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Duncan B
6th March 2006, 14:30
I have recently been reading about the development of Judo. As far as I can tell, Judo developed by a number of JuJutsu masters working along side Kano.

It seems strange to me that a group of highly respected JuJutsu masters would just decide to work with a guy who was
a) very young and
b) as far as I can tell relatively inexperienced (my source suggested aboout 4 years JuJutsu training)

There must have been a reason, even if it's that my initial reading has been incorrect. Can anyone point me to some sources or explanations that might explain this?

I've got some theories, but they are only that - theories.

Many thanks
Duncan Bowdler

Brian Griffin
6th March 2006, 15:58
I have recently been reading about the development of Judo. As far as I can tell, Judo developed by a number of JuJutsu masters working along side Kano.
Kano opened his first dojo in 1882, and the technical syllabus of Kodokan Judo developed on the mats, among Kano and his students, over the next couple of decades. It became, more or less, the "official national style" in the early 1900s, when its kata were adopted by the Dai Nippon Butokukai. It was at this point that the shihan of the major jujutsu ryuha "joined" the Kodokan movement.

It seems strange to me that a group of highly respected JuJutsu masters would just decide to work with a guy who was
a) very young and
b) as far as I can tell relatively inexperienced (my source suggested aboout 4 years JuJutsu training)
Incorrect.
Kano had some training in jujutsu as a teenager, and began training seriously when he entered university around 1877. He quickly earned a teaching license in Tenjin Shin'yo Ryu under Fukuda sensei, arguably the most famous practitioner of the time, and served as his official representative when Fukuda was not present (i.e. shihan dairi). When Fukuda died, he continued training under Iso sensei, the head of the system. After Iso's death, Kano trained under Iikubo sensei, the headmaster of Kito Ryu, who eventually awarded Kano menkyo kaiden and made him his successor. By the mid-1880s, Kano was a legitimate jujutsu shihan, head of his own school, and successor to Iikubo's Kito Ryu. His students proved themselves, repeatedly, over the ensuing decades.

Joseph Svinth
7th March 2006, 05:23
Kano had serious political connections. For example, he was personal friends with the president of at least one elite university and a future mayor of Tokyo, and he was often appointed to attend meetings for Prince Tokugawa. Age doesn't buy that sort of connections anywhere, let alone Meiji Japan.

In addition, Kano's senior students had equally good connections within the police, DNBK, and the elite universities. Nagaoka, for instance, was head instructor for both the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and the DNBK, and Iizuka was a leading collegiate coach.

johan smits
7th March 2006, 07:37
Besides that, I recently learned that a lot (if not most) of Kano's early students were acomplished masters of jujutsu.

I got a feeling that the difference between judo and jujutsu from that time mostly exists on paper nowadays and that there was a lot of crosstraining going on with more similarities between early judo and jujutsu than differences.

Also and that fits the picture, Kano was a pretty good politician (that takes nothing away from his abbilities in jujutsu or judo) but it sure does help.
In stead of take on all the world, become friends with them and cooperate, that's clever.

you can look on judoinfo.com and read the posts of Cichorei Kano, he writes a lot of interesting stuff.

best,

Johan Smits

bu-kusa
7th March 2006, 09:00
there is an interesting article about this here

http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30112


which is also located on a well hidden judo sub-forum.
Just as a matter of interest has anyone here trained in both judo and traditional (i.e. ryu-ha based) ju-jutsu? Were there any suprising insights to be gleaned from such practise?

many thanks for your time, :)

Duncan B
7th March 2006, 10:36
Kano had some training in jujutsu as a teenager, and began training seriously when he entered university around 1877. He quickly earned a teaching license in Tenjin Shin'yo Ryu under Fukuda sensei, arguably the most famous practitioner of the time, and served as his official representative when Fukuda was not present (i.e. shihan dairi). When Fukuda died, he continued training under Iso sensei, the head of the system. After Iso's death, Kano trained under Iikubo sensei, the headmaster of Kito Ryu, who eventually awarded Kano menkyo kaiden and made him his successor. By the mid-1880s, Kano was a legitimate jujutsu shihan, head of his own school, and successor to Iikubo's Kito Ryu. His students proved themselves, repeatedly, over the ensuing decades.

