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Old 3rd July 2015, 08:30 PM   #7
estcrh
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Timo Nieminen
The weapon you have (jitte/jutte) is 十手, "ten hands", which can be read as "power of ten hands weapon". In hiragana, じって, which has Hepburn romanisation "jitte". "Jitte" is the correct romanisation of the Japanese name of the weapon.

The usual romanisation of 十, "ten", is "ju", and the usual romanisation of 手, "hand", is "te" (as in "kara-te"), so we find "jutte", though this doesn't reflect the Japanese hiragana writing or the Japanese pronunciation. It could be argued that "jutte" is the correct (or incorrect) English name for the weapon.

The spear-point jitte shown above is, according to Serge Mol, "Classical Weaponry of Japan", 實手, or "real hand"/"true hand" (or "fruit hand"). I haven't seen this elsewhere, and as far as I can tell, 實 (or the equivalent 実) doesn't have a romanisation of "ji" or "ju". For romanisations of these, see:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%AF%A6#Japanese
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%AE%9F#Japanese

Mol uses "jutte" for the truncheon to distinguish between the two weapons, akin to "kris" and "keris" being used to distinguish between Philippine and Indonesian versions.

Is either jutte or jitte given in the OED?

(Compare "jujutsu", "jujitsu", "jiujitsu" as variant romanisations of the same word.)
Timo, you can not have two weapons with the same name, since the jitte was a secret weapon it is not well known, many people try to use what they consider the correct Japanese term but if they do not know about the two very different weapons how can they apply the correct name?

Why a jutte is called "jutte" and not "jitte". Taiho-Jutsu: Law and Order in the Age of the Samurai By Don Cunningham. Page 72.
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Last edited by estcrh; 3rd July 2015 at 08:40 PM.
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