History

One of the things that make the martial arts a fascinating subject of study is the history behind the art.

Jiu Jitsu began as a mainly wrestling style of combat with techniques designed for combatants wearing armour. As a result the large leaping and kicking movements found in many other arts ( such as Tae Kwon Do ) are not used in Jiu Jitsu, but rather techniques include throwing, joint locking, striking, choking, and pinning, as well as the defenses against all manner of weapons.

Jiu Jitsu then, is an all encompassing combat system directed at allowing the combatant to defend against anything from the single untrained assailant through to a group of trained combatants.

Over time, the art was adopted by various groups of people who took different aspects and developed them much further than before. Karate developed the striking aspect, Aikido the locking and balance aspect, and Judo the throwing holding aspects. All have their fundamental origins from the ancient Jiu Jitsu techniques, and as such Jiu Jitsu is sometimes referred to as the 'Mother Art'.

Ancient History of Jiu Jitsu

The Samurai were the officers of the Japanese army, who in turn were the young sons of high ranking families. The Emperor Kammu built the Butokuden (Hall of the Virtues of War) as a formal school for the officers of the Japanese army who became known as Samurai.

Jiu Jitsu was developed around 792 A.D., as a system of martial techniques to be utilized by the Samurai to allow combatants to fight at close quarters on the battlefield in an effective manner. During the 12th century, the Emperor was overthrown and approximately 400 years of civil war followed. During this time, Jiu Jitsu was continually tested and refined on the battlefield.

Although Jiu Jitsu techniques had been used for centuries, it was during the Edo period (1603 - 1868) that Jiu Jitsu developed into a systematic art taught by numbers of masters. Tokugawa Ieyasu had brought peace to Japan by forming the Tokugawa military government with it's hierarchical social structure but with the end of war, combat became less important in Japanese culture and martial arts styles were markedly altered, with styles now tending towards unarmed combat. Systems were created based upon the grappling techniques of the previous armed systems and this became known as Jitsu.

The end of the Edo period was the beginning of the Meiji Restoration. This was another civil war. It was aimed at returning the power from the Shogun to the Emperor. In1873, the government brought the rigid social structure to an end and prohibited the Samurai from wearing swords in public. The Samurai in general were disgraced ( many then became ronin ) and the Emperor then passed a law banning the practice of the martial arts that the Samurai had pioneered. This, together with sweeping social changes in Japan, led to a vast decline in the popularity of Jiu Jitsu, although the recent offshoots of Judo and Aikido (not associated with the Samurai) began to gain in popularity. As such Jiu Jitsu almost became lost to the past, but some of the masters refused to stop, and practiced in secret or travelled to other lands. This is the first occasion that Jiu Jitsu came to Britain. After World War II, the occupation forces prohibited the practice of the martial arts and this ban was not revoked until 1951.