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A kunai (苦無, kunai^?) is an ancient kind of trowel, originated during the Tensho Era in Japan. The kunai was normally wrought of iron, not steel, cheaply forged and unpolished. The size of most kunai ranged from 20 cm to 60 cm, with the average at 40 cm. The kunai was used by common folk as multi-purpose gardening tools and by workers of stone and masonry. The kunai is not a knife, but something more akin to a wrecking bar. The blade was soft iron and unsharpened because the edges were used to smash plaster and wood, to dig holes and to pry. Normally only the tip would have been sharpened. The uses to which a kunai was put would have destroyed any heat-treated and sharpened tool like a knife.

Kunai normally had a leaf-shaped blade and a handle with a ring on the pommel for attaching a rope. This would allow the kunai's handle to be wrapped to act as a grip, or when used as a weapon; to be strapped to a stick as an expedient spear, to be tied to the body for concealment, or to use as an anchor or piton.

Contrary to popular belief, they were not designed as throwing weapons, though they can definitely be thrown and cause damage. Instead, they are a thrusting and stabbing tool [1].

Some images of actual kunai are available on The Virtual Museum of Traditional Japanese Arts webpage [2]

A typical kunai in fiction.

Many ninja weapons were merely adapted farming tools, not unlike those used by Xiaolin (Shaolin) Monks in China. Since Kunai were cheaply produced farming tools of a decent size and weight, and could be easily sharpened, they were readily available to be converted into simple weapons.

As with the shuriken and ninjutsu, the exaggeration persistent in ninja myths played a large role in creating the current pop culture image of kunai.

In the mythology of ninja, the kunai is commonly portrayed to be a Japanese knife that is used for throwing as opposed to stabbing. As a weapon it is larger and heavier than a shuriken, and with the grip could also be used in hand to hand combat more readily than a shuriken. In addition, it could be used for climbing, as either a kind of grappling hook, or a piton.

The blade is shown shaped like a squashed octahedron, a rod for the handle with a ring on the end, extremely simple in design. It would be made of tempered steel, with sharpened edges, and polished to a shiny surface.Sometimes the surface was mirror polished to cause an elaborate,dazzling effect when fought with properly,and for aerodynamicness when occasionally thrown.The handle is wrapped in fabric or cord to act as a grip.

In Masaaki Hatsumi's Grandmaster of the Togakure Ryū school of Ninjutsu collection there are examples of short kunai, long kunai, narrow bladed types, saw-toothed types, and wide bladed types. In some cases, the kunai and the shikoro , a wide bladed saw with a dagger-type handle, are hard if not impossible to distinguish.

The kunai is the weapon of choice for the Mortal Kombat character Scorpion and Joe Musashi in Revenge of Shinobi.

In the manga/anime Naruto, kunai are used by many of the ninjas as thrown weapons, along with shuriken.