Jutsu

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This article is about the morphology and meaning of the Japanese term. For the Naruto concept, see Jutsu (Naruto).

Jutsu (術, Jutsu^?) — meaning technique, method, skill or trick — is a bound morpheme of the Sino-Japanese lexical stratum of the Japanese language.

Jutsu may combine with another morpheme (or word) to form a word. It does so much more commonly as a second part; examples are, in order of increasing conspicuousness, wajutsu (話術, narrative skill), shujutsu (手術, surgery), geijutsu (芸術, craft) and gijutsu (技術, technique, technology).^[1] Non-speakers of Japanese may encounter it within the name of a specific martial art, e.g. battōjutsu (抜刀術, the art of drawing a sword) or jūjutsu (柔術, unarmed fighting).

As a suffix, jutsu seems to be mildly productive, combining with gairaigo: komyunikēshonjutsu (コミュニケーション術, communication skill) and meikuappujutsu (メイクアップ術, make-up skill).^[2]

Jutsu also combines as a first half. A straightforward example is jutsugo (術語, technical term). An allomorph ends with gemination instead of tsu (see sokuon), resulting in words such as jussaku (術策, manoeuvre) and jutchū (術中に, stratagem).^[3]

[edit] Notes

^ In kanji, these got about 1, 25, 57, and 220 million hits respectively at Japanese-language Google on 13 August 2007. (No attempt was made to exclude pages in Chinese.) With the possible exception of wajutsu, all will appear in even the simplest of dictionaries for the learner of Japanese as a second language.
^ With about 243,000 and 935 hits respectively at Japanese-language Google on 13 August 2007.
^ These three words appear in intermediate or larger Japanese and Japanese–English dictionaries.