I am often asked by people the question “What is Jujutsu?”
Wow what a cup of tea this question is! Before we begin our journey on tea tasting we must first empty out our tea cups to the last drop. We do not want any of the old, leftover tea inside the cup so when I start pouring in my flavor of tea, there will be no mixing of the flavors. If the cup is completely empty you will be able to get a good taste and good idea of what I am sharing at this moment in time.
Well our journey starts in Japan a few thousand years back. You see, when people went off to battle or war they brought their weapons, their armor, and their mind. On the battlefield your opponents (the enemy or bad guys) also wore armor. Now when the two armies met out in the middle of the battle field they first would use their weapons. If the opponent got around the weapon or if the jujutsu kaisen mahito broke or was dropped, then they would have to use their empty hand. Now in Okinawa this was called Karate. But back in the day in Japan it was called Jujutsu. Before we can understand what jujutsu is, lets first break down the word jujutsu and learn what it actually means.
Ju in my mind feels like a Concept. A concept if you look it up in a dictionary says idea or thought. So this means that the first half of the word ju-jutsu (JU) is the idea part.
The idea behind this meaning of Ju is “to be gentle”, “to give way”, “to yield”, “to blend”, “to move out of harm’s way”. But Ju is only the concept or idea, it is not an action.
Jutsu is the principle or “the action” part of Ju-Jutsu. In Japanese this word means science or art.
Science is the understanding of how, why, where and when something works.
Art means the type of method that is used. For instance, the art could be the format of how you move your body or how you posture your body while moving during confrontation. So the meaning of Jutsu can also stand for war or something very serious and violent in nature in terms of fighting in a war. It can stand for a way to preserve your own life. So when you put the two together and it becomes Ju-Jutsu.
We now have what I feel or know it as the art or science of giving way by way of crippling or killing your opponent. In my opinion, Jujutsu is a very complete martial art. What this means is in Jujutsu we have many different skills or little methods of martial arts, like a mixture of different fighting philosophies that blend well together that helps make Jujutsu such an effective fighting method back then on the battle fields of Japan and here in modern times on the streets of the USA. In Part 2, Sensei Peter Freedman will discuss many of the different aspects of Jujutsu and why it is such a powerful martial art.