Thanks for this, my source had suggested that his JuJutsu was limited. "Some" Jujutsu, whilst relatively unquantifiable does make the situation make a bit more sense. It didn't seem right that Kano had just turned up one day as a dojo novice and four years later had a teaching license.

No matter what Kano's position or connections, he must have had ability. That I have absolutely no doubt in. It seems to me a significant achievement to bring together so many shihan and forge a quite radical change in training methodology and technique.

Thanks for the thread Paul, very interesting.

Many thanks to everyone for your help.

Duncan

Joseph Svinth
8th March 2006, 03:30
From "Getting a Grip: Judo in the Nikkei Communities of the Pacific Northwest, 1900-1950":

In 1877, while attending college, Kano began studying Tenshin Shinyo-ryu jujutsu under Hachinosuke Fukuda. Tenshin Shinyo-ryu emphasized holds, chokes, and locks but few throws, and to learn it, one practiced kata, or choreographed patterns practiced with a cooperative partner, and randori¸ or free wrestling with an uncooperative partner. Pedagogically, its chief tenet was that the student learned with the body rather than the mind. Thus there were no long explanations, just sweaty practice. "The important thing," Fukuda reportedly told Kano, "is to try again, and again, and again, then you will be able to do a technique." [NOTE: Mrs. Fukuda, 9-dan, is a relative of Hachinosuke Fukuda.]

Kano persisted, and on August 5, 1879, he was selected to demonstrate jujutsu before the former United States president Ulysses S. Grant. The demonstration took place at the home of financier Eiichi Shibusawa. Other participants included the jujutsu teachers Hachinosuke Fukuda and Masatomo Iso, and Kano’s training partner Ryusaku Godai.

Soon after, Fukuda died. Undaunted, Kano began studying Tenshin Shinyo-ryu jujutsu under Masatomo Iso. Unlike Fukuda, whose teaching style emphasized kata almost exclusively, Iso believed in letting students learn through randori. Unlike many of Iso’s seniors, Kano was always on time, and as a result he soon found himself teaching the beginners. "It was no easy task to [do randori] opposite thirty trainees," he later recalled, "but to do this after receiving training in kata was extremely difficult… Sometimes I was so dead tired that I could not walk straight, and occasionally hit against a fence."

When Iso died in 1881, Kano was once more without a teacher. He mentioned his problem to a baseball friend named Isoo Abe, and thereby got an introduction to Tsunetashi Iikubo’s Kito-ryu jujutsu class. Kito-ryu had fewer kata than Tenshin Shinyo-ryu but included some that Tenshin Shinyo-ryu did not, most notably some that had been designed for throwing men wearing armor. Kito-ryu was also more philosophical than Tenshin Shinyo-ryu and the name judo, "the gentle way," comes from an old branch of Kito-ryu called the Jikishin-ryu. [NOTE: Abe was a leading Japanese educator, a pioneer of baseball in Japan, and a future mayor of Tokyo.]

One of Iikubo’s students, a man named Kanekichi Fukushima, was very strong and always defeated Kano. Since he knew no jujutsu tricks that could beat the fellow, Kano decided to examine some Western wrestling texts he found in the library of the Yushima Seido shrine, and there he found descriptions of techniques he hadn’t seen before. Evidently, neither had Fukushima, who subsequently fell for one of them.

Besides learning the value of conducting research and implementing a plan, Kano also learned through practicing jujutsu that he couldn’t succeed alone. Instead, he needed willing, cooperative partners. Furthermore, to retain cooperative partners, one had to first exercise considerable self-control. So, wrote Kano in 1898, "not only did I find it [jujutsu] interesting, but also realized that it was most effective for the training of both body and mind. So by taking together all the good points I had learned of the various schools and adding thereto my own inventions and discoveries, I devised a new system for physical culture and moral training as well as for winning contests."

