I am going to begin part two of this post by summarizing the major points from Part one. We went into a lot of detail in that first part in order to clearly dispel the myths and confusion about the historical and more importantly the technical origins of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. From the evidence it is abundantly clear that Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is a form of Jigoro Kano’s Jiu-jitsu or “Judo” and certainly not a secret classical Jiu-jitsu method taught to Carlos Gracie by Count koma “as an act of friendship and against imperial degree”.
When I make the above statements about the origins of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, the Judo people usually nod their heads in total agreement or smugly say: “I told you so”. I then have to remind them, that the rest of that historical inquiry outlined in the first part of this post series, reveals to us that what passes for “Judo” today bears very little resemblance to the philosophical and highly practical “Budo”/ martial art system Kano developed and envisioned.
“Sacrilege” they may howl indignantly but the truth of the matter is that all the objective historical sources make it clear that Kano was, at the least, highly ambivalent about developing Judo as a sport. Moreover, it is well documented that Kano was categorically against the sportive aspects of Judo being over emphasized or, worse yet, being given primacy over the other aspects of his system. Don’t just take my word for it; let’s look at what an internationally known figure and serious Judo practitioner, like Russian president Vladimir Putin has to say on this topic:
“Unfortunately, judo’s creator did not live to see the time when judo would become a truly universal sport, popular around the world among children and adults, boys and girls, men and women. Millions of people of all ages practice judo. It would seem that his dream has come true. But Jigoro Kano saw his system least of all as a sport, although he no doubt understood that the longing of young people for competition would invoke the desire to compare one’s strength with others and bring out the best in oneself. In his declining years, after attending a competition, Kano, very disappointed, gathered his students together and reproached them: ‘You fight like young bulls clashing horns. There was no refinement or elegance whatsoever in any of the techniques I saw today. I have never taught that kind of judo. If you are going to think of winning through brute strength, that will be the end of Kodakan judo.’
Today judo is mainly (in fact, virtually only) a sport. What we today call judo is far removed from what its originator had conceived and created. Jigoro Kano’s theoretical developments and philosophical musings find little resonance in today’s sport. We see only the tip of the ice burg, and only a tip that, under the influence of time, has changed its outline, acquiring new contours until it barely resembles the original form. Kano saw judo technique as a means to self-perfection on the path to achieving an ethical ideal. Today, alas, goals, points, and seconds have given primary importance, causing the sport much harm. And even in judo’s homeland, Japan, matters of prestige on the world tatami have pushed to the background the ideas that guided the great educator.”
-Vladimir Putin, from his book: JUDO, History, Theory, Practice
I came across Putin’s book and his thoughts on this topic only after I had conceived of and started work on this post. I had assumed that the problems with modern Judo were easier to see from the outside by those few people, like myself, that had a broad practical, non-sport based, interest in all the various incarnations of Kano’s art as well as a historical interest in them. However, as I looked deeper into it, I came across some even more interesting opinions and insights from within the orthodox Judo world.
For example, here is a quote from Geof Gleeson, one of the United Kingdom’s foremost authorities on Judo and author of: “Judo Inside Out” from which this quote was taken.
“Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, saw judo mainly as a social training for the citizen. Like many other foreign liberal educationalists, especially physical educationalists, at the turn of the century, he was a patriot and believed that a nation’s people should be prepared to defend their rights and privileges against any foreign oppression. To do that the citizen would need to be fit and his programme of physical education (which included judo) would help him do that. It was in this context that he taught judo as self-defence…
Also, like those same other national educationalists, Kano did not trust competition. He, like them, felt that too much stress placed on competition would produce people who were selfish, greedy, narcissistic and full of hubris; in short, as Herbert Spencer said, competition can re-barbarise the participant.”
Wow, that was a very harsh denouncement of the over emphasis of competition in sport and by extension, the sportification of Judo. I had not originally intended to use language anywhere near as strong in my criticism of the sportification of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and Judo but these warnings and powerful condemnations from the master himself where too important to ignore.
