, haori, etc), unless one stripped down to the underwear to plant rice in the wet fields. To deliberately target tendons with a shuriken requires a level of skill beyond all but the most unusually talented of throwers. Also, referring to the literature, we see that the main targets for shuriken were eyes, throat, backs of hands and the feet.

Common ground between throwing cards, coins and hira-shuriken? Definitely.

Sawing effect from a hira-shuriken? Doubtful...

Throwing hira-shuriken came from throwing cards? Not a chance...:-)

- Jason.

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