Originally, Kano called this combined system of physical culture and moral training jiu-no-michi, or the pliable way. Later, though, he took to calling it "Kodokan judo." The "Kodokan" portion meant "A Hall to Study the Way." The original Kodokan was a philosophy academy in Ibaraki Prefecture, and although Kano’s ideograms were different, the term still alluded to Meiji-era self-improvement. As for "judo," it was an older Jikkishin-ryu jujutsu term that showed, as Kano later wrote, that "what I taught was not a dangerous thing, nor would it needlessly injure any person."

Of course, to spread these methods and ideas, Kano first had to have students and a place to teach them. So, in June 1882, he started a dojo [training hall] in space belonging to a Buddhist temple located in the Shitaya district of Tokyo. Around April 1883, the dojo moved to Kano’s home, apparently because of complaints about the noise...

Brian Griffin
8th March 2006, 07:22
Hi Mr. Svinth, thanks for your contribution. Excellent research, as always.

I had always understood Fukuda shihan to be the one who emphasized randori, given his reputation for fighting prowess. Iso (then head of Tenjin Shin'yo) was the one noted for the precision of his kata. Perhaps my memory is faulty...I'll have to check.

Miss Fukuda is the granddaughter of Fukuda Hachinosuke shihan. To my knowledge she never married. In the mid-'30s there was a ceremony commemorating the founding of Kodokan. Kano shihan planted three trees, in honor of his three sensei: Fukuda, Iso, & Iikubo. Young Miss Fukuda was there with her family as guests-of-honor. Shortly thereafter, Kano came to her home and personally invited her to train at the Kodokan. She has dedicated her life to Judo, ever since.

Brian Griffin
8th March 2006, 07:50
Here's a post (http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthread.php?p=242088#post242088) I made a couple of years ago that covers some of the same territory.

Duncan B
8th March 2006, 16:22
Thanks for this info guys, very interesting.

If I may summarise my understanding, what I think we're saying is:

1) Kano had a significant grounding in JuJutsu, sufficient to be taken seriously by other JuJutsu masters.
2) Kano, not unsurprisingly, continued to study JuJutsu ryuha and was later awarded menkyo-kaiden.
3) He had the necesary vision and contacts to draw other masters into his system, allowing it to follow the path that it did.

Now my next question is:
Point 3 above suggests that there was a need or motive for JuJutsu shi-han to be drawn towards Kano's new system.
Why was this? OK political connentions, but what was the motive? Was it financial, or was it due to a belief that JuJutsu needed to develop either its techniques (unlikely) or its reputation.

I think this is really the crux of what I didn't initially understand and it is now piquing my interest.

Once again, thanks for all of the info.

Duncan

Joseph Svinth
9th March 2006, 03:04
Brian --

You're absolutely right about Miss Fukuda.

Duncan --

Short answer:

During the 1880s and 1890s, Japan's Ministry of Education became interested in including some kind of Japanese folk wrestling in its formal curriculum. This was based in part on German theories. After 1904, the Japanese military wanted more physically fit draft-age youth. And, after 1910, there was newspaper support for such things. The Kodansha publishing company, for instance, was a major patron of kendo.

Long answer: More from the book.

Like many Japanese of his generation, Jigoro Kano was influenced by a combination of Asian and European philosophies. For example, his father-in-law was a well-known neo-Confucian scholar while his personal library included books by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. The result was that Kano had both Japanese and European pedagogical goals, specifically:

(1) Developing students' minds, bodies, and spirits through the discipline associated with regular physical exercise.
(2) Filling students' hearts with loyalty and patriotism.
(3) Inculcating necessary moral and intellectual knowledge.
(4) Developing the strength and stamina young men needed for military service.

