Commonly referred to as a "ninja star" by Hollywood and the general public. The shuriken was not exclusive to ninjas or ninjutsu. The shuriken was also used by samurai and other fighting classes.  Although this documentary is in Japanese, I think you will find the footage to be truly amazing. This is for people that are interested in classical Japanese martial arts and for people that have no More.. idea what it is. This is a three part documentary. The word shuriken, composed of the characters " shu", "ri" and "ken", is literally translated as "hand hidden blade". The character "ri" is composed of the morpheme (meaning component) "i" as in clothing, in the sense of covering, as well as the phoneme (sound component) "li", together representing the idea of "reverse, back, or covered. Ri (the on yomi reading) is also read in kun yomi as ura, which to us martial artists would be familiar from expressions such as "ura waza" as opposed to "omote waza". In combination with the first character, "shu-ri" suggests "hidden in the hand, or in the palm". "ken" means blade, and is the same character as found in bokken, or shinken, hence "hand hidden blade". There is however, occasional usage of the character "ri" which means separate, or to release, and this has sometimes led to the translation of shuriken as "hand release blade". Why this usage occurs is not clear at this stage, though it could refer simply to thowing of blades such as tanto, kodachi, or even katana, where it is not necessary to hide the blade in the hand. The other possibility is that people were not greatly literate in feudal times, and they simply used any character that sounded correct. Mou En Ryu documents, the Mou En Ryu Shu Ri Ken Goku Hi, held in the University of Kyoto library contain one particular example of this usage. During the time of the Sengoku Jidai, (Warring States period, 1482 - 1558) shuriken were also once known as shiriken, meaning "rear end blade", due to a popular misco...