Nihon Jujutsu

The Jûjutsu is one of the most anciant Japan combat martial art. It’s Ju Jutsu an independent system with own training thematic.

What is the different between: Jûjutsu, Ju Jutsu, Ju Jitsu, Jiu Jitsu? Actually nothing. In the speaks of Japanese the sounds is Jujutsu but the English people started to use the name Ju Jitsu. Than to make it more difficult, German people and other nations are using it as Jiu Jitsu. All of them is the same. The matter is only that different nations use different pronounciations.

As we know, none of the modern Japanese styles is no older than 150 years. The founder of Judo is Jigoro Kano (1860 – 1938), he made his own system in 1882. The introduction of Karate was in may of 1922, on the exhibition of the Japanese Ministry of Education, by Gichin Funakoshi (1871 – 1957). Aikido was born in ~1930, when Uyeshiba Morihei (1882 – 1969) founded a school, which name was Kobukan.

The story of Jûjutsu is hundred of years old. The most famous class of the Japanese history was the samurais order. The fight with weapons – mostly with swords – was decided by unarmed close combat in many case. In the armed fight was a common situation that the warriors were nearly each others, and started to grappling. In this situation we must use very different techniques, so beside the weapon, the kicking, pushing, pulling down became important. Because of that the fighters’ techniques and preparations got more and more highlighted. These requirements drives to organising the system of Jûjutsu.

They practiced Jûjutsu in several schools which is different mostly in the method and purpose of executing. These known schools was example: taijutsu, wajutsu, torite, kempo, kumiuchi, kogosoku, hakuda, etc. One of these schools purpose was killing the enemy.

The name of Jûjutsu was developed from 2 words: jû – means softness, it’s actually letting go, adjusting to the conditions. The other word jutsu means art, method of the free executing of techniques. In the old times, schools (ryû) within the styles, distinguish by their names, usually the family’s name.

In Japan more hundreds of schools are known (which had has in the centuries), but the significant part of these were built to the spectacular techniques, without power, what save the expense of the real effeciency. The old armed fights gave to the practicioner combat skills, fastness, situation awareness, risk-judging experiences. With this knowledge they can choose the appropiate jutsu technique, when it was necessary. In Europe those spectacular techniques were spredding which contains difficult twists, throws and blocks. Different things were important to different schools. One of them was throwing, other one was using punches, maybe they were pushing sensitive points on the body.