How to accomplish this was, of course, contentious. Originally the Japanese military and Ministry of Education tried European calisthenics and gymnastics. While these activities proved useful for making young people stronger, few youths enjoyed doing them. And, while foreign games such as baseball and rugby built teamwork and were fun, they placed enormous emphasis on winning. Judo and kendo, on the other hand, said Kano in the Japan Times in August 1936, could train body, mind, and spirit equally, plus be taught in such a way as to allow practice by everyone rather than simply a handful of gifted athletes....

As a matter of national security, Japan's Ministry of Education started investigating the physical condition of students, and during the 1910s, studies found that boys' overall fitness levels increased and incidence of curvatures of the spine decreased subsequent to the introduction of mandatory physical education programs. So, as exercise in the schools had been shown to improve the fitness of draft-age males, the question was then what the youths were to do during their mandatory physical training.

Western-style sports such as baseball, soccer, and track were popular with both schoolboys and teachers. (For his part, Kano liked track while his friend, the socialist professor and future mayor of Tokyo, Isoo Abe, was an equally avid supporter of baseball.) However, the Japanese military preferred activities such as sumo, kendo, and swimming, as it was believed that these sports offered more immediate military applications. Still, even the militarists were not averse to innovation. For example, during World War I, British propaganda proclaimed that the reason the sun never set on the British Empire was the emphasis that British schools placed on "manly" sports such as rugby and boxing. Noted an editorialist for a Japanese newspaper called Yomiuri in March 1919: "During the [recent world] war no people demonstrated so well as the English the truth that healthy spirit and lofty aspirations live in sound bodies." So, inspired by such platitudes, the Japanese Army adopted boxing as a military exercise in 1924 and rugby five years after that.

During the late 1910s, Kano also developed a doctrine he called the "Three Culture Principle." In this, he argued that intellectual, moral, and physical development had to occur simultaneously if there was to be internal harmony within either a person or a society. "Present day education is unduly inclined toward intellectual culture," he said, "and if nothing is done about it, physical and moral training will become deficient."

The Three Culture Principle reached fruition in March 1922 with the organization of the Kodokan Bunkakai, or Kodokan Cultural Association. This organization held its first meeting at Tokyo's Seiyoken Hotel on April 5, 1922 and its first public lecture three days later at the YMCA in Kanda.

The mottoes of the Kodokan Cultural Association were "Good Use of Spiritual and Physical Strength" and "Prospering in Common for Oneself and Others." Although those are literal translations provided by the Canadian scholar David Waterhouse, these were usually translated into English as "Maximum Efficiency with Minimum Effort" and "Mutual Welfare and Benefit."

The meaning of "Maximum Efficiency with Minimum Effort" is self-evident. "Mutual Welfare and Benefit," however, requires some explanation. To Kano, "to perfect myself I do not for a moment forget to be of service to the world." Furthermore, "I will dedicate my future activities to the service of society." To Kano, the goal of athletic accomplishment was not medals and trophies, for those only led to unhappiness: after all, somebody had to lose in order for someone else to win. Instead, the goal of athletic accomplishment was to teach the athletes to be altruistic. Ideally, one even gracefully conceded things that one wanted whenever those desires proved to be in conflict with the common good.

MarkF
9th March 2006, 10:27
Thanks for this info guys, very interesting.

If I may summarise my understanding, what I think we're saying is:

1) Kano had a significant grounding in JuJutsu, sufficient to be taken seriously by other JuJutsu masters.
2) Kano, not unsurprisingly, continued to study JuJutsu ryuha and was later awarded menkyo-kaiden.
3) He had the necesary vision and contacts to draw other masters into his system, allowing it to follow the path that it did.

Now my next question is:
Point 3 above suggests that there was a need or motive for JuJutsu shi-han to be drawn towards Kano's new system.
Why was this? OK political connentions, but what was the motive? Was it financial, or was it due to a belief that JuJutsu needed to develop either its techniques (unlikely) or its reputation.

I think this is really the crux of what I didn't initially understand and it is now piquing my interest.

