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Thread: Judo prior to Jigoro Kano

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    Question Judo prior to Jigoro Kano

    On this thread, Tony Manifold pointed out to me that a older form of Judo existed prior to the Kodokan. I am not a judoka, so I thought all that existed prior to Jigoro Kano's judo was the various jujutsu ryu. Does anyone know anything about this older Judo? Are any of it's techniques known today?
    David F. Craik

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    From Judo Formal Techniques by Tadao Otaki and Donn F. Dreager
    To prevent it from being confused with the Judo of Jikishin Ryu, which had been using the word for more than two centuries before Kano's time, Kano founded his Kodokan Judo at the Eishoji, a temple in Tokyo, and thus established Kodokan Judo. Kano follow the the lead of the founder of Jikishin Ryu in making the transition from a jutsu(author's Italics) form, primarily concerned with martial matters, to a do form, where the emphasis is on character development and the perfection of the individual.

    That should get you started.
    Tony Manifold
    " Attack, attack, attack- come at your target from every possible direction and press until his defenses overload. Never give him time to recover his balance: never give him time to counter"
    Stover

    http://members.shaw.ca/tmanifold

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    Smile Very cool

    Thanks Mr. Manifold! Searching for Jikishin (not sure if this ryu survives today), I found the following interesting article as well:

    http://www.bstkd.com/Bulletin1.htm

    Didn't want to clog up the other thread with Judo questions.
    David F. Craik

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    Jikishin-ryu is a branch of Kito-ryu jujutsu, which Kano studied. There were a variety of names used for the same basic family of arts, to include yawara, tai-sabaki, judo, jujutsu, etc. Online articles that should give you some insight into Kano's reasoning for adopting that particular terminology include

    Rev. T. Lindsay and J. Kano, "The Old Samurai Art of Fighting Without Weapons," Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, XVI, Pt II, 202-217. Reprinted 1915; see also http://judoinfo.com/kano6.htm

    Mineo Maekawa, "Jigoro Kano’s Thoughts on Judo, with Special Reference to the Approach of Judo Thought during His Jujutsu Training Years," Bulletin of the Association for the Scientific Studies on Judo, Kodokan, Report V (1978), reprint from http://www.bstkd.com/kano1.htm

    Paul M. Nurse, "The Beginnings of Kodokan Judo: 1882-1938," http://www.fightingarts.com/learning...ginnings.shtml

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    Kodokan Judo, at the beginning was mainly Tenshin-Shinyo Ryu and Kito Ryu techniques (although there were others). However, there was a competiton with Fusen Ryu c. 1900 with Mataemon Tanabe's school. They stomped the kodokan judoka, mainly because they were specialists in newaza. After that time - Kano had a group of judoka who spent alot of time with Tanabe and became "experts" in newaza. Certain techniques were incorporated into the Kodokan repetoire. The Kosen group, however continued to specialize in newaza. Judo was a term that was used by Jikishin-Ryu, and others for a hundred years or so. It was a descriptor - way of yielding, implying it had a higher purpose than just self defense (jujutsu).
    Russ St. Hilaire
    Kobukai Jujutsu

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    Originally posted by kobukai
    Kodokan Judo, at the beginning was mainly Tenshin-Shinyo Ryu and Kito Ryu techniques (although there were others). However, there was a competiton with Fusen Ryu c. 1900 with Mataemon Tanabe's school. They stomped the kodokan judoka, mainly because they were specialists in newaza. After that time - Kano had a group of judoka who spent alot of time with Tanabe and became "experts" in newaza. Certain techniques were incorporated into the Kodokan repetoire. The Kosen group, however continued to specialize in newaza. Judo was a term that was used by Jikishin-Ryu, and others for a hundred years or so. It was a descriptor - way of yielding, implying it had a higher purpose than just self defense (jujutsu).
    I found this quite interesting as I have never understood where the strong newaza influence in Judo. From what I have seen of most older styles of ju-jutsu it was mostly just a combination of tachi and suwari waza.

    I had also heard that Kano had some involvement with Russian wrestlers and had thought that a lot of the newaza could have been influenced from here.

    Does anyone know much about the Fusen Ryu and if the newaza from it are similar / the same as Kodokan Judo?

