The beginning of wisdom is admitting one's own ignorance.
I really like that saying, I think but am not sure it's Confucious, and I think it applies here.
Karate or ju jitsu
- Thread starter cliveanstey
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I really like that saying, I think but am not sure it's Confucious, and I think it applies here.
Having the Gracie name attached makes no difference as that's just one attempt at "branding BJJ". See Tony Dismukes' write up on the self policing in BJJ. BJJ might be politics galore (such as the Gracie franchising) but it does a helluva job of upholding its standards across the board with some disparity between self-defense vs sport BJJ.
You are not going to use the Gracie name as part of your school's name or advertise that you teach Gracie Jiu Jitsu without the Gracie's OK or you will face a major lawsuit if you're caught doing so.
You're misinformed about this. When Rorion Gracie started teaching in the U.S., he did trademark the term "Gracie Jiu-Jitsu" and aggressively threatened legal action against anyone else who used the term. Usually this was other members of the extended family. However the trademark was invalidated after a legal battle with Carley Gracie, who had been teaching BJJ in the States longer than Rorion had. Since then, "Gracie Jiu-Jitsu" is no longer a trademark and you can't be sued for using it. However during the period when Rorion had the trademark, the community settled on the generic name "BJJ". Individual family members wanting to promote their own brand will often do so under their individual name, such as Renzo Gracie Jiu-Jitsu or Carlson Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. (These names may be trademarked) By default, this means that the main people left using the "Gracie Jiu-Jitsu" name are those connected to the Torrence academy, I.e. Rorion and his sons. However they no longer have any special legal rights to the name. If you want to open your own "Gracie Jiu-Jitsu" academy tomorrow, then no one has standing to sue you for it. Someone might show up to beat the crap out of you in front of your students for being an unqualified fraud, but they won't have grounds to sue.
I see. By Carley Gracie I take it you mean Carlos who I believe created the Gracie style along with his brother Helio. Also, from what I've heard there is a lineage of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu that is completely independent of the Gracies. The person who started it learned from the same source as Carlos and Helio, he went to the same school, but he never taught under the Gracies or claimed to be a part of them or to be associated with them in any way other than having trained alongside Carlos and Helio.
The Jiu Jitsu School I train at now does use the Gracie name and it was cofounded by one of the Gracies. As far as I know they are legit and I don't think they would get away with using the name or mentioning it on their website about being cofounded by a Gracie if that weren't the case. A fraudulent school, if not sued, can and most likely will be exposed if they're not the real deal.
Luiz Franca. Tony Dismukes mentioned him in post #28. I think in the early days there were some stylistic differences but with the internet and everyone pumping out DVDs and books, everyone is training and learning from each other.
There have unfortunately been a few cases of this happening. It's usually a person claiming a belt they don't have (black belt) but I even saw a video of a purple belt tearing apart a guy who decided to give himself a black belt and open his own school.
No, I mean Carley Gracie, who is one of Carlos's sons and Rorions cousin.
Yep, that would be the Luis França/Oswaldo Fadda lineage. Both that lineage and the Gracie lineage originate with Mitsuo Maeda, but França never trained alongside Carlos and Helio. França learned directly from Maeda and taught Fadda, who taught students in poor neighborhoods while the Gracies were marketing to wealthier clientele. Carlos Gracie studied either directly under Maeda (as claimed by the Gracie family) or under Donato Pires, a student of Maeda (as suggested by an examination of the timeline in question). Carlos then taught his brothers, who helped to develop and spread the art. (Carlos, Helio, and George were the main three family members from the first generation involved in developing and spreading the art, but in the next generation there were many, many more family members involved.)
Interestingly enough, if you watch practitioners from the França/Fadda lineage, you can't distinguish them from practitioners of the Gracie lineage. That's because the art really evolved as a group effort of a whole community over several generations as jiu-jitsu practitioners from different schools fought, sparred, trained with, learned from, and stole techniques from catch wrestlers, judoka, lutre livre practitioners, samboists, and each other. Ideas which worked for one school were quickly copied by other schools.
I'm sure they are legit. May I ask what school you train at?
Oh yes. Unless they keep a really low profile, they will be discovered and publicly shamed eventually.
Interesting. I did know that Carlos and Helio went to a Jiu Jitsu school in Brazil that was owned and ran by a Japanese instructor from Japan. I take it that would be Maeda. So Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has its roots in the Japanese art.
They are called Gracie New Jersey and they have a website at www.gracienewjersey.com
Steve
Mostly Harmless
if you're interested in a detailed, academic history of BJJ, check out slideyfoot's article on his blog:
slideyfoot.com | bjj resources: History of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ)
Yep. Roots in Judo, actually, since Maeda was a Kodokan black belt. However at the time Judo was sometimes marketed as Jiu-Jitsu (or Kano Jiu-Jitsu), since westerners were more likely to have read about Jiu-Jitsu.
Head instructor is a 5th degree under Royler. Very legit.
