You and the enemy are both seated in seiza facing each other. The distance is such that the enemy cannot reach you while sitting down, but can reach you with a one-handed cut by raising their hips.
Sensing the enemy’s intent to attack, quietly place your hands on the sword and begin to draw the sword while raising your hips, keeping the edge upwards. Importantly, this far in the kata the intent is not to fully draw the sword and cut down the enemy, but merely to subdue their spirit and make them reconsider. As such, this draw must be extremely threatening, yet at the same time not overly fast nor provocative, so as to leave the enemy with a way out by deescalating — hence “quietly” (静かに). Jōdō practitioners might recognise the feeling from the start of the twelfth kata Ran-ai.
Only when the enemy leaves you with no choice but to preemptively attack do you turn the saya over and vehemently perform nukitsuke without hesitation (they got their chance and blew it). For the purpose of the kata, this moment occurs when the blade is almost fully drawn, the saya pulled back as far as possible and the right arm almost fully extended. With a suitably-sized sword, roughly one hand’s width of the blade should be left inside the saya. The wording here is to perform nukitsuke “aiming at” the enemy’s temple, with the implication that this attack is rather easy to evade simply by leaning backwards. This is why the kissaki must stop (the “-tsuke” part) while still projecting a strong threat to the enemy’s eyes. Regardless, the attack must be performed in such a way so as to leave absolutely no doubt that the enemy will have to reflexively evade in this manner — hence “vehemently” (激しく). A convincing attack to the eyes triggers this kind of reflexive response and will cause the enemy to abandon whatever else they were going to do — a fact that is constantly exploited in jōdō. When drawing towards the eyes, it is not the tsukagashira but the hand that projects seme. Otherwise, the hand will be slightly off centre, creating an opening for a counterattack, and the hand would need to move up for the nukitsuke.
Although it may be tempting to do a sideways left-to-right cut across the eyes, the nukitsuke is really more of a forwards action. The focus should be on the kissaki going towards the eyes from the moment it leaves the saya, sayabiki pulling the left shoulder back and pushing the right shoulder forwards. The resulting cut, had the enemy stayed in place, would enter the right temple at the corner of the eye, and exit near the left ear.
Why is the nukitsuke executed as a horizontal cut, specifically? Since the right hand is already at eye height as a result of the strong seme in the draw, and the target of the nukitsuke is the eyes for the abovementioned reasons, the shortest possible effective path for the kissaki is through a horizontal cut. The right hand needs only move a little ways to the right by means of tenouchi and extending the elbow, and one can make maximal use of sayabiki to increase the force by closing the shoulder blades.
With the enemy physically and mentally off-balance (or, if they failed to evade, screaming with their eyes sliced open), exploit the opening by cutting down vertically from above with both hands. At this point, if one were to perform a two-handed cut without moving, the cut wouldn’t reach its target. This is due to the gosun-no-sa (五寸の差); the five-sun (~15 cm) difference in reach between a one-handed and a two-handed cut. The hips, and by extension the rear knee, therefore need to move forwards by about that much. Although this is often thought of as pushing the knee forwards, what one is really doing is quite simply to realign the hips facing forwards, thereby pulling the knee in underneath oneself. This movement is very much like a kneeling version of the assumption of chūdan-no-kamae in Morotezuki: keeping the same ma-ai while going from hanmi to seitai. Because the shoulders are wider than the hips, the hips will need to move forwards by that much to maintain the same reach, and this will cause the right knee to bend past the initial 90° angle. A good way to experience this movement and check how far one has to move forwards is to grab a doorframe with the right hand forwards as in nukitsuke, and pull oneself in to take hold also with the left hand.
During furikaburi, it is stressed that the kissaki must pass by the left ear and brought above the head with the feeling of thrusting to the rear. In the (2014) English translation, this is written as “swiftly move the sword above the head with the feeling of thrusting behind the left ear”, but this translation is somewhat misleading. The original wording is 切っ先を左耳にそって後ろを突く気持ちですばやく刀を頭上に振りかぶる, and should be read as “the kissaki passing the left ear, the sword is swiftly brought above the head with a feeling of thrusting to the rear”, giving a slightly different image of the sequence of execution. Why is it emphasised to perform furikaburi with a feeling of “thrusting to the rear”? Although it is sometimes stated that it was decided for the kissaki to pass the ear as a compromise between Musō Jikiden Eishin-ryū (where the sword is brought directly up) and Musō Shinden-ryū (where the sword first goes back along the cutting line towards the shoulder to be ready to deflect a counterattack), in fact, this method of passing the ear and “thrusting” to the back also exists in (at least) Musō Shinden-ryū. The purpose of this furikaburi is to protect from and swat aside with the tsuba a counterattack from above — not necessarily implying one should imagine such an attack actually coming, but the furikaburi is performed as though it were. For this technique to work, the blade needs to be at an angle where it can protect the head — achieved by first bringing the kissaki to the left ear and angling the edge upwards — and the action of deflecting the incoming cut needs to be swift and strong and performed in a rising quarter-circular trajectory to above the head — as if thrusting to the back.