Once again, thanks for all of the info.

Duncan


Read this. If this isn't what you want, click the link inside. If that isn't it then you need to do some serious reading (books).;)

http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30112


Mark


PS: The short answer is: Relevence. The old ryu were no longer relevent. Kodokan filled the void.

Duncan B
10th March 2006, 17:25
Thanks Joe,
That answers the absolute context that had been puzzling me. There just had to be something generating a rationale for such a movement, clearly Japanese Militarism and Dept. Education desire would have created such a pressure.

Mark,
Thanks for the link, it's the same as Paul's above (to your previous post). It doesn't actually answer the question however. There's no way in the world any JuJutsu master would have shrugged his shoulders and said, "OK this is better than what I do", (sorry for the simplification) people just don't work like that. Unless they're exceptionally open minded and socially conscious (possible but I'm not convinced). I'm sure you've got much better things to do than try, however the ideas on their own have been interesting.

Something in both of the articles has grabbed my interest, but it's waaay off topic so I'll PM you (if I can figure that out).

Once again many thanks for answering my niave JuJutsu boy questions.

Regards
Duncan Bowdler

Ellis Amdur
10th March 2006, 21:09
The other jujutsu schools didn't want to simply fold their tents and fade. However, their problem was as follows: Prior to the Kodokan, there WAS competitive practice, but it was cruder. Many dojo practiced on wooden floors, and each dojo had it's own rules. Shiai started similar to sumo, and could include locks and strangles, or something similar to an ippon throw. Beyond one's dojo, competition was largely challenge matches, of which their were quite a few. Itinerant young men would go from dojo to dojo, seeking a "lesson," which was a challenge to run the line. If successful (which could range from beating a few guys, losing and being likeable, to beating everyone), he could be invited to stay a while and teach (thereby getting a roof and some food). At any rate, it was informal, often rural, and "contributed" little to the national polity. Not only did the Kodokan set up a competitive model that others from a variety of ryu could participate, they entered jujutsu into the educational system (to that point in Meiji, jujutsu had an image of being low-class, antiquated and/or violent). Once in the educational system and also part of police training, other ryu had the option of trying to ignore the Kodokan, or somehow cooperating. Most allied themselves. They continued their own kata AND did Kodokan shiai - thus many teachers were shihan of x-ryu and Kodokan 3rd dan, for example. Problem is, to win at shiai (which most young guys would rather do than learn kata), one has to train in the methods appropriate to shiai. Weapons training, for example, was largely irrelevant. To rank in the Kodokan, one had to do the Kodokan kata. More and more, the young students had little to no interest in the koryu kata - their plate was full with Kodokan. The teacher, to keep teaching, taught what the students were willing to learn. The kata of their ryu became like the antiques in the attic. Given the changes in society - who is going to fight with a chain-and-sickle, how will these kata train military for combat in China or SE Asia, how will training, in a short time make a tough young man (student or soldier), to offer three questions - the ryu were abandoned and Kodokan ascendent. Which is why, today, few care about old jujutsu. For those who want more "comprehensive" competitive practice, the Mixed Martial Arts scene provides a new way to play. Those interested in koryu in Japan who are young, are, more often than not, bookish rather than bruisers. Not all, certainly, but the larger proportion.

Best

wmuromoto
11th March 2006, 02:48
Ellis reminded me of an interview I had with the current headmaster of the Hontai Yoshin-ryu. He taught Kodokan judo to "younger people" on alternate days. He said, self-deprecatingly, that he still liked to teach Hontai Yoshin-ryu, but even to him, it was "sort of like an antique." ...Those were his own exact words.

I pretty much agree with the rest of Ellis' remarks. If you're going to do shiai with Kodokan rules, you are more or less inclined towards Kodokan style training.

