Brazilian Jiu Jitsu: a historiographical fraud

Authors:

Ronald Condé, Escola Superior de Polícia Civil (ESPC) Curitiba, Brazil, ORCID: 0000-0001-7517-0141, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract:

For many contemporary practitioners, Jiu Jitsu is not a martial art of Japanese origin, but an Indian one. This occurred because a misinformation was propagated for a long time by the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Confederation (CBJJ) website, on which it was taught that Jiu Jitsu arrived in Japan was due to the expansion of Buddhism across the Asian continent through Indian monks. Materials and methods. The bibliographic survey consists of articles from electronic journals, books and interviews related to the subject under consideration. The method used for this study was the literature review. Results. Jiu Jitsu was born as a martial art of the warrior aristocracy dedicated to military activity and not to contemplative asceticism [12]. Just like Jiu Jitsu, Shuai Jiao and Ssireum, which may have been probably some of its matrices, were geared towards the warfare [10,11], oriented, consequently, by the tradition of action rather than the tradition of contemplation. Regarding the modern Jiu Jitsu, it has never changed nationality. It has been only singularized in its emphases due to the impacts of the competitive rules adopted in Brazil, mainly due to the absence of external pressures on the State of Brazil, as took place in Japan, in order to ban its practice and force the masters to readapt its principles according to the western paradigms of the New World Order [2]. Conclusion. It can be surely inferred that the BJJ brand and related ones are based on a historiographical fraud that has been doing a disservice to the multiple sectors dedicated to the study and improvement of Jiu Jitsu, by disconnecting it, in an oblique way, from the tradition from which it came and belongs to, so they cannot know the truth about the Martial Art which they practice.

Keywords:

history of martial arts, jiu jitsu, hand-to-hand combat, Japanese culture, Mitsuyo Maeda.

DOI: 10.14526/2070-4798-2022-17-3-107-109.

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