The Kano Society

Bulletin no 16   -  December 2006                              

The Bulletin - Editor’s comment

The Historical Development of Kodokan Judo

Syd Hoare

 A lecture presented by Syd Hoare 8th Dan to the European Judo Union Foundation Degree Course at Bath University July  2006)

It is said that history is written by the victorious and in our case the victor was Kodokan judo which triumphed over jujitsu (although the jujitsu of the time was virtually on its knees anyway). However in researching this article I have looked at a variety of sources including Japanese ju-jitsu, Sumo and Japanese Budo and tried to present as balanced a picture as I could.  It is an area in which more useful research could be done.

Judo is a complex art. It is:- 

(1) technically and tactically very complex (100+ throws etc).

(2) it takes a long time to get good at it.

(3) it is physically and psychologically hard – heart-rates at sustained 180-200 beats per minute in randori. 

(4) it comes from a successful  oriental culture (2nd largest economy in the world).

(4) its principles and terminology are Oriental.

(5) its roots go back many centuries.

The complexity of judo came home to me when I was teaching judo a couple of years ago and a female 1st Kyu asked me about her technique.  She was also a former member of Britain’s Olympic rowing team.  After we had talked about her technique for a bit she said, “You know, after six months in rowing I knew everything there was  to know  yet here I am a year and a half into judo and I feel that I have only scratched the surface”.

So as top coaches and judo leaders we have a lot to learn and that is not a bad thing I think. We do a sport that is more than a sport and we should know and be able to talk about all aspects of it both in our dealings with judo people and those outside it such as government officials who finance us.  Also if you only know what is and not what was you cannot know what could be.

In its widest historical context Japan is an offshoot of the much older and more massive Chinese culture.  During the last two thousand years or so Japan adopted the Chinese writing system, its systems of government, its Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist philosophies, its martial arts, its architecture and so on. Chinese influence has been massive.  However by the direct sea route Japan is some five hundred miles distant from China and although the Korean peninsular is much closer the straights between Korea and Japan are about 115 miles across. The journey from China to Japan would have been months long and dangerous. (Compare the distance of the English channel which is only 21 miles from mainland Europe but which has acted as a very effective barrier even up to recent times).  The absorption of Chinese culture was very slow and at the same time Japan was sufficiently remote enough to develop into a quite distinct oriental culture of its own over this long period.

 In most countries the introduction of horses and metal technology including firearms greatly changed the way men fought. It is recorded that the horse was introduced  into Japan about 284AD but no doubt there were earlier unrecorded instances of horses brought to Japan. The use of the horse for hunting and fighting quickly  spread among the court, the aristocracy and the warrior groups. Up to the introduction of firearms by the Portugese into Japan about 1543 the chief skills of the warrior were archery, riding, spear and sword fighting. Archery and horse-riding combined and the great power of mounted archers is well illustrated in the Mongol hordes whose empire spread as far as Europe. Up to about 1543 when the use of firearms quickly spread  mounted archers (kisha) dominated the Japanese battle scene. After that date they quickly ceased to be important since a single bullet could bring  down a horse. One can still see displays of mounted archery in Japan where it is called Yabusame. The combination of horsemanship and archery could also be seen in other activities such as Kasakake and Inuomono.

 Unlike most of the other martial skills the  gun could be quickly mastered and did not require great stamina or strength. Thus guns came to be used by physically smaller warriors and foot-soldiers.  Firearms and cannons also changed the way castles were built and more importantly from our point of view led to the lightening of armour that the warriors wore since the bullet could not be stopped.  The emphasis was forced to switch to faster and more nimble movement on the battlefield.

A typical early Japanese battle formation had in the front line groups of standing archers and artillery.  While one was firing the other was reloading.  The second line of the army consisted of long spear men and the third line was short spearmen.  As in Europe the weapons with the greatest reach were used first then down to medium reach and finally to hand to hand combat with or without bladed weapons long or short.  As always it was left to the foot soldiers (the infantry) to do the final mopping up. There were however a certain amount of battles where the best man/men of one side would take on the best man/men of the other side.

 The introduction of the firearm in 1543 roughly coincided with the long series of wars that resulted in the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa clan in 1603. Once Tokugawa Ieyasu had won he introduced a rigid system of control of the warrior houses in a checker board system of friendly and not so friendly clans over the whole country and he enforced a kind of hostage system known as Sankinkotai where the families of the feudal lords were regularly obliged to travel to and stay in the capital known as Edo (now Tokyo).  This rigid control by the Tokugawa family lasted for about two hundred and fifty years and the period is called the Edo period.  Now this just trips off the tongue but just think how long a period of peace that actually represented. Foreigners were excluded and Japanese were not allowed to travel abroad. If they did travel abroad they were executed on return. During that time there were no internal conflicts to speak of and no external threats except perhaps the Christian missionaries in the early Edo period.  Paradoxically it was during this long period of peace known as the Edo period that the martial arts and other arts flourished in Japan.