It may be useful to think of the furikaburi as “lifting” and pulling the body in underneath the sword as it is brought above the head, as this will facilitate a large technique and keep the posture from collapsing. The blade should never drop below horizontal, and if the wrist and grip do not relax once the kissaki passes the ear, that same angle can be maintained until the cut. The cut must be executed immediately without hesitation once the left hand takes hold of the tsuka.
It is clearly stated to step forwards with the right foot at the same time as executing the cut. What this means in practice is not that the cut and the step finish simultaneously, but that they start at the same time. The foot must be in place at the moment the arms are fully extended and the sword is at its maximum reach, and this moment is exactly when the blade impacts its target. Up until that point, the forwards momentum of the sword will be pulling the arms out, but once at its maximum reach, the sword will instead begin to pull the body forwards. If the foot is not then firmly in place to counteract this forwards momentum and stabilise the upper body, the posture will crumble. Since the step finishes before the cut, the feeling is one of stepping first and then cutting, but step and cut must initiate as one.
The end point of the vertical cut is just below horizontal. Why do we cut to below horizontal in Mae and Ushiro, and to horizontal in standing kata? The enemy is still seated in seiza, and at horizontal level the blade would just barely not have exited the sternum. In koryū, the cut is even lower, but cutting just a few centimetres below horizontal is enough to free the blade from the bone. The right hand at this point should be roughly beside the right knee, and the left hand in front of the tanden.
When initiating chiburi, it is written to turn the right palm facing up, and thus the edge to the left. This should not be taken as turning the palm all the way up and the edge all the way to the left, but simply to straighten the wrist so the edge is pointing along the line of the lower arm. From there, lead with the kissaki as you bring the sword up to the fully outstretched position to your right. As the elbow bends to bring the right hand close to your right temple, without changing the neutral orientation of the wrist, simply relax the right shoulder to let the elbow naturally go forwards to the most relaxed position: this will be very close to 45° to your front right diagonal. Until this point was clarified by the technical board, it was fairly common for practitioners to leave the elbow at an awkward angle out to the right and compensate by instead angling the wrist to bring the blade to a 45° angle at the position by the right temple. Who cuts like that? It is significantly easier and more natural to keep the wrist as it is and let the elbow go forwards, so that everything is ready for the kesa swing. The 45° angle is decided already at this point, and, more importantly, is a result of simply letting the body fall into the most comfortable position.
The chiburi in Mae is commonly known as ō-chiburi2, but is formally called kesa-ni-furioroshite-no-chiburi3. With the elbow already in the correct position and the hand at the temple, the lower arm will be at a 45° angle backwards and upwards from the elbow. Therefore, it is a simple matter to flick the sword forwards by tightening the grip with the little and ring finger and the thumb, and let it continue along the same path as the elbow extends without changing anything.
The sword is stopped by changing the grip from the cutting grip to a stopping grip; in simple terms, by closing the flat grip into a balled fist. This will transfer the force up into your arm and shoulder to be effortlessly absorbed instead of stressing the joints sideways, and the kissaki will naturally point slightly inwards towards the fallen enemy. The right hand should now be at the same height as the left.
As the chiburi is executed, stand up to the iaigoshi position, with a feeling of pulling yourself up from the floor with the right hand. In the (2014) English translation, it is stated “after shedding the blood off, make ready to do Iai Goshi”, but this is a mistranslation, as this position is already iaigoshi. The original Japanese says 立ち上がりながら袈裟に振り下ろしての血振りをして居合腰となる: “while standing up, do ‘kesa-ni-furioroshite-no-chiburi’ and assume iaigoshi.” Iaigoshi is defined as being a position with the hips lowered and both knees slightly bent, with a kigamae of zanshin. The text goes on to say that one should bring the left foot up in line with the right while maintaining iaigoshi, and move the right foot back.
[!NOTE] This section will be expanded, possibly with a dedicated article on nōtō.
Finally, perform nōtō while sinking down back to a kneeling position. Stand up again bringing the feet together, release the hold on the sword with the right hand, and return to the starting position.