You probably have seen a Kubaton and thought it was an ornate keyring fob. Just something to make your keys easy to find. For self defense fighting, there’s probably no weapon handier. And it looks like it’s just a dangly thing on your keyring. It’s not at all a concealed weapon. It’s just to help you find your keys. Right? Right.

The word Kubaton is Japanese and means “stick for the hand”. The purpose of a Kubaton is to provide maximum damage to the attacker with very little danger or effort on your part. 

Kubatons come in all different shapes and sizes but they are usually about 6 inches long and about a half inch thick and can be made of any hard material, wood, metal, plastic. The ends are shaped in a variety of ways, round, squared off, pointed, etc. 

A basic general rule in Martial Arts is to hit a hard target with a soft object, for instance his skull with your heal palm; and the reverse, hit a soft target with a hard object, for instance his kidney with your fist. This is to prevent injury to you while doing the maximum damage to the attacker. But sometimes you can miss and bang your fist on his elbow or some other boney part. Hurray for the Kubaton. It’s all purpose. You don’t have to be concerned about hurting your hand because this metal “stick” does all the contact for you. Just grab it and hold it tight. The “business end” sticks out and you thrust straight out, or up, or around. You should aim for soft targets but if you hit something hard you’ll still succeed because he has no body part stronger than your little pointed metal stick.

Before official Kubatons were readily available, I used to carry a Cross pen for self defense. These were nice ball point pens where you’d twist the barrel before you’d write with it. Which meant the top and bottom were almost a solid piece. The pen was completely steel and worked great as a Kubaton and was always handy sitting innocently in plain view in my pocket. You might want to get a steel Cross pen for yourself, but because they are so thin, there’s a much greater chance of you dropping it. A real Kubaton is thicker and really fits your hand. They also are sometimes grooved around the barrel so your fingers wrap snugly around. Gives you the feeling you’ve got a roll of coins in hand, too. 

Everyone should get themselves a Kubaton. I especially like the beautiful anodized aluminum ones. So be safe, and always know where your keys are.