Practical Martial Arts Association

In his oldest work (Shanghai Municipal Police - Manual of Self-Defense 1915), W.E. Fairbairn includes the following tidbit towards the end of the book in a section that matches situations and techniques (no picture or further description is in the manual): (2) Your opponent attempts:- (A) To strike you with his fist... (3) With baton, strike forearm a smart blow from below. Those of us who practice certain forms of Jujutsu probably understand a number of reasons why the baton may be down in such a position as to allow this strike - most obviously, it is not particularly civil for police to begin many interactions with weapons in offensive positions (the photo below is from the UN Police Manual 2015, showing the sort of position we are talking about). So one reason to have a less than ideal starting position may be context - especially when equipped with weapons one cannot simply get the weapon between themselves and a possible aggressor, let alone cocked into an aggressive position as ...

When I started Jujutsu in 1992, there wasn’t an easy way to find out what other people actually did in terms of martial arts, especially from the comfort of one’s favourite chair.  Books on the subject, much like today, were either quite general, too specific or a loose collection of drivel that relied on the cover and title to get you in (clickbait for books – readbait?) and best left on the shelf altogether. This is one of the reasons for this blog – I try to give Jujutsu people a small insight into what other people do – and it is for this reason there are not all that many articles purely on Jujutsu on a blog called Jujutsukan. Strangely enough, Jujutsu people are at an advantage over many others when it comes to understanding what other people do – because what other people do is a lot more uniform than what comes under the umbrella term of Jujutsu (especially in terms of Japanese arts). If someone tells you that they do Judo, BJJ, Kendo or the like you can immediately have a ...

In Jujutsu, how do you gauge the 'level' of any action?  What makes a technique that of a 7th Dan rather than a 7th Kyu?  Embedded in the kata of Jukendo (of which I know next to nothing) is an important component of the answer - that the skill with which you are operating is in many ways a function of the quality of your opponent's actions. In the details of the Jukendo kata, we see the following: In the first kata, an opening appears and you skewer your opponent.  Ideally, of course, timing, distance, footwork, technique, targetting, posture etc are all entirely correct.  This is the pattern of the first four kata. In the fifth kata, the opponent essentially performs the same action as the demonstrator in the first kata, in the same manner,  that is to say, timing, distance, footwork, technique, targetting, posture etc is all entirely correct.  The demonstrator then defends the original technique.  The opponent does not over-commit, does not do ...