Furthermore, we should not forget that these warnings come from a man known as “the father of sport” in Japan. Therefore, he was no stranger to the positive benefits of sports but must have also seen firsthand the negative aspects since he was a professional educator and devoted so much of his life to the higher ideas of “physical education”.
These are important facts to remember that Jigoro Kano was responsible for introducing other sports, including baseball if I’m not mistaken, into Japan. He developed and promoted all kinds of sports and recreational programs aside from Judo. It was for this reason that he served government posts in their equivalent of the ministry of education and sports.
Therefore, this was part of the reason he was appointed to be Japan’s first representative to the IOC (International Olympic Comity). In fact, he was the very first member of the IOC from any Asian country. This would have been quite prestigious for both Kano and Japan.
This is important to clarify because the “sport apologists” within modern Judo and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu often point to Kano’s role on the IOC as proof that he must have been pursuing the sportification of Judo at the highest levels. I think this is simply a distortion of the facts; Kano was multi lingual and the most well-traveled Japanese statesman of his time. Furthermore, his specialty was sports, (not Judo which was his personal hobby and passion but not his official job), so of course he was the natural choice to represent Japan on an international Sports body and would probably have gotten the job even if had never heard of Jiu-jitsu.
By the 30’s he may have realized that he could not stop Judo from becoming an international sport even if he wanted to. However, his writings are clear that his Judo was to be the highest form of “physical education” while purely competitive “sports” in his experience could actually be the worst kind.
Once again, don’t take my word for it, the professor himself wrote and spoke about it extensively:
“Judo is not a sport. It is an art, a science and a way of life.”
-Jigoro Kano
Personally, long before I had ever researched Kano’s views on the topic, I held similar opinions. Opinions and philosophies that I thought were rather obvious and self-evident. I felt that while sports and competitions can be good things, and I’ve done my share of various athletic competitions, some things, like our real world self-defense systems are simply far too important to be degraded into silly games. Not only silly games but games left in the hands of the small minds and “meat heads” that don’t seem to be interested in anything else but silly games and crass ego gratification.
However, over time I came to realize that I seemed to be in the minority with these ideas, no matter what martial art I was studying. The comfort I got was to know that I at least shared the same opinions as someone as worthy of respect as Jigoro Kano and was therefore in very good company.
Moreover, this “sportification” or, as I would be forced to characterize as, the “degeneration” of Judo is one of the main reasons that there was and is so much confusion about the differences between “Judo” and “Jiu-jitsu”, and particularly about Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and its origins and relationship to Kano and his “Judo”.
The weird truth that took me a long time to discover and objectively verify, is that Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, at least in its complete “self-defense” form, is a hell of a lot closer to the original “Kano Jiu-do” then modern Judo is, despite Judo’s avowed and direct relationship to its founder Jigoro Kano. I found this really strange at first because while obviously similar, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and modern Judo still seemed light years apart on so many levels.
Let me be clear, I am not talking about the differences in the relative sport rules that unfortunately are the only things some people are able to understand, and allow to completely define what they do and how they think and use their…art. I am talking about the complete body of knowledge that is practiced, preserved and passed on in comparison to that equivalent body of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu knowledge, or at least the Brazilian jiu-jitsu version I sought out and was taught and imported to my home country of Canada for the first time.
Not that long ago, say circa 1920, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and “judo” were the very same things, they both began with the same body of knowledge that had been developed by Jigoro Kano and his direct or indirect followers. Most people more or less agree with this but then the conventional wisdom is that Brazilian Jiu-jitsu radically diverged from Judo because of all the technical innovations that the Brazilian Jiu-jitsu practitioners developed. While certainly true up to a point and especially in the area of refinement and adopting Jiu-jitsu to actual street fighting and Vale-tudo, it was nonetheless nowhere near as extensive an evolution as myself and other early practitioners where led to believe.