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    There was some good stuff written sometime ago on e-budo about Fusen-ryu. Don't remember the thread right now...The guy wrote that there is nothing in Fusen-ryu that can not bee found in Kodokan judo.

    Regards,
    Tommy

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    From what I have heard people who've actually come in contact with Fusen ryu said that it doesn't have anything that resembles judo newaza. The russian influence didn't happen til the 60's or 70's, in fact they had a russian become 1st or 2nd dan in judo in the 20's or so then he developed sambo based on his judo training and several other different russian wrestling systems and other martial arts. The biggest newaza faction in judo was kosen judo, who were judoka that specialized in newaza as opposed to tachi waza that eventually became having newaza only contest which still go on today. I think there were bits and of newaza here in there in different jujutsu styles the judo just eventually put it all together and made it much flowing and not something more akin to aikido holddowns and such.

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    There are many historical accounts - but here is one from The Kano Society, in reference to Yukio Tani, the judo pioneer in England.


    "We know little about Tani's early training. Apparently his father and grandfather were teachers of jujutsu and he started training at a young age. So this must have been around 1890. Shingo Ohgami told me that Tani trained with Fusen-ryu groundwork specialists Torajiro Tanabe and/or Matauemon Tanabe. This is supported by information in Takao Marushima's Maeda Itsuyo: Conte Koma (1997), where it is said that Matauemon Tanabe was a friend of Tani's father. This is interesting because the latter Tanabe, the fourth headmaster of the Fusen-ryu, features in the early history of Kodokan judo.

    In the September 1952 edition of Henri Plée's Revue Judo Kodokan, Kainan Shimomura, 8-dan, wrote: 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 in which Tobari (then 3rd dan judo, he died an 8th dan) for the Kodokan opposed [Matauemon] Tanabe, expert of the Fusen-ryu school. One must not commit the error of considering the ancient jujutsu as being a priori inferior to modern judo.

    Straightaway Tanabe sought the combat on the ground, but Tobari succeeded in remaining standing up. After a fierce fight Tanabe won by a very successful stranglehold on the ground. Tobari, bitterly disappointed by the defeat, began to feverishly study groundwork. The year after, he challenged Tanabe again. This time it was a ground battle and once more Tanabe won. He was now famous and, in the name of the ancient schools, challenged the members of the Kodokan, and even Isogai (then 3rd dan, at the time of his death he was a 10th dan) was put in danger from his ground technique. The Kodokan then concluded that a really competent judoka must possess not only a good standing technique but good ground technique as well. This is the origin of the celebrated 'ne-waza of the Kansai region'. And in conclusion to all this one may very well say that Mataemon Tanabe, too, unconsciously contributed towards the perfecting of the judo of the Kodokan.

    There are also accounts of the match between the Kodokan and Fusen-Ryu (which I will attempt to find and post). Also - after the Kodokan adopted newaza, and let the Kosen group specialize in it - the Kodokan had to create something called the "Kosen Rule" stating that a shiai had to be 70% standing and 30% ground, because the Kosen group always just took the fight to the ground to win. This rule lasted unil 1943 I think.
    Russ St. Hilaire
    Kobukai Jujutsu

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    Originally posted by vadrip
    The russian influence didn't happen til the 60's or 70's, in fact they had a russian become 1st or 2nd dan in judo in the 20's or so then he developed sambo based on his judo training and several other different russian wrestling systems and other martial arts.
    I heard about the russian influence (maybe this guy from the '20s) in the Japanese TV show "Sekkai Fushigi Hakken" in which it was suggested that a russian wrestler and Kano-sensei had several bouts together and became good friends in the early days of Judo. Something about Kano throwing the wrestler but protecting the back of his head from striking the deck. The russian guy was very impressed at the gentlemanly nature of Judo.

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    I think you're combining separate events. The story about Kano and the Russian on the ship is generally dated to Kano's trip to Europe in 1889. So, if it happened, then it would have occurred between September 13 and October 15 of that year, as those are the dates that he was on the ship. (Or, more precisely, two separate ships, with a transfer in Shanghai.)

    More quantifiably, sambo pioneer Vasily Oschepkov joined the Kodokan on Oct. 29, 1911. He achieved shodan on June 15, 1913, and nidan on October 4, 1917.

    Sambo began influencing European judo in the very early 1960s, when the Soviets began regularly competing in international competition.

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