As part of the social control by the Tokugawa military government (Bakufu) society was divided into four strict groups –  farmers, artisans, merchants and the ruling elite warriors (samurai). Minute regulations were imposed on each group. However the samurai were allowed to carry two swords and enjoyed certain extra legal rights that the other classes did not. For example samurai had the right to cut down anybody of another class without any penalties. It is estimated that the population of Japan towards the end of this period was about 30 million and of that number some 1,800,000 were samurai equalling roughly six percent of the total - quite a large standing army!

 The samurai’s status varied quite a bit.  The lower samurai were foot soldiers, guards or clerks but many of the upper ranked samurai were landed aristocrats and some became scholars and bureaucrats.

 As part of their compulsory education the Edo period samurai were required to train regularly in the Rokubugei or six martial arts along with a literary education which was mostly Confucian based.  Bunburyodo was the Samurai catchword. This means the dual way of the sword and culture. You can understand the meaning if you think of the English saying - the pen is mightier than the sword.  The samurai were expected to be more than warriors. The Rokubugei were:- sword (kenjitsu), spear (sojitsu), horse (bajitsu), bow (kyujitsu), gun (hojitsu) & the hand to hand techniques of jujitsu. In addition they studied Heigaku or military strategy. There were of course other martial arts but the above six were the main ones. Despite the existence of the gun the sword remained the premier martial art and probably more time was spent on practising that than the others. However bearing in mind their administrative duties and the number of martial arts they had to train at one wonders just how much time they managed to spend on even one. There is not a lot of information on the day to day life of the Edo period samurai and their training regimes. (= a research topic)

 There also emerged a code of conduct for the samurai known as Budo or Bushido – the Way of the Warrior.  This was derived from the clan laws (Bukkeshohatto), codes of conduct and moral laws of the warrior class.  These developed from the Kamakura period onwards (1185 – 1333) and culminated in the Edo period where they formed a type of ideological support for the samurai class and the feudal control by the military government.  In this ideology loyalty, sacrifice, faith, a sense of honour, etiquette, integrity, simplicity, thrift, warlike spirit and honour were stressed.  Loyalty was much extolled but it has to be born in mind that this was a commodity in very short supply during the long centuries of war that preceded the Edo period. Zen Buddhism also played a part in the mental training of the warriors especially in the pre-Edo period when death was often the outcome of their profession. Zen was a sort of preparation for the possibility of death.

 I have provisionally translated Ju-jitsu as hand to hand techniques rather than unarmed combat because many of the jujitsu schools employed short weapons such as knives (tanto), and many of their defences were against such weapons.  The techniques of jujitsu were striking (kicks and punches etc) known as atemi-waza/ate-waza/atemi, throws, strangles, restraints, joint locks and binding the enemy once  knocked down.  Jujitsu was also for fighting in confined or crowded quarters such as corridors or small rooms where swords were not that effective.

 However these martial arts did not just spring into existence in the Edo period they all have quite long histories.  Jujitsu is generally reckoned to have sprung from the earlier armoured grappling known as kumi-uchi and the later kogusoku which was regarded as a kind of halfway house between sword-fighting and hand to hand combat. Kumi-uchi in turn sprang from sumo – then known as Sumai.  (This word comes from the Japanese verb sumau which means to struggle or compete). It is not the sumo we now see on the TV.  Early Sumai included kicking and punching and throwing moves.  (The main method of winning in modern sumo is pushing the other out of the ring but this only came into sumo about 1700).  Sumai, the native wrestling style of Japan, has a really ancient history and is mentioned in the ancient myths of Japan where it was first called Chikara-kurabe (trials of strength).  As with many forms of wrestling elsewhere in the world sumai was practised as a form of exercise for battle and for use in battle.  Such sumo in Japan was called Renbu-sumo. Greek wrestling was similarly used. So the chain of development of judo was chikarakurabe - sumo(sumai) – kumiuchi – kogusoku – jujitsu – judo. However this was not a linear progression where one superseded the other.   Sumai was the oldest in origin and was used by the military clans for battle from about 1200AD (bukke-sumo) but then later developed on its own to the form we see now on TV. Sumai had various forms.