Over the years, I would come across old judo text books, long out of print and was surprised that they showed the same techniques that we thought had been more recent and exclusive developments of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Furthermore, “Russian” combat sambo (another branch of Kano Jiu-jitsu with obscured origins) had many of the identical self-defense techniques as Brazilian Jiu-jitsu did. Thus, there was an obvious historical and technical relationship between Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and Sambo. Yet most, if not all of these self defense standard methods appeared to have no connection to modern Judo because they were no where to be found in any training syllabus, text book or curriculum.
An increasing number of people started to realize that the historical development of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu was not so much about all the highly effective techniques and strategies that The Brazilian Jiu-jitsu people invented but of the huge body of knowledge that the Judo people simply abandoned, discarded or forgot!
Once again, the modern Judo people might say “I told you so” but I would have to remind them that this is nothing to be proud of, in fact it should alarm them. Personally I was horrified and this is no exaggeration, I literally felt betrayed. Who the hell had done this? To me, and I think any like-minded modern “warrior”, the idea of taking the world’s most complete and formidable system of unarmed combat that has the power to save lives and turning it into an mostly silly game of “kokas”, “yukos” and who touched who’s back slightly on the mat- is the “physical culture” equivalent of the fall of the Western Roman Empire!
I don’t believe I’m overstating this kind of loss. The fall of the Roman Empire set back the western world by 1000 years and literally re-barbarized its inhabitants. The emasculation and sportification of judo set self-defense technology back by generations. To put this in its proper context, how many people have been injured or even killed because they could not get access to this once prolific self-defense technology? That thought really does sicken me and makes me wonder what Jigoro Kano would have thought.
Europeans in the dark ages forgot how to build aqueducts and bring running water into their cities. Judo people only forgot things like the “technical lift”, the very essence of bio-mechanical elegance, efficiency and practicality. The “technical lift” that had probably saved countless people in real conflict (I count myself among them) was blithely forsaken. Why? For what? To be able to spend more time on kokas and yukos?
In the western European Middle Ages illiteracy became the norm. Things like the great Greek classics of Plato and Aristotle were nearly lost forever and someone finding a book probably would have used it to wipe his butt. In Judo entire bodies of knowledge like lower body submissions (leg locks) were abandoned like an illiterate peasant would discard a pile of books he could not use.
Judo people where becoming bio-mechanically and tactically illiterate. Each technique or self-defense method was like a word in a language. Judo’s physical vocabulary was being stripped bare like some kind of Orwellian athletic “new speak”!
“No striking allowed in a tournament”?-let’s just throw out the strike defense training despite it being one of the most important and basic aspects of self-defense and unarmed combat. “Ground action is stopped if you pick someone up off the ground”?-cool, we can just completely forget how to “pass a guard”.
And now for my personal favorite, “holding someone’s back on the ground for 25 seconds wins a match”?-no problem, we can just roll over and turn our back and lay there, like any completely scared and untrained person would do in a real fight! Then hope someone saves us (that someone being the referee in the sport context). Yea, great and the best part is we get to call ourselves “Black Belts” for doing it. Please, someone tell me I’m not the only one who thinks this is nuts.
In fact, when I outline this kind of devolution to lay people they often can’t fathom it, and say stuff like: “people really couldn’t be that stupid” and If they were why did nobody else talk about it? Therefore, I really can’t know what I’m talking about compared to these millions of Judo practitioners that think every thing is just fine. I mean no sane, rational group of people would just dispense with thousands of years of extremely important knowledge just to play games…would they?
Therefore, let’s continue with my trend of when I say something that seems controversial but is actually the obvious conclusion- you don’t have to take my word for it. Here is a quote from Michel Brousse, former member of the French national Judo team, from his introduction to the reissued edition of Moshe Feldenkrais’ classic book: “Higher Judo“.
