Posted by: Prizewriter
Into the West: The search for Traditional Ju Jutsu - 01/25/08 03:27 PM
Quite a few years back, as is my way, I went to a Ju Jitsu class. It was a World Ju Jitsu Federation class. I thought it would be good for my Aikido, and would be interesting to learn! I went on to the WJJF website, bought one of their books and read about the martial art of the Samurai… or so I thought.
Things started going wrong from the first class. The instructor asked me for money straight away (never a good sign). It was expensive too.
A while into class, I notice advanced students doing some weapons forms. Some were using Sais. Now I always thought that Sais were weapons used in the Ryukyuan prefecture. They were not the weapon of choice for Samurai. Something did seem right about the whole set up.
I went home, done a bit more study into the WJJF and its founder Robert Clarke, and went to a few more classes. Turns out I wasn’t studying what I thought I was. It wasn’t Ju Jutsu; it was a modern self defence class labelling itself as JJ for marketing purposes.
Now I could go on about the dubious nature of orgs like the WJJF, but there would be no point. Plenty of people go to these classes and get great benefit from it and enjoy it. Power to them.
The reason for the above tale is to use it as a context for the question of this thread:
How rare is Traditional Japanese Ju Jutsu in the Western world?
I ran a poll on here a while back to see how many people had trained in traditional JJ. Not many had. So it got me wondering: How rare is it to find trad. JJ outside of Japan?
Now I am aware that modern Budo arts such as Judo, Aikido, BJJ, and “modern” JJ styles are popular in today’s world. But I want to talk about traditional Japanese Ju Jutsu here.
For the sake of this post, the criteria for traditional Ju Jutsu will be systems considered as part of the Koryu (e.g. Kito Ryu, Yoshin Ryu, Daito Ryu etc….).
Any posts welcome.
P.S. I love Judo. I love Aikido. I think BJJ is great. But there are any number of threads (heck, even dedicated forums!) about those topics. I would appreciate if this thread could be about Traditional Ju Jutsu, as defined above.
Many thanks and any (legit) comments appreciated.
Things started going wrong from the first class. The instructor asked me for money straight away (never a good sign). It was expensive too.
A while into class, I notice advanced students doing some weapons forms. Some were using Sais. Now I always thought that Sais were weapons used in the Ryukyuan prefecture. They were not the weapon of choice for Samurai. Something did seem right about the whole set up.
I went home, done a bit more study into the WJJF and its founder Robert Clarke, and went to a few more classes. Turns out I wasn’t studying what I thought I was. It wasn’t Ju Jutsu; it was a modern self defence class labelling itself as JJ for marketing purposes.
Now I could go on about the dubious nature of orgs like the WJJF, but there would be no point. Plenty of people go to these classes and get great benefit from it and enjoy it. Power to them.
The reason for the above tale is to use it as a context for the question of this thread:
How rare is Traditional Japanese Ju Jutsu in the Western world?
I ran a poll on here a while back to see how many people had trained in traditional JJ. Not many had. So it got me wondering: How rare is it to find trad. JJ outside of Japan?
Now I am aware that modern Budo arts such as Judo, Aikido, BJJ, and “modern” JJ styles are popular in today’s world. But I want to talk about traditional Japanese Ju Jutsu here.
For the sake of this post, the criteria for traditional Ju Jutsu will be systems considered as part of the Koryu (e.g. Kito Ryu, Yoshin Ryu, Daito Ryu etc….).
Any posts welcome.
P.S. I love Judo. I love Aikido. I think BJJ is great. But there are any number of threads (heck, even dedicated forums!) about those topics. I would appreciate if this thread could be about Traditional Ju Jutsu, as defined above.
Many thanks and any (legit) comments appreciated.