In addition, Kano was probably more than happy to accommodate all the egos by incorporating any technically and sportively useful technique from any ryu, regardless of point of origin. Teachers linked to the Takeuchi-ryu were instrumental in helping to formulate a lot of the Kodokan's kansetsu waza, for example. And as a national and potentially international sport, judo was the wave of the future. Jujutsu ryu at the time were going the way of other classical arts, such as tea ceremony, noh drama, etc. They had very little relevence for a modernizing Japan embarking on nationalization and expansion.

Wayne Muromoto

Joseph Svinth
11th March 2006, 09:45
Some more background to that transitional era, which is not especially well documented in English.

During the early 1880s, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police hosted a couple of tournaments meant to resolve the question of which was better, Kodokan judo club or a Yoshin Ryu jujutsu school headed by Hikosuke Totsuka, and over time, the Kodokan athletes firmly established their primacy. For a lively account, see Wayne Muromoto's article at http://www.furyu.com/archives/issue3/judo.html .

As for the Ministry of Education, the background includes this. During the 1880s and 1890s, prominent Japanese physicians included a German named Erwin Baelz. One day during the early 1880s, Dr. Baelz complained to the governor of Chiba Prefecture that the well-to-do youths he was examining were in poor physical condition, and that a little exercise would do them a world of good. "The governor was quite of my way of thinking," Baelz wrote in his diary, "and expressed his strong regret that jiujitsu, as a splendid method of physical training formerly much practiced in Japan, should have gone so completely out of use." The governor then introduced Baelz to an elderly Yoshin-ryu jujutsu instructor named Hikosuke Totsuka (yes, this is the same fellow mentioned above). After watching some demonstrations, Baelz was convinced "that this [e.g., jujutsu] would be an ideal form of gymnastics for my students."

Back in Tokyo, the Ministry of Education was not impressed by Baelz's observation. "The students," Baelz was told, "had come to the university to do mental work."

Undeterred, Baelz set about proving the Ministry of Education wrong. After all, gymnastics and national wrestling were key elements of nineteenth century German Kultur. And, while he couldn’t find anyone who would teach him jujutsu (already in his early thirties, everyone told Baelz he was too old to learn), he did find the young Jigoro Kano, who just happened to be the principal of an elite prep school. And, said Baelz, Kano, "and his comrades were at length successful in inducing the university authorities to summon the jiujitsu expert from Chiba and a great jiujitsu contest took place. This made it clear how much training is needed to learn the art, for of all the young men who had been working at it in Tokyo, not one, not even Kano, could cope with the police officers who had been trained by Totsuka in Chiba. Next day old Totsuka , accompanied by his best pupil Sato, came to call on me and to thank me for my exertions in the matter. I can still see him in imagination, this venerable old man, with tears running down his cheeks… He declared, it made him blush that a foreigner should have had to tell his fellow-countrymen that it was incumbent upon them to revive jiujitsu; but now, when he knew that his beloved art would come into honour once more, he could die in peace."

This defeat, which is invariably glossed over in Kodokan histories, probably took place in 1882, as in 1883 a Kodokan team defeated another Yoshin-ryu jujutsu team led by Totsuka's son Eimi, and that's the one described in Wayne's article.

As Ellis notes, not everyone capitulated so gracefully. In Revue Judo Kodokan, II (September 1952), 125, Kainan Shimomura wrote, "Yokoyama and Yamashita, the pioneers of Judo, were appointed Professors to the State Police Force, following on a Gala of Budo (martial arts) during which different Schools of Jujutsu opposed one another, but the numerous Societies of the ancient Jujutsu, which continued to exist, despised the 'Judo of Kodokan' at the bottom of their hearts. Encounters between Professors of the State were the exception. However public opinion got so worked up that in January 1891 an inter-group combat took place…" (Endnote 2, in the article about Yamashita and Roosevelt at http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_svinth1_1000.htm .)