From what I know Judo evolved from Ju-Jitsu not the other way around. In ancient Japan Ju-Jitsu was a grappling based art that was sometimes used by the Samurai. At the time there were many different Ju-Jitsu styles and schools each of which specialized in a particular aspect of the art. One style might specialize in leg sweeps, another style might specialize in shoulder throws, ect. Over time all the styles combined together into Judo which was more of a sport than a combat art. However, old school Ju-Jitsu was still widely practiced and it, along with many of the other martial arts, spread throughout the world to all different continents and countries including Brazil where Gracie Jiu-Jitsu was formed. In Brazil its spelled as "Jiu-Jitsu" not "Ju-Jitsu" with an extra i. So anyway, the Gracies then took their art to the USA and started a school in Torrance CA and from there it further spread.
Steve
Mostly Harmless
Photonguy, if you want to know about the history of BJJ, read the link I shared earlier to slideyfoot's blog. Please tell me what you think of his article. I'd like to hear your opinion.
You're right but Tony wasn't saying the other way around. Maeda, who taught judo to the Gracies, was one of the pioneers of judo but it was known as Kano Jiu-Jitsu at the time. If it already had the name Judo then what we practice today could very well have wound up being called BJ instead of BJJ.
Where's Chris Parker when you need him.
Steve
Mostly Harmless
It's brazilian koryu, though, sooooo....
Syed01
Yellow Belt
If you didn't practice kickboxing than I would already tell you to learn Karate. It's not like Karate is all about striking as grappling and holding techniques are encrypted in kata. And in order to know the application of kata one has to master bunkai which will take years after years to learn. So in this case the quicker direction would be Jujutsu. But you can still look into the point karate (sports karate) of WKF/JKA in order to get some benefits of footwork, timing, precision strike etc.
None of the Ju-Jitsu I've seen was as specialized as you suggest here. There may have been (may still be) some that were that specialized, but I'm not aware of them.
Chris Parker
Grandmaster
Shaking his head... just so you know...
Okay...
Judo (Kodokan Judo) evolved from two specific forms of jujutsu (not "ju-jitsu"), Tenjin Shin'yo Ryu Jujutsu and Kito Ryu Jujutsu, with influence from another few systems on top. Originally referred to as Kano-ha Jujutsu, this became (evolved into) Kodokan Judo.
Er... while, on the surface basically sorta correct, it is still far from the reality of jujutsu's development throughout Japan's history... at least partially because there was no single line of development.
No. Different systems would have their own specialisation, sure... but it was more about particular specific contexts, which may lead to an emphasis of one aspect or another... but not to the point where X-Ryu focused on "leg sweeps" or any other such thing.
No. Two systems went into the make-up of Judo. That's it. And while Judo developed into a full-blown sport, that wasn't the real intent to begin with.
Er... huh? No, "old school jujutsu" was not "still widely practiced"... it still isn't... and, particularly with the ban on martial arts following the Japanese surrender in 1945, numbers shrunk again. Judo gained much of it's following by being part of the school system, for the record. And, no, these old school systems didn't, along with many other martial arts, spread throughout the world...it's really only been in the last couple of decades (since the late 70's, early 80's, really) that such systems have started to be seen and taught outside of Japan...
As far as it coming to Brazil, that was an early form of Kodokan (Judo)... commonly known at the time as Kodokan Jujutsu or Kano-ha Jujutsu... not any of the "old systems" you're implying.
That was a common transliteration (both with and without the "extra 'i'") in the early 20th Century... for the record, the hiragana for jujutsu is: じゅじゅつ... to give that a literal phonetic reading, it's "ji-yu ji-yu-tsoo"... which can be rendered as "jiu jiutsu"... "jiu-jutsu"... "jujutsu"... "jyu jyutsu"... "jyu jyutu"... and more. The most standard today is the Hepburn form, which is "jujutsu"... so no, it's more that that was the common transliteration, whereas today, a different standard is used.
Actually, the name "Judo" was already in use. Some representatives of the Kodokan, in the West, at least,actually were making an effort to distinguish Judo (a modern, scientific, civilized art worthy of a progressive 20th century nation like Japan) from Jujutsu (a primitive, thuggish vestige of the medieval age)*.
*(Adjectives in parentheses indicate the ideas presented by these Kodokan evangelists, not my own views.)
One complication was, there were already various publications in the West describing the deadly secret art of Japanese jujutsu, so that was what audiences wanted to see. Some Kodokan representatives just shrugged their shoulders and went with it. Also, practitioners (such as Maeda) who wanted to engage in professional challenge matches could evade censure from the Kodokan by not using the Judo name.
As an aside, I have not yet found definitive information on what exactly constituted a violation of the Kodokan rules in this regard, since a number of official Kodokan representatives (such as Kimura) did openly engage in challenge matches. Was it getting paid that made it a violation? Was it including strikes rather than just grappling? Was it a political thing, where who you were and how you performed determined what you got away with? Was it a Japanese thing where a rule was expressed by implication rather than being explicitly spelled out? I've seen numerous statements that challenge matches or prize-fighting was against Kodokan rules, but I have yet to see the text of any official rule on the subject.
Well, if we're going to be phonetic about it, the Brazilian art in its homeland is pronounced something like "Zh(y)oo-Zheetz", with variations according to regional accents. The addition of the B or G to BJJ/GJJ is something that started in the U.S..
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