The Origins of Jujitsu or Jui-Jitsu

Webster's Dictionary defines jujutsu as “an art of weaponless fighting employing holds, throws and paralyzing blows to subdue or disable an opponent.” This is not a bad definition of jujutsu, merely incomplete. To better understand jujutsu, it is necessary to look at its origins and the fundamental principles that underlie this comprehensive fighting system. Jujutsu's origins have been largely lost in Japan's prehistory. Even before the Samurai of ancient Japan existed, jujutsu-like combat forms were being developed and used in combat. The first records of combative grappling can be found shortly before 750 A.D. This is an historical and well-documented fact. Another fact is a samurai was seldom, if ever, without a weapon. That leads to the question of why a group of warriors who were always armed would devote the time and considerable effort and energy to develop a system of purely empty-hand combat. Obviously, they wouldn't. Classical jujutsu maintained a balance of weapon and empty-hand methods with a great deal of overlap and blending. Therefore, jujutsu was designed originally as an auxiliary skill to be used in conjunction with weapon arts, not as a replacement.

Samurai of pre-Tokugawa Japan were required to be adept in a vast range of combat skills. Kyujitsu, kenjutsu, bajutsu, sojutsu and kumi-uchi were among the basics, these being the techniques of the bow and arrow, the sword, horsemanship, the spear and grappling in armor. These skills were part of a vast array of bugei or martial arts, essential to combat in feudal Japan. The term bujutsu also means martial arts but came into use much later and tends to be used today when listing such non-sport arts as kenjutsu, iaijutsu and aikijutsu. Under a daimyo (a regional authority) or within a family clan, instruction was offered to retainers or family members in the weapons and skills of the Samurai as taught by their particular ryu. While ryu is usually translated as school or style, there were often many different arts taught within any one ryu. In order to adequately prepare their members for combat, the ryu instructors would have needed to teach a wide variety of bugei. Most ryu contained some jujutsu methods.

Terminology varied from system to system, taijutsu, wajutsu, torite and yawara being just a few of the names used for various jujutsu-like systems. Regardless of the name used, the underlying principle remained the same with jujutsu being a secondary study and a part of the whole, not separate unto itself. It was not until the Edo period (1603-1868) that jujutsu became a generic term used to describe this wide range of techniques. This period is considered the “Golden Age” of jujutsu, when the major schools flourished and technique was brought to its highest level. With the coming of the Tokugawa shogunate and its control of Japan at the beginning of the 1600's, battlefield combat largely became a thing of the past. As the need for standing armies and the mobility required by war declined, many ryu began to reflect this change. Samurai were able to concentrate on one aspect of combat and attempt to master all aspects of it. As duels to the death were frowned on by the government, the severity of the techniques began to lessen and the ability to control or disable an opponent using non-lethal methods became respected and valued.

During the more than two hundred years of the Tokugawa rule, a general peace existed in Japan. Shut off from the rest of the world and tightly controlled and regulated to the smallest detail, Japanese society was prevented from returning to its former state of civil unrest by a Big Brother government that severely punished nonconformity and political activism. It was during this period that jujutsu reached its zenith and much of what we recognize as jujutsu today was developed.

While the most popular translation of jujutsu (or also seen as Jui-Jitsu or Jiu-Jitsu) remains “the gentle art,” a more apt translation would be "the art of flexible adaptation". jujutsu requires the ability to yield or flow with an attack or offer momentary resistance in order to break the attacker's balance and/or momentum and thereby control, disable, cripple, or kill the opponent. True jujutsu is achieving the maximum effect with the minimum effort.

jujutsu was the first Japanese martial art to be widely recognized in the West. Until the 1950s, jujutsu was the art of choice for law enforcement and military organizations worldwide. It is the confusion of combat systems with martial sports that allowed jujutsu to be superceded by karate, kung fu and tae kwon do in the public eye. Ironically, it is the perception of jujutsu as a sport today that has thrust it back into the public eye. While many jujutsu techniques are used in the cross-style tournaments so popular on pay-per-view TV, the chokes and joint locks seen in the UFC and Pride are just scratches on the surface of traditional jujutsu's wealth of knowledge.

Modern jujutsu, with its emphasis on ground fighting, bears slight resemblance to the traditional techniques of kumi-uchi as practiced by the Samurai.

