Chapter Eight - Forget the Do give me a Jutsu
I took to ju jutsu like a duck to water. It had everything I wanted out of a martial art and included many elements I felt had been squeezed out of aikido.
The club I started at was run by a guy called Brian Devlin, ex army, hard as nails and a great guy. He wasn't a big man but he packed a punch and was all heart! In some cases quite literally. Like, for instance, when he had open heart surgery one Thursday and was taking the class again the following Thursday! Brian was what I term a real martial artist, someone who wasn't afraid to get stuck in and take a little pain as well as dish it out. And someone you really didn't want a fight with. But he had a good sense of humor and was always keen to help.
He ran his club with a firm hand and was happy to drive people to exhaustion to get that bit more from them. And he lead by example.
Brian had originally studied Goshin Ryu style ju jutsu but at that time was under Terry Parker banner and taught jukka Ryu. But he still retained certain elements of his previous system that he passed on to his students.
Terry was an older and apparently softer exponent of the fighting arts. But looks could be deceiving! Terry was, back then, about mid fifties and a sixth dan in ju jutsu. He was, outside of London, the main man in the South for the British Ju Jutsu Association. And he was successful enough to go full time as a martial arts instructor when I knew him. He was one of those charismatic people who you wanted to like and do things for. And along with Brian he became my main ju jutsu sensie.
The thing about ju jutsu is that unlike some martial arts it retains its essence as a fighting art, an effective and at times very violent one at that. It was ju jutsu that Jigaro Kano took and used as his template for modern judo. But judo is so shorn of techniques and content as to be only a pale shadow of the complete martial art ju jutsu is.
In the days of the Samurai, before karate, aikido and judo, there was only ju jutsu. But there were thousand’s of school’s each one different to the next. Some of these schools still survive and in some cases have given birth to more modern systems as well. Ju jutsu , as I said, is a complete art. It includes throws, locks, strikes, kicks, nerve holds, chokes, strangles, etc etc. Techniques are practiced standing, kneeling and laying down. When ever I am asked by someone ’what martial art should I do for self defense’, even now I still say ju jutsu. That’s not because its the most successful system or complicated, but because for the average person it’s the one they will get to grips with and be able to use for real the easiest!
Jukka Ryu Ju Jutsu came to Britain by way of the States. To be honest there didn’t seem to be much history to it, other than Ju Jutsu had gone to America and at some point Jukka Ryu had grown up out of it as a separate style. However as I progressed in the style I did learn that it’s main claim to fame was it’s practitioner's being able to take a hit. I once saw some footage of one of the American masters taking a three way simultaneous strike to the neck and throat by black belts who had just proved their ability to smash boards and bricks. It was quite funny watching him walk away unhurt while one of the guys studied his fist trying to figure out what had gone wrong. The other thing that became apparent was that on moving from America to the UK there had been the introduction of elements Preying Mantis kung fu in to the system.
Although I was doing Ju jutsu Thursday’s, then Saturday’s and Sunday’s I still kept my aikido class going too. In fact as I realized how some of the aikido techniques had been watered down I started to incorporate some of my ju jutsu in to the aikido classes.
It was not long before my aikido had a definite ju jutsu flavour to it. And the more I learned the more I realised how aikido had lost it's way. For some aikido goes beyond martial arts and embraces cosmic love and unity. But, as a martial art some aspects of it seriously sucked, and now I could see why! Time and again I saw how an effective fighting technique had been reduced to a shadow of it's former self. And so the 'do' of my system gave way to the jutsu of a more serious fighting art.
Over the next few years I trained hard and pushed on to purple belt. I learned sweeps, hip throws, wheel throws, shoulder throws, arm locks, ankle locks, head locks, chokes, strangles, how to fight blind folded, how to fight with one arm and a lot more. And I became a member of the Southern Area Display team.
I enjoyed being part of the display team, because unlike some of the displays I had been involved with before they were diverse, well thought out and quite often funny as well as dramatic! Terry normally opened the display's with a little speech and a few moves to set the scene. He would often say something like, 'and today you will see strikes', and with that someone would jump up and rush him only to be felled by a well aimed punch or chop. He would then go on to throw someone, then lock them up and finally would suggest the audience might see a few unusual techniques, and with that someone would grab him in a bear hug from behind. Terry would slip a hand back and apparently grab his assailants groin, the hapless attacker and would groan and sag and Terry would walk away as he threw two ping pong balls in the air, normally to quite a round of laughter from the spectators. The one thing you never saw Terry do was hit the floor, he had broken his back as a stuntman and risked being paralysed if he did a break fall!
