An employee at a jewellery shop in Tokyo has been hailed a hero after thwarting an attempted robbery and giving chase after the three suspects fled. But the hero of the hour wasn’t armed with a Taser or pepper spray, but with a weapon invented hundreds of years ago by samurai warriors: the sasumata, a pole with two prongs attached to the end.
After footage of the attempted robbery early on Sunday evening attracted attention online, an auto parts manufacturer that also makes the forked pole reported a deluge of requests for the traditional weapon.
In the clip, a store employee, dressed in a white shirt and braces, can be seen brandishing the sasumata in an attempt to pacify three men wearing motorcycle helmets after they attempted to rob the business in the capital’s Taito ward.
He is then seen using the implement to strike a motorcycle – presumably a getaway vehicle – he had knocked to the ground seconds earlier.
The incident has generated a wave of interest in the implement, which according to the public broadcaster NHK, was first used by samurai during the Edo period (1603-1868) to apprehend criminals.
Far from becoming a museum piece, the sasumata, which is designed to restrain people without seriously injuring them, is still used by police officers in Japan, NHK said.
Japanese media reported two suspects had been arrested over Sunday’s incident, while the search for a third continued.
A firm in Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo, has become an unexpected beneficiary of the incident and a spate of other robberies over the past year, telling NHK it had been inundated with calls from people wanting to buy one.
The firm, whose employees use their metalworking skills to make sasumata, said it once sold just a few every month, but has been receiving as many as 10 orders a day since autumn last year.
Its range includes a weapon that releases a strong rubber band that wraps around the assailant’s body to inhibit their movement, while another is made of a lighter material to make it easier to use.
However, the company’s president, Takemitsu Sano, cautioned against using sasumata to start a fight, stressing that they were intended to be for self-defence and were more effective in the hands of people who have been trained to use them, NHK said.
In 2001, demand for the weapons among teachers rose after a man killed eight children during a knife attack at a primary school in Osaka.
