Around 17th century Japan, a legendary duel took place between Japan's most extraordinary swordsman, the undefeated Miyamoto Musashi, and a Shinto Priest, Muso Gonosuke Katsuyoshi who was trained in the art of the bo staff (bojutsu). Musashi emerged from the confrontation victorious, but felt no other opponent had possessed so great a skill as Gonosuke. Out of a spirit of profound respect, he spared his life.

As the legend goes, and there are many variations, the wounded but determined priest retired to the mountains, and there fell into a deep, meditative trance. In the midst of his contemplations, a mountain spirit revealed to him in a vision a shorter version of the common bo staff, called a jo.

Afterwards, Gonosuke cut a bo to the precise dimensions given him in the dream, and from his bojutsu training modified and improved techniques, allowing him a far greater range of control over the stick, and consequently, over the weapons of any adversary, especially the swordsman. He named his new ryu, or style, Shindo Muso Ryu, the Divine Way of Dream-Thought, and with this new weapon, he re-challenged the great Musashi. It would prove to be Musashi's only defeat.

For over 360 years Shindo Muso Ryu developed mostly in secret into a large and complicated system of techniques and kata, until in the modern era, Shimizu Takaji, the last Headmaster of the ryu, developed a refined system containing a reduced number of katas, leaving only those found to be absolutely essential and reliable. The great teacher Ms. Tsunako Miyake helped bring this modern jyodo into the Fugkukai system in the late 70s, 80s and 90s. This modern and refined system of budo is the focus of jyodo training at Windsong Dojo, and has under gone even further refinement towards efficiency as taught by Hanshi Karl Geis.

Please note that at Windsong Dojo, we require that a jyodo student have some aikido training (at least green belt) before attending class in order that they might better understand the principles as well as the rules for safety regarding such a deceptively dangerous weapon. The safe practice of jyodo requires intense focus and meticulous attention to detail. Like aikido, the jyodo kata provide a means by which a student learns and understands principles through repetition. But because of the extremely dangerous nature of both the jo staff and the bokken, we do not practice either any form of randori or shiai (competition based confrontations) in jyodo.