Extract of Jujutsu History
The word jujutsu, to use the older nomenclature, is written with two ideographs, the first ju, meaning “to obey, submit to, weak, soft, pliable”; and the second jutsu, meaning “art” or “science”. The use of the first character is intended to imply that jujutsu relies for its triumphs not upon brute strength but upon skill and finesse, the ability to win by appearing to yield. Thus in jujutsu the opponent undermost may have the other at his mercy, though to the novice he may appear to be defeated. Jujutsu is the art which every samurai under the feudal regime was compelled to learn, and it was often a point of honour among the higher-minded ones, if attacked by a vulgar opponent, whether with or without a weapon, to try first to overcome him by means of jujutsu before drawing their own swords. Authentic stalwarts such as the redoubtable Chobei of Bandzuin, the Father of the Otokodate of Yedo, and the equally formidable Funakoshi Juyemon whose astounding exploits against tremendous odds are so dramatically described by Lord Redesdale in his Tales of Old Japan, were clearly adepts in jujutsu. The word otokodate means a man of chivalrous spirit or one who takes up the cause of the weak against the oppressor. A synonym is kyokaku.
Nowadays, however, jujutsu is no longer a monopoly of the military class, and the various dojo or schools in the larger cities render it possible for any respectable person to practise it. The fees charged in my day were astonishingly small, the principal school in Japan, then as now, the above-mentioned Kodokan founded by the late Dr. Jigoro Kano, collecting but fifty sen a month, or say a shilling at the then current rate of exchange, from every pupil, while those who held the grade of shodan or first grade and upwards paid nothing since they attended in the capacity of teachers, as they do today. It is another characteristic of this cult that its members may not make a public display of their art for money. Thus for the most part all competitions were in those days virtually private functions, admission being by invitation, and jujutsu gossip did not then figure in the sporting columns of the native press like boxing and wrestling in America and England, though ample space was allotted to reports of the sumo matches during the season. Similarly kenjutsu or kendo (fencing) is held in equally high esteem. However, the passage of time has brought about a good many changes in the domain of publicity, so that today the periodical judo championship tournaments are to all intents and purposes public displays and are widely reported in the native press. But in my day the etiquette observed in relation to both judo and kendo was appreciably stricter, and I remember how on the occasion of a smoking concert at the old Gaiety Theatre on the Yokohama Bluff, two Japanese fencing instructors of my acquaintance who had agreed to give a display refused to do so on ascertaining that money was being taken at the doors and that the concert was not being given for a charitable purpose.
The origin of jujutsu, like so many other things Japanese, is traced back to the mythological age, the gods Kajima and Kadori having, it is said, availed themselves of the art for the purpose of chastising the lawless inhabitants of the eastern provinces. But from then until the time of the Hojo regime (say from the twelfth to the fourteenth century) no special school (ryugi) had developed. Later, however, the various methods employed by physically inferior persons in defeating physically superior antagonists were carefully elaborated until eventually many distinct ryugi, sects or schools, came into existence. The suggestion that Chin Gen-pin or Chuen Yuan-pin of the Ming dynasty of China introduced the art into Japan is not generally credited, and in any event it seems certain that it owes its present perfection almost entirely to Japanese exertions. Jujutsu is but one of the names by which almost one and the same thing has been connoted: kempo, yawara, kugusuku, kumiuchi, and now judo are all slightly different applications of identical principles. Irrespective of the eclectic and predominant modern system of judo evolved by Dr. Jigoro Kano above referred to, the best known schools of my day not all of which exist today were the Kiraku-ryu, Takenouchi-ryu, Yoshin-ryu, Shinnoshindo-ryu, Tenjin Shinyo-ryu, Sekiguchio-ryu, Shibukawa-ryu, Asayama Ichiden-ryu, Kyushin-ryu, Kito-ryu, Ryoishinto-ryu, Arataryu, Shimmei Sakkatsu-ryu, etc. I was first introduced to the Tenjin Shinyo-ryu which is an amalgamation of the Yoshin-ryu and the Shinnoshindo-ryu. The founder of the Yoshin-ryu was one Akiyama Shirobei Yoshitoki, a physician of Nagasaki. He had been to China to study, and there learned under one Haku-tei or Pao-chuan three te or tricks of jujutsu. The principal features of the art as practised in China were kicking and thrusting. Yoshitoki fully mastered these three te, together with twenty-eight differentkassei-ho or means of resuscitation. Returning to Japan he taught the art to his pupils, but discouraged by the paucity of tricks at their master’s disposal the majority abandoned their studies before they had acquired proficiency. Yoshitoki then sought to improve his art, and it is recorded that he retired to the Temmangu Temple at Tsukushi for a hundred days and there finally succeeded in increasing the number of his te to 103.
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