Although Kano trained and taught regularly, Sakujiro "Devil" Yokoyama was the Kodokan's head instructor during the early days. Yokoyama (ca. 1864-1914) was the one of the heroes of that police contest mentioned above, and E.J. Harrison described him as "perhaps my greatest teacher." (Letter to RW Smith, July 9, 1959, http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_harrison_0503.htm .) Yokoyama's 1915 text is reviewed at http://www.bestjudo.com/brjudosakujiroyokoyama.shtml , and a photo of training at the Kodokan ca. 1900 appears at http://home.att.net/~hofhine/Judo.html . Yokoyama's original style was apparently Tenshin Shinyo Ryu.

wmuromoto
11th March 2006, 18:31
I've done judo for most of my younger life and now do Takeuchi-ryu jujutsu, so I don't think I'm biased one way or another on this discussion. That said, Joe's very informative notes on the Kodokan's early matches brings to mind what one of my sempai told me about the Takeuchi-ryu's shiai and contacts with the Kodokan. I earlier mentioned that several Takeuchi-ryu sensei were very influential in the creation of judo's early kansetsu waza and shime waza methods. That didn't hold the Takeuchi-ryu back from engaging in matches with the Kodokan, apparently. In one match, my sempai said that a Takeuchi-ryu sensei (I forgot the name) fought Kodokan's Yamashita to a hikiwake; a draw. Yamashita threw the TR person cleanly and the judge initially indicated it was an ippon (full point) for Yamashita. Then Yamashita fell back, grabbing his arm in pain. While being thrown, the Takeuchi-ryu sensei had grabbed Yamashita's throwing arm and used the momentum of the throw to dislocate it. The judge amended his call to hikiwake, a draw, because both techniques happened at the same time and were both equally worthy of an ippon.

If anything, the above is an example of how tough the shiai used to be in those days, and as Joseph Svinth noted, Kodokan judo didn't necessarily always win. Its ascendancy owes much not only to its eclectic adaptation of methods from any and all sources, but also to its ability to be seen as a "new," scientifically-based style with roots on Japanese jujutsu.

Especially after the victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, Japanese nationalistic pride was on the rise. Up until that war, the Japanese public attempted to emulate Western powers as much as possible as the way to become an equal. It surprised itself when it defeated Russia, a major power, and aroused a strong sense of Japanese national identity, especially when European journalists, also surprised at Russia's defeat, sent back dispatches that praised Japanese military actions. The impact of that war on Japanese martial arts and popular culture could be its own thread, so I won't discuss this much. Suffice it to say, afterwards the modernized Japanese public turned back to its own traditions after neglecting them in its drive to modernization. Kodokan judo was perfect: it was "modern" but had its roots in Japanese jujutsu. It was a martial art in tune with its times. It was sponsored by Kano, who became a very highly placed educator, and it could be exportable as a symbol of Japanese culture. It could also be taught as a national sport in training centers, such as the Butokuden Senmon Gakko, without having to take sides over which particular jujutsu school would be taught. With judo, you're teaching a sort of pan-Japan sport, not a particular jujutsu ryu from a particular province from a particular lineage over another ryu.

This is not to take anything away from judo. If not for its popularity, I would daresay that the rest of the jujutsu schools may have faded away. Kano saved much that was good about jujutsu in his Kodokan and popularized the shiai aspects of jujutsu, transforming it gradually into a sport that could be entered into the modern Olympics.

So IMHO, judo (and its offshoots, such as the Gracie style) remains a very good intro to "jacketed grappling" for most people. It is very vigorous, has most of the really good techniques that are legal in shiai from jujutsu (if you balance standing and groundwork randori equally and also include Kodokan kata in the curriculum), and its modern tournament rules have created a relatively safe (if rule-bound) form of sport. It's so successful at what it does that from what I've seen, most of the jujutsu systems have pretty much abandoned a lot of their shiai practice and currently focus on kata geiko. If you want to do shiai, do judo because that's been its focus for so long. If you want to do lots of kata geiko, do a jujutsu form. But many of the still extant jujutsu schools once did participate in shiai and were quite good at it, as Joe notes.

Wayne Muromoto