As I had a reasonable knowledge of sword techniques, and Terry was happy to use my ‘expertise’. I taught one of the other guys a few moves which we showcased at some of the demo’s. It went down quite well, especially when we made the occasional cock up. Like the time my partner mixed moves up. I was expecting a downward cut to my hand and he went to a straight lunge to my midriff. Fortunately I saw it at the last second and dodged to one side, just as well as we were using live blades! A huge cheer went up from the crowd and we got a good round of applause, it was only afterward that I found a hole going straight through my gi, he had missed impaling me by only an inch or so!!
Off the mat things were ticking along too. Most of our friends were married or at least paired off. My sister in law left her husband and took up with another guy. Kay changed jobs and was doing OK. And we moved from Corringham to Basildon and in to a three bedroom house with a huge garden and just minutes from the town center. And I left the British Library and moved in to the local DHSS (Department for Health and Social Security).
But we didn’t last long in Basildon nor did I last long at the DHSS. It was after all just another boring government job and I wanted more. And so I got myself a job as a manager of a newsagents in Dagenham.
Little did I realise it was the beginning of the end for Kay and me. Things went badly from the start. We sold our house and moved in to the flat above the shop in Lodge Avenue just off of the A13.
The very small minded people who lived there before us took anything and everything, even the light bulbs! The flat was OK though, garden was a mess and the shop small and unexciting. And I had to get up at silly O clock to open it and take the papers in!
Part of the deal was Kay being assistant manager, so she had to give up her job. And to be fair it really wasn’t her thing one little bit!
But the good news was there was a Ju Jutsu club run by Terry Parker just around the corner and not long after I moved to Dagenham he also opened up another club in Barking. But to be honest I didn't enjoy my training as much with a new bunch of people. Of course I knew some of them, but it just wasn't the same.
However, getting in to London for my aikido class was a bit easier now. And although I had left the evening classes and gone private I still had a good hardcore of students.
My way of doing aikido had migrated away from how I had done it under my old instructors. Don’t get me wrong, they were good and knowledgeable. But they also subscribed in part or whole to a limited attack and response. And it was something I could not continue in good faith.
In my class during free practice any attack could be used from a punch to a kick, grabs, charges, head locks, bear hugs, all of them were legal. And because of that my students had no preconceived
ideas of what an attack may be.
One of my students was a French guy who had done kung fu toreasonable standard and when we fought he did like to put the occasional sweep in, which was awkward but taught me a lot. He had held the position of enforcer at his kung fu club, a position I also held at ju jutsu.
For those not in the know, an enforcer did things the instructor
couldn't do for a whole plethora of reasons. But they included things like taking on challenges from visiting martial artist’s and keeping unruly students inline.
To be honest I didn’t have a huge amount to do as enforcer and it was all very unofficial anyway. But Terry did use me a couple of times, including the time one of the black belts took his wife out in a big way ( as in threw her hard, nothing sexual). I simply got the ’teach him a lesson’ chat and happily bounced him off the floor a few times until he had had enough.
One of the things about ju jutsu is you have to be fit to really get good at it. And boy did we get put through our paces. Each lesson we did about a hundred or so break falls, plus loads of kicks, punches, sit ups, press ups etc etc. And, by the time you were going for brown belt you had learned about 200 techniques.
I did my brown belt under Professor Morris 10th Dan. I was a long and arduous session and half way through I had to go off to be sick and nearly didn’t come back. It was only Terry’s missus who talked me in to doing the rest of the grading, but I did pass.
During my time with the ju jutsu crowd we did a few seminars, including visiting the Mecca of British ju jutsu up in Liverpool and training under Professor Clark 10th Dan. However the highlight of these get together’s was the visit from Soke Inoue, then head of the Hontai Yoshin Ryu, Japan’s oldest surviving school of ju jutsu. And it was he who awarded me a second dan in aiki jutsu for my dedication and time devoted to both aikido and ju jutsu.