“Its historical value is clear; the book contains forgotten techniques abandoned in recent decades because of the evolution of contest rules”
Brousse is being polite, I think, considering that I have already deemed this process a de-evolution and I truly believe that It was dangerously regressive. I would recommend Feldenkrais’ book to anyone interested in what kano Jiu-jitsu, or higher Judo was like. The book is entirely on ground work and appears as technically complete as the Brazilian Jiu-jitsu of the same period. It has leg locks, triangle chokes, guard passing and neck cranks. This might surprise some people, but by now it should not.
Now it may sound like I am attacking “judo” or insulting Judo people but that is not my intention at all. I am using Judo, (which by the way, I like and enjoy very much and have to say have encountered far less goofs and losers than in my Brazilian Jiu-jitsu experiences), as a case study. Judo makes such an important example because, as I’ve pointed out, it is the closest relative to Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and the best historical example of what can happened when a profoundly important body of knowledge is stripped bare and left as a hollow shell of its former self, against the express wishes of its founder, all in order to make a sport out of it.
This should be a frighteningly familiar cautionary tale for Authentic Brazilian Jiu-jitsu practitioners or anyone in the public interested in real life self-defense. Once a system has been taken over by narrow minded sport adherents the “warriors” may not get it back. Therefore, one of the points I want to make to the general public and perhaps to newer Brazilian Jiu-jitsu practitioners who are thinking of dropping out because they are not getting the real world training they need –don’t give up on us!
Now is the worst time to leave Brazilian Jiu-jitsu to its own devices. Instead, help save Brazilian Jiu-jitsu from itself, get more involved not less. Make demands of your instructors, and organization, to not only teach (which means they have to learn) relevant material but to “Belt” grade based on it.
If things get bad enough, and I believe they are well past this point, we might need stronger measures. You could refuse to go to their tournaments, (Don’t forget, tournaments are the major revenue generator for Jiu-jitsu organizations and some individuals-why do you think they are pushing it so much?), change schools if you have to, but don’t give up on the system. Perhaps the most important thing and the hardest to do, is don’t take or issue Belt rank for not learning authentic Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. This may sound extreme but I have done all of the above. There is a lot more to be discussed in this area but it needs to be saved for another post. For now let’s get back to what I have said about Judo.
It’s natural for Judo people to perhaps feel slighted by what I’ve written and jump to the defense of what they do. Loyalty is a great virtue, loyalty to your team, loyalty to your coach, your Dojo, your country even, are generally positive things and I applaud that.
Nevertheless, did you notice that I did not say “jump to the defense of Judo”, Because the deeper question is what exactly are they loyal to? I would also ask that question of sport Brazilian Jiu-jitsu practitioners. The usual and overly simplistic answer is “I’m loyal to Judo or Brazilian Jiu-jitsu” whichever the case may be. This kind of platitude just begs the question of what exactly those things are and how do you define them. In other words, what specifically is “Judo” or “Brazilian Jiu-jitsu” to you?
In the specific case of Judo we can ask: is that loyalty to the teachings and methods of Jigoro Kano that you are professing? I think from all the evidence provided here, from all the Judo authorities, that the modern Judo practitioner cannot make that claim. Yet they are still virtuously and fiercely loyal.
So the question remains, what are they loyal to? Are they loyal then to a set of competition rules? This clearly seems to be what is defining the practical content of their Judo. To me, the idea of being “loyal” to nothing more than a rule book seems pretty silly whether we are talking about Judo or Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.
Yet if we can step back for a moment away from the cultural glorification of sports and all the lofty but mostly hypocritical language that accompanies it, when we get right down to it- that’s all we are talking about, reducing an art, a science and a way of life to a game’s set of rules. What I find most humorous is that we are not only talking about being defined by a set of competition rules but by arbitrary rules at that!
Where did these rules come from? Were these rules dreamed up by some bureaucrats in an office somewhere and imposed on everyone else? Who put these bureaucrats in charge? Was there a consensus or an election? Were the Judo people even consulted or do they just blindly do what they are told so they can go to their tournaments for the sole purpose of getting an ego-fix? Anyone involved in major sporting events of any kind knows the answers to these questions.
