Over at Ellis Amdur's excellent Kogen Budo blog, there is a guest post that looks at Nakada Shin Ryu Jujutsu. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.
Pre-War Jiujitsu in Europe
Before the second world war, jiujitsu was taught as an independent system throughout Europe. [1] There was no influence from arts like karate or aikidō; furthermore, jiujitsu was different and separate from jūdō. This jiujitsu may have been a bit stiff, and probably relied more on strength than we are led to believe when we read the books and newspaper articles from that period, but its practice still developed formidable fighters, who fought matches against boxers, wrestlers and sometimes just plain street fighters. Some of these matches were organized, while others were unruly affairs, the result of an impromptu challenge during what was intended to be a demonstration of the art. Jiujitsu had to prove its mettle and the record shows that it did.
Post-War Jiujitsu in Europe
After the second world war, jiujitsu waned in popularity. It had to compete with others arts like jūdō, karate, aikidō, taekwondo, kung-fu, to name just a few. And frankly, jiujitsu did not do so well against these more sophisticated, complete martial art forms, both in terms of popularity and effectiveness. This was not only the situation in my country, the Netherlands, but the same could be seen in countries throughout Europe. Jiujitsu became marginalized.
The old-timers mostly kept to themselves, training in small clubs, teaching the techniques that were now deemed old-fashioned and outdated. Others, who wanted to modernize jiujitsu, created systems with extensive curricula, and standardized methods of teaching and examination. It was not unusual for some teachers to train a bit in karate or aikidō, and add some elements of these arts to their jiujitsu. Their focus was on creating a system that could be taught over a several years period with a uniform curriculum, and a grading system equal to jūdō. What emerged was a form of European jiujitsu that had a lot of one-technique pattern drills. On the plus side, thanks to the efforts of those modern minded teachers, jiujitsu became more popular again and the numbers of practitioners increased. On the other hand, these changes often diminished the self-protection value of jiujitsu in a serious way, and thus altering the essence of the art.
My Own Path
I started training jiujitsu at the age of fourteen, in 1975. My first instructor of both jiujitsu and jūdō was Johan van der Bruggen, who had trained under Nakada Taiji, in Surabaya, Indonesia. Based on what he taught, our best guess is that Nakada was a student of Tenjin Shinyō-ryū (天神真楊流); he is not listed as a yudansha at the Kodokan. There were actually a surprising number of Tenjin Shinyō-ryū practitioners who settled in a number of areas throughout the world in the late 19th century and early 20th century, founding independent schools that shared much the same curricula: something very similar to early jūdō, along with various kata practices as well. Van der Bruggen also studied with Koizumi Gunji and Kawaishi Mikinosuke, well-known pioneers of European jūdō. Van der Bruggen used Kawaishi’s system of teaching jūdō.
In 1987, I began training in Kano-ryū jiujitsu with Tony Hughes, a student of James Hipkiss. Hipkiss was a student of Koizumi Gunji (and to a lesser degree, Abbe Kenshiro). He was dissatisfied with the increasingly sportive direction of postwar jūdō, and attempted to preserve the jiujitsu and jūdō he had learned from Koizumi as one art.
After a few years, I began training in Shinkage-ryū jūjutsu (真蔭流), from Archibald Johnson. Shinkage-ryū is one of the most widely used appellations among Japanese martial arts. This particular ryūha, created in the Meiji period, was founded by Imaizumi Hachiro (今泉八郎). Imaizumi studied Sekiguchi Shinshin-ryū jūjutsu (関口新心流) and Kusunoki-ryū kenpō (楠流拳法) from Imaizumi Ryūsetsusai Tomoaki, later taking his teacher’s family name. He later studied Tenjin Shinyō-ryū under Iso Mataemon and Araki-ryū bōjutsu & torite from Taiboku Kuranosuke (大木蔵之進), a vassal from Iyo-Matsuyama province. In 1883, Imaizumi became a police instructor in Shitaya, Tokyo. He founded the Enbukan dōjō. He died in 1906. The Shinkage-ryū that Johnson taught was a typical Meiji era jūjutsu, mostly stand-up arms-length grappling, with take-downs rather than jūdō type throws, and locks and pins.
After establishing my own dōjō, I continued to seize the opportunity to train in other systems. Most notably, I attended many seminars with Henry Schubert, from Germany, who had lived in Japan for a considerable time, and fortuitously, lived right down the street from the Inoue family, the headmasters of Fusen-ryū jūjutsu. He studied extensively with them and after returning to Germany, adhered to what Inoue sensei told him, enthusiastically spreading what he had learned.
Not for everyone
After these many decades of training, my own jiujitsu developed into something different, almost by its own will. It is not a style I “created;” rather, it “came into being.” It is a combination of all the older forms I’d learned, most notably the Shinkage-ryū and Fusen-ryū, as well as Kano-ryū.
One more encounter had a very significant effect on the development of my current practice. Some years ago, Ellis Amdur came to Holland to teach a very intense week of Araki-ryū torite-kogusoku. One thing he said really stayed with me: “Araki-ryū is one kata.” Although I never became his formal student, these words inspired me to rework everything I had learned. During his visit, Amdur sensei rather informally taught one set of five brutally simple kata from the Araki-ryū torite curriculum, entitled Gohō no Dan. He later gave me permission to use this set as I saw fit. Thus, a small portion of Araki-ryū, filtered through our own perspective, is part of our curriculum. We distilled all of this down into five kata for jiujitsu, each of them rich in content and information, informed also by my experience as a jūdōka.
After training for some thirty years, it became apparent to me that what we did had become different from other schools of jiujitsu. I decided to name the style after my first teacher’s school and since he had already passed, asked his son (his legal heir) for permission to do so. He graciously granted me permission. I wished to pay full respect to my first teachers, who gave me the physical grounding upon which everything since was built. Therefore, I named my current school, Nakada Shin-ryū.
The ultimate question, though, is this: Does it work against a resisting opponent? I’ve taught this compact system to Security Liaison Officers, and others who need effective techniques at close range, and they report that it has been very useful to them in the course of their work. We have only a few people training, all of them long-time practitioners of budō. We are not to be found on the internet nor do we advertise. Our training is not for everyone. It is not because the training is overly tough nor is the system is very difficult to learn. It is not for everyone because it is boring. When one trains in the essence of an art, stripping away everything that is not necessary, you are left with very little material to work with. That is difficult for a lot of people: for most, I dare say. On the other hand, it makes a few of us very happy. Besides that, since we train for the real world, we have to be practical, and thus we get by with only a few kata.
Five kata for jiujitsu may not seem like much, but with all the variations possible on several levels, there is still quite a lot to train. Besides jiujitsu, we have a few iai kata as well as kata for tantō (single edged dagger). The kata provide structure and context, and they each contain rudimentary techniques. Having said that, the kata contain a lot more than is obvious at first sight.