History of the BJJ Belt system.

great video.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ-Y7Ynjv1E&feature=player_embedded"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ-Y7Ynjv1E&feature=player_embedded[/ame]

its interesting how the belt system used to be almost exclusively a representation of teaching skills not fighting ability or experience. The stories (some might say allegations but the guy seems to know his stuff) of the Kodokans efforts to basically co opt BJJ in its early days are new one's to me, very interesting.

 

He comes across sincerely but I'm hesitant to agree with several things, there are a number of those allegegations you allude to. Noticeably the points conversation at the end.

The Gracie's created a point system that surrounded the principles they believed in with their art, to say they were against it and it was forced by outsiders seems fallacious.

Side note, agree about the blackbelt teacher/fighter. We have a lot of blackbelt fighters, though most now opt for an all black belt rather than white band.

 

its not really a big deal to me whether the gracies ever condoned or participated in competition with points, certainly not as big a deal as the kodokan trying to bring them into the Judo fold, but to what point system created by them exactly are you alluding, they have always seemed pretty consistently opposed to point systems in my opinion.

I think belts as representatives of skill and experience is better than as representatives of teaching skills, I am not saying the Gracies only had malicious intent with it but having such a complicated instructor based grading system just seems like a way to make it easier to set up franchises and control who is teaching the art, not surprising as in those days the rivalry between different BJJ gyms against each other and the Luta Livre schools was very heated. Also teaching skills are a very individualistic thing why shouldn't you be able to learn a fighting system because that's not a skill you possess. In my experience the white band no white band on your black belt isn't adhered to very much any more.

 

The points system that award points for advancing positions, 4 for back mount etc. This is their points system.

I have been reading this week about the origins of BJJ and its ties to Judo and Fusen Ryu. Regarding your interest in the Kodokan Judo, were you aware that Kano came from a traditional Jujutsu background, went off on his own with some top students and trained hard with a limited number of techniques (throws) and then there was a massive challenge match, run by the Police to find what system they should use for training, and Kano's guys swept the board, making it the number 1 martial art at the time?

They pretty much swept the board, with the exception of a couple of draws, and were the top dogs for a while, until these guys from Fusen Ryu came along and challenged them, and turned the tables completely, kicking their butts. Kano's school then decided that they needed to study Ne Waza and Judo turned to focus on this almost to the exclusion of Nage Waza, and for many years was all on the ground, eventually the points system (Judo pts) was adjusted to make it more Throw orientated to keep it exciting for the fans. This is something of an 'absorbing' of the Fusen Ryu here.

A notable example of what happened to Fusen Ryu but not to BJJ was with Tani http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Tani

Tani was a young (and very small) fighter that used to fight in the UK in one of those 'take all comers' type events, fighting people from all sorts of backgrounds, he was undefeated for many years, eventually a representative from Kodokan (may have been Kano himself) visited the UK to promote Judo and look for a Judo rep (just like he tried with Gracie) and Tani signed up

http://www.britishjudo.org.uk/the-history-of-judo

So that decision for Tani to stop brawling and create a school, and it being Judo due to that honorary belt, vs Gracie to keep the faith to BJJ is why most folk have heard of BJJ and not so many about Fusen Ryu, absorbed by the machine..

 

but when was this developed and used by the Gracies exactly.

Fairly common knowledge yes.

The Fusen Ryu thing is interesting because I was going to say did the Kodokan try this with other similar grappling styles that accepted the endorsement instead of rejecting it like Helio and Carlos and have now just been forgotten. Apparently one of the Gracies (can't remember who) claimed BJJ is more of a direct descendant of fusen ryu than Judo but many other people seem to struggle to find any verification that fusen ryu looked anything like BJJ groundwork/Judo Newaza.

 

Hmm, are you saying that there is Fusen Ryu in BJJ or Judo? And if so, what from Fusen Ryu do you think there is?

 

http://martialarts.stackexchange.com/questions/1242/is-there-any-documentation-of-newaza-in-fusen-ryu

http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=87066&p=2157377&viewfull=1#post2157377

sounds like someone from Fusen Ryu was good at groundwork and proved this at the Kodokan forcing them to look more closely at there own ground skills, not that the Ryu its self was particularly notable for it's newaza.

 

Yeah, that's essentially it. There was an instructor of Fusen Ryu who had a personal interest in ne waza, however Fusen Ryu itself contains exactly none. At all. So there isn't any Fusen Ryu in BJJ or Judo, which is what I was getting at.

 

yea I am not seeing any evidence to make me question whether all BJJ belt linages stop at Kano.

 

As far as I understand it the techniques in traditional Jujutsu schools are often very similar, for example an armbar or triangle, or wrist lock can be found all over different schools.

The difference with Judo was the way they were trained, in that they took out a number of small joint manipulations, striking and gouging and made it 'sporty' then they trained in a different way from the other traditional schools with a lot more of a scientific approach, lots of drilling, randori etc.

However they focused on Nage Waza, not Ne Waza, doesn't mean that Kano didn't know Ne Waza from his previous training, but he hadn't drilled it and used it in Randori, whereas the Fusen Ryu guys did to this.

So the weakness with traditional jujutsu was that they didn't train as hard to win (within the rules that favored Judo too..) especially when wins were given by throws, not that they couldn't throw, but they didn't drill the same.

Fusen Ryu was the same concept but from the Ne Waza perspective. So I am not saying there are any techniques unique to Fusen Ryu, but they were trained with a single mindedness akin to Kano's Judo that made them 'win'.

