Bunkai · Applications
Jitte (~24 movements, kiai on ~13 and 24) opens from the same jiai-no-kamae salutation as Jion and shares that family’s solid, symmetrical character. Study the Jitte walkthrough first. (Move numbers are approximate; counts and kiai vary by reference.)
A pressing block controls a mid-level thrust, followed by a double palm-heel press — pressing an incoming attack down and pinning it.
The covered-hand kamae is a two-hand guard; the press traps and pins a grabbed wrist or a pushing arm against the body to set up a strike.
Three successive deflections against attackers on alternating sides — remaining rooted and clearing mid-level attacks (the ‘ten hands / multiple opponents’ reading).
Repeated arm-clearing and limb control on a single opponent — keeping contact on his arm while shifting angle to open a line for a counter.
Jitte’s defining sequence: both hands rise and grasp as if seizing a thrusting or descending staff, lift and wrench it up, then drive it back into the attacker. Unarmed, the identical grab-lift-drive reads as catching a two-hand lapel grab or an overhead club/hammer-fist, then a two-hand press, neck-crank or throw — ‘grabbing the staff’ = grabbing the attacking limb.
Simultaneous high block one side and low block the other — defending a high attack from one direction and a low attack from another (the multiple-opponent theme).
One arm parries or traps high while the other strikes low (the low ‘block’ read as a strike to groin or thigh) — a simultaneous parry-and-hit on one opponent.
Three successive rising blocks against repeated head attacks — or, in the applied reading, age-uke as an offensive rising forearm to the jaw and an arm-clearing entry, the ‘block’ read as a strike, finishing with the second kiai.