Therefore, the more penetrating question is whether Judo is or is not more than a set of arbitrary competition rules? Most practitioners would again jump up to answer that of course it is more, much more. Ergo, the next natural and I hope revealing question would be: then why would you be offended or threatened by what I’ve written since I’m only critical of the competition rules replacing everything else.
The answer in my view must be that people are forced by the nature of arbitrary sport rules and competitive thinking to so closely identify with those rules as to regard them as something real and to not be able to identify with anything outside of them. Therefore, you are loyal to what you are told Judo is, not to what it was designed to be. Thus, at the risk of sounding overly existentialistic , we are allowing unknown and unaccountable bureaucrats and forces to define our reality. Welcome to the sport induced Matrix. Are you ready for the red pill?
Now here is the kicker, I want to make it clear that Kano never endorsed the “ippon” based competition rules! You got it, not only did Kano not want Judo to be turned into a sport; he certainly did not want it to be a sport based on the “ippon” rules that literally defines Judo today!
Do I even need to say it? Don’t take my word…
“The ‘sudden death’ concept that was and is the essence of these rules…is an out-dated feudal concept from Japan. Kano himself did not like this and much preferred the ‘best out of three points’ approach to a competition and it was this method of scoring that was used up until and just after his death.
By the 1930s the Japanese army had begun to push its bellicose nose into sport…The army preferred and imposed the ‘sudden death’ scoring on Judo because it manifested the ‘old samurai spirit’. So as a means to some defunct fascist ideal the 1-point terminal score may have had some value, but as a means of developing a morale and training ethos for a contemporary society it has no place and little value.”
-Geof Gleeson, from “Judo Inside Out”
Hence, letting people dictate what your art is or isn’t by turning it into some kind of sport , I believe is a kind of “mob mentality”, everyone else is doing it so you get swept up into it as well and turn your brain off. In my opinion, this is part of the “re-barbarization” process that the 19th century educationalists like Spencer and Kano saw in the over emphasis on competition for competition sake. Those same negative personality traits that appear in the individual also can become societal.
This might be a bit of a stretch, but I want to try and tie together these ideas of sport and how it can bring out the worst and not the best in people, along with Kano’s ideas about ethics and the role martial arts or Judo can play in society.
All we need do is take a look at the last hockey riots we had in Vancouver to see the negative effects of sports on our society. Yea, I would first point out that there is something seriously wrong with a large segment of a population that would let as undemocratic a government as we had ever had in Canada at that time (the Harper Conservatives) pass laws restricting your ability to vote and then even more infringing on your privacy and freedoms, all without that much protest and certainly without taking to the streets.
But come a loss of a hockey came, and they take to the streets in what is a well know mob mentality. The kind of mob mentality and negative social contagion that is also something I would suggest is a kind of spontaneous Fascism, where large groups of people feel they can impose their grotesque will against the social norms and the well-being of a community using violence and intimidation. These people really where “re-barbarized” by sport.
However, what I personally found most interesting and compelling about the shameful Vancouver hockey riots was that in this sea of mob violence appeared little islands of individual heroism. An individual, against terrible odds and at great risk to his own personal safety would stand up against the rabid mob in defense of another individual or even someone else’s property.
Sometimes they were badly injured for trying to do what was right but these were people who were able to maintain their individualism and humanity under the most extreme pressures to abandon it. As we saw from the numbers, this was a rare quality and I believe it demonstrates the defining characteristic of the “true warrior”. It certainly was not about trying to “win” something and doing everything you could to stack the odds in your favor.
How did these people develop these “warrior” qualities? I am not sure, but it is certainly worth exploring. I do believe that Jigaro kano wanted his “Judo” to be the vehicle for the development of this kind of person. I certainly want my Jiu-jitsu to be all about developing this kind of person. Therefore, we can understand fairly easily what the true purpose of of Kano’s Jiu-jitsu was and is.