KUJI KIRI (九字切り lit. "nine symbolic cuts") This is the practice of making nine cuts – five horizontal and four vertical, alternating – in the air or palm of a hand with the finger or on paper with a brush is known as kuji kiri, nine syllable cuts.

Kuji-kiri is explained in Shugendo texts, quite correctly, as a preparatory ritual of protection, to cut off demonic influences and their inki (vital substance). In Japanese folk-magic and onmyodo, the nine cuts are often made over writing or a picture, to gain control of the object named or pictured. Thus, a sailor wishing to be protected from drowning might write them over the kanji for "sea" or "water".

Author and historian John Stevens notes that methods of oral sex using kuji-kiri were employed by practitioners of Tachikawa-ryu. The Fuju shu does not spell out every ritual in detail. However, in several of the kuji-kiri rituals it is spelled out that the strokes are made alternately horizontal and then vertical: five horizontal and four vertical for men; and four horizontal and five vertical for women. A modern Japanese text labeled Dai Marishi-Ten hiju/大摩利子天秘授 (Nine syllables of the Tactics of the Great Goddess of Light (Marishi-Ten)) says that five horizontal slashes are made while reciting the yo-syllables: rin, toh, kai, retsu, zen, which spells (come, fight, ready, line up, in front) first. These are to be followed by four vertical slashes while reciting the in-syllables: pyo, sha, jin, zai which spells (warriors, one formation, take position). The document gives no other information as to why this arrangement is used.