Kano then incorporated these guys into his school so that they learnt Newaza with the same level of skill, and then, realizing that the ground games were becoming boring in 1925 changed the points system to favor throws, Kosen Judo on the other hand decided to maintain the old system and has a higher focus on Ne Waza.

 

But how did Tanabe develop this interest and skill in newaza before ever going to the Kodokan if there was no one else teaching it, its foreseeable he could just have figured allot of stuff out by messing around with training partners but he sounded pretty proficient.

 

I was under the impression that Tanabe was only one guy, and he squared off against a few Judo guys in single matches and did well, then they had a school challenge, implying more than just he was skilled.

Be interested to see a list of Fusen Ryu techniques though, since you say there is no groundwork in them can you share them with us?

 

I think that you will hear some arguments that the ne-wazza in Fusen-ryu was not the same as was seen in Kodokan (and it's sub-group Kosen). There is info suggesting that some was taken from Fusen-ryu but that this was not a whole sale change in what Judo was doing. There will always be arguments about what happened but again I have not heard of Fusen-ryu dominating Judo as much as a match or two was lost. Perhaps you need to check a few more sources and see what else has been written.

LFD

 

No, being familiar with the methods and history of a range of classical systems, I really wouldn't agree with that at all. For one thing, good luck finding a triangle choke in many schools... while there will be some things that are semi-standard, there really are some major differences from one school to another.

Er... no. Both the major schools that Kano trained in previously (under the teachers he learnt from) featured a lot of randori, which is where Kano took it from. Kano's reasons for adapting the way he approached the study wasn't about sport, it was about a more holistic philosophy and the education of the Japanese public. But the training methods weren't that different to a range of other Ryu-ha around.

Well, they focused on a range of things, including nage waza, but also including atemi waza, katsu, jime waza, kansetsu waza, and so on. But there wasn't much ne waza in Tenjin-Shin'yo Ryu (although there was a fair bit of suwari waza, which had some transitional aspects moving into ne waza), and even less in Kito Ryu, which is where the bulk of the nage waza comes from (the kansetsu and jime waza are primarily from Tenjin-Shin'yo Ryu). Fusen Ryu has no ne waza at all in the waza of the school.

Er... again, no.

And once again, no. Tanabe (a Fusen Ryu instructor), due to his small size, found that he ended up being underneath in randori, and as a result, worked on fighting back from there, ending with him being given a nickname of "Ne Waza Tanabe", and he was the one who brought some of his training partners and students to face Kano's guys, but although he was a Fusen Ryu instructor, the ne waza wasn't Fusen Ryu, as it doesn't have any.

I haven't heard any account of the story where he adopted the students... what he did was to bring Tanabe in as a guest instructor. Oh, and Kosen Judo (High School Judo) wasn't there to "maintain the old system", it was because staying on the ground is a more controlled situation, with less chance of injury (from a throw), so it was kept for the High School students.

Yeah, Tanabe was, from all accounts, fantastic and something of a prodigee when it came to jujutsu and, specifically, ne waza. Many of the things he did were his own creation, coming partially out of necessity, and partially out of his constant experimentation, similar to the way BJJ developed itself.

 

From what I remember, judo didn't absorb FUSEN ryu but began sending people to train in areas with strong newaza as newaza was popular in some areas as certain folk styles of wrestling. Then eventually judoka beat the FUSEN ryu competitors and began groundwork development. Which may explain why maeda was good at groundwork combined with his travelling and training with catch wrestlers.

 

Fusen Ryu are quite a private school. Their entire syllabus is about a dozen kata, and they don't show them to outsiders. There are a few embu of a couple of groups, though, but it should be noted that they are showing variations, rather than the actual kata.

Here's a favourite:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNH58RzuwPs"]Fusen Ryu Enbu. - YouTube[/ame]

Another group is found here:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NIC3lrw9Ws"]Seibukan Fusen Ryu Jujutsu at Meijo Daigaku 7-4-10 - YouTube[/ame]

There isn't any ne waza in Fusen Ryu. This information comes from a friend of mine who has contact with the Ryu themselves. Tanabe was brought in as a guest instructor for the Kodokan, but he didn't teach Fusen Ryu to them.

No. Tanabe was brought in as a guest instructor at the Kodokan.

I know this gets a bit confusing, but there was no match between Fusen Ryu and Kodokan, there were matches between Kodokan students and Tanabe's students (and Tanabe). Tanabe was a Fusen Ryu instructor, but they weren't using Fusen Ryu.

 

Its a different topic but I think this is an important point to remember when your in one of those Basically Just Judo arguments (although those are rarer now), its clear the Kodokan's travelling carny fighters couldn't not have picked up stuff from the European styles they spent so much time going up against, I find it very unlikely that Meada's game was purely judo based by the time he reached Brazil.

 

Also do you mean folk styles in other parts of Japan or around the world, would be good to see some reading material on this. Judo Newaza has always appeared to me as having a shot of somthing resembling CACC running through it, this could explain it.

 

Especially considering how long maeda travelled round by himself. He had to have trained with someone and catch wrestlers were everywhere.

But yeah different topic. I doubt complex groundwork originates from anywhere except civilian styles and lots of randori

 

I'll see if I can find it but I remember reading that it was from Japanese styles of groundwork in random areas. They weren't considered jiu jutsu but rather native wrestling styles.