Conversion from Japanese to Brazilian:

In the mid-1800's in Japan, there were a large number of styles ("ryu") of jujitsu. Techniques varied between ryu, but generally included all manner of unarmed combat (strikes, throws, locks, chokes, wrestling, etc.) and occasionally some weapons training. One young but skilled master of a number of jujitsu styles, Jigoro Kano, founded his own ryu and created the martial art Judo (aka Kano-ryu jujitsu) in the 1880's. One of Kano's primary insights was to include full-power practice against resisting, competent opponents, rather than solely rely on the partner practice that was much more common at the time.

One of Kano's students was Mitsuo Maeda, who was also known as Count Koma ("Count of Combat"). Maeda emigrated to Brazil in 1914. He was helped a great deal by the Brazilian politician Gastão Gracie, whose father George Gracie had emigrated to Brazil himself from Scotland. In gratitude for the assistance, Maeda taught jujitsu to Gastao's son Carlos Gracie. Carlos in turn taught his brothers Osvaldo, Gastão Jr., Jorge, and Helio.

In 1925, Carlos and his brothers opened their first jiu-jitsu academy, and Gracie Jiu-Jitsu was born in Brazil.

At this point, the base of techniques in BJJ was similar to those in Kano's Judo academy in Japan. As the years progressed, however, the brothers (notably Carlos and Helio) and their students refined their art via brutal no-rules fights, both in public challenges and on the street. Particularly notable was their willingness to fight outside of weight categories, permitting a skilled small fighter to attempt to defeat a much larger opponent.

They began to concentrate more and more on submission ground fighting, especially utilizing the guard position. This allowed a weaker man to defend against a stronger one, bide his time, and eventually emerge victorious.

In the 1970's, the undisputed jiu-jitsu champion in Brazil was Rolls Gracie. He had taken the techniques of jiu-jitsu to a new level. Although he was not a large man, his ability to apply leverage using all of his limbs was unprecedented. At this time the techniques of the open guard and its variants (spider guard, butterfly guard) became a part of BJJ. Rolls also developed the first point system for jiu-jitsu only competition. The competitions required wearing a gi, awarded points (but not total victories) for throws and takedowns, and awarded other points for achieving different ground positions (such as passing an opponent's guard). After Rolls' death in a hang-gliding accident, Rickson Gracie became the undisputed (and undefeated!) champion, a legend throughout Brazil and much of the world. He has been the exemplar of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu technique for the last two decades, since the early 1980's, in both jiu-jitsu competition and no-rules MMA competition.

Jiu-jitsu techniques have continued to evolve as the art is constantly tested in both arenas. For example, in the 1990's Roberto "Gordo" Correa, a BJJ black belt, injured one of his knees, and to protect his leg he spent a lot of practice time in the half-guard position. When he returned to high-level jiu-jitsu competition, he had the best half-guard technique in the world. A position that had been thought of as a temporary stopping point, or perhaps a defensive-only position, suddenly acquired a new complexity that rapidly spread throughout the art.

In the early 1990's, Rorion Gracie moved from Brazil to Los Angeles. He wished to show the world how well the Gracie art of jiu-jitsu worked. In Brazil, no-rules Mixed Martial Art (MMA) contests (known as "vale tudo") had been popular since Carlos Gracie first opened his academy in 1925, but in the world at large most martial arts competition was internal to a single style, using the specialized rules of that style's practice.

Rorion and Art Davie conceived of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. This was a series of pay-per-view television events in the United States that began in 1993. They pitted experts of different martial arts styles against each other in an environment with very few rules, in an attempt to see what techniques "really worked" when put under pressure. Rorion also entered his brother Royce Gracie, an expert in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, as one of the contestants.

Royce dominated the first years of the UFC against all comers, amassing eleven victories with no fighting losses. At one event he defeated four different fighters in one night. This, from a fighter that was smaller than most of the others (at 170 lbs, in an event with no weight classes), looked thin and scrawny, and used techniques that most observers, even experienced martial artists, didn't understand.

In hindsight, much of Royce's success was due to the fact that he understood very well (and had trained to defend against) the techniques that his opponents would use, whereas they often had no idea what he was doing to them. In addition, the ground fighting strategy and techniques of BJJ are among the most sophisticated in the world. Besides the immediate impact of an explosion of interest in BJJ across the world (particularly in the US and Japan), the lasting impact of Royce's early UFC dominance is that almost every successful MMA fighter now includes BJJ as a significant portion of their training.