 Japan under the Tokugawa Shoguns was divided into 281 Han or feudal domains.  Each Han ran its own samurai school and they had their own teachers. The jujitsu teachers who came under the control of the Tokugawa secret police (metsuke) taught their own style of jujitsu in other words what they individually thought would be most useful in battle.  It is estimated that about 80% of the Han taught an individual style of ju-jitsu.  By the end of the Edo period there were 179 recorded styles of jujitsu with a small number of styles employed by more than one Han. Compare this with the 745 styles of Kenjitsu sword-fighting.

 The earliest ju-jitsu school is said to be the Takeuchi-ryu of around 1550 although it did not use the word ju-jitsu to describe what it did.  Around that time sword fighting and armoured grappling were pretty well mixed up.  The Takeuchi school used the words Kogusoku  and Koshimawari to describe what it did. The use of the word koshimawari is interesting since literally it means hip-circling and perhaps describes throwing movements. As  mentioned Kogusoku was the midway point between sword-fighting and later jujitsu.  The Muto (swordless) techniques of the Shinkage school are also believed to be kumi-uchi/kogusoku type techniques. Early jujitsu styles were Kyu-shin-ryu, Arakiryu, Sekiguchiryu, Fujiyamaryu, Yoshiokaryu, Koguriryu, Shinshinryu and so on. Most of the later styles sprang from these early ones. The names of these schools derive for the most part from the founder’s name.

There is one little hiccup in this history and it occurs in the shape of a Chinese known as Chin Gen Pin (born 1587) who came to live in Japan where he died in 1671.  He was a poet and potter of some repute but it is said that he taught Chinese boxing - Chuan-fa (Jap. Kempo) to three men Miura, Fukuno and Isogai who later founded their own ju-jitsu schools.  (One of them – Fukuno - is the forerunner of the Kito-ryu which is one of the two jujitsu styles that Judo is based on). Some claim that Chin Gen Pin was the founder of Japanese jujitsu but this is disputed.  For a start the dates do not tally.  It seems much more likely that jujitsu evolved from the earlier kogusoku, kumiuchi and sumai.  After all there must always have been a need for knowledge of what to do in close combat.  Some knowledge of the older Chinese martial arts such as  Chinna (jujitsu equivalent) and Shuwaijiao (judo/sumo equivalents) – these are modern pronunciations/the ancient pronunciations are not known – must have crept into Japan but there is no record of this. 

It is not known exactly when the word ju-jitsu came to be used – it gradually appeared from about 1600 onwards which is quite late and may have been hastened by the compartmentalisation of the Rokubugei (six martial arts) training of the peacetime samurai. As most of you know JU means soft, compliant, gentle, flexible, non-resisting and JITSU means techniques.  The word JU has a very long and ancient Chinese history.  In the classic Chinese I-Ching or Book of Changes there is a section which talks about opposites being contained within each other or being reflections of each other.  Soft is  hard, strong is  weak and so on.  As an example water is said to be soft and yet it can sweep or wear away mighty rocks.  A later Chinese classic of the 12th century BC -the Sanlun military classic (Jap.Sanryaku) - has a line which is the real origin of the martial word JU where it says JU YOKU GO SEISURU which means the yielding can overcome/defeat the hard.  Example - snow on the willow which bends to shed its load rather than breaking. The word JU-JITSU or techniques of compliance gradually emerged.  According to Jigoro Kano there were other names for Jujitsu such as Taijitsu (literally Body Techniques), Yawara (an alternative pronunciation of the character Ju), Torite etc. It is noteworthy that it is the only martial art that does not have a name that is purely descriptive as in KEN(sword)-JITSU or SO(spear)-JITSU. Ju-jitsu or judo is named after a principle rather than a weapon.

Gradually armour was used less and less and jujitsu became more technical and divorced from the battlefield reality. For example it was practised in bare feet which would not have happened in battle. It’s practice in lighter clothing and in a dojo (first on boards then later on straw mats) allowed for much greater development of pure technique. Its masters taught in secret/private and they described the principles of their art in Shinto, Buddhist, Confucian or Taoist terms. The use of religious or ideological principle to describe the innermost secrets of these arts was pretty common – perhaps it was a form of dressing up of what would otherwise be quite a brutal business. Attitudes to the bugei varied depending on where the particular exponent was coming from ie whether they were Strategists, Confucians, ‘professional’ martial artists or Yoseika (cultivators).  Generally speaking the Confucians and Strategists used their martial arts for country and person building (hitozukuri & Kunizukuri) while the professional martial artists (the specialist teachers) were more religious (Buddhist) in their exploration of the mind and the search for ‘truth’.  The Cultivators on the other hand tried to make their martial art more a form of health giving exercise and recreation.  These strands persist even today.

To be continued ...

Bulletin 16 Part 2