Jujutsu (; , ) is a Japanese martial art and a method of close combat for defeating an armed and armored opponent in which one uses no weapon, or only a short weapon. The word jujutsu is often spelled as jujitsu, ju-jitsu or jiu-jitsu, this is due to the difficulties in translating the Japanese writing system, which uses ideograms, to languages which use an alphabet. When the martial art spread to foreign countries the word jujutsu was adopted to describe it, although in many cases the romanization wasn't known at the time of adoption so it was written down phonetically.