Chris Parker
Grandmaster
Chris Parker - Thanks for your answer. I wasn't sure on that. Any idea how much the Japanese borrowed from Chinese or Korean MA prior to the dates you have given? Not that it matters much, especially in light of a tendancy of many countries (and not just oriental) to show themselves as inventors of good things centuries before others, but just curious. Your point is well taken as to the main weapons on the battlefield. But I always thought unarmed tactics were probably taught at least to battlefiend leaders, as well as foot soldiers, for those times when they might lose a weapon in an opponent or have it struck from their hands.
Hmm. This is probably not the right forum for me to say what I'm about to say, but the question was asked, so I feel obligated to answer it.
I have never seen anything at all that I would class as a native Korean martial art. At all. There aren't any, they are all borrowed from other cultures, with varying degrees of success (Hapkido and Tae Kwon Do being some of the more successful), Each of these borrowed arts gets a degree of "Korean flavour", but that doesn't make them natively Korean arts.
So when it comes to Japanese borrowing from the Koreans? None at all. Very much the other way around, actually. And, I have to say, that is a very sore point with the Koreans, as the reason the Japanese methods are so big (as well as certain Chinese methods) is that the Japanese had a very nasty habit of, when they were bored, sailing over to Korea and occupying it. As this went on over a century or so, the native Korean martial traditions were basically replaced by the Japanese ones. Essentially, Korea suffers badly from a lack of a sense of individual culture, and the cultural response seems to be to explain the similarities with the Korean culture to those around it as "well, they stole that from us". Sadly, that doesn't pass muster.
Japan borrowing from China? Small examples, once we get past the 8th and 9th Century. Up to that point, China was seen as the cradle and shining example of culture, and the Japanese social and court structure was modelled on the Chinese, to the point that the Japanese basically copied the Chinese written language and applied it to their own spoken one. As a result, to this day written Japanese characters tend to have at least two pronunciations, on'yomi (written sound) and kun'yomi (native sound). The kun'yomi pronunciation is the way the Japanese word for that concept is pronounced, with the on'yomi being the way they thought the Chinese pronounced the term. Some good examples are the terms for swords, actually, with this character 刀 (blade, usually used to refer to a knife or sword) being pronounced with kun'yomi as "Katana", and on'yomi as "To"... the Chinese pronunciation is "Dao". Alternately, the character 剣 (sword) is pronounced with a kun'yomi as "Tsurugi", but the more common pronunciation is the on'yomi "Ken". The Chinese is "Jian". Lastly, the character 道 (path, or way) is pronounced "Michi" (kun'yomi) or "Do" (on'yomi), with the Chinese being "Tao". The specific pronunciation depends on the context, so 道 can be pronounced with the kun'yomi of "michi" to refer to a street, or as "do" in a more "way of..." approach, giving Kendo as 剣道, although just on reading it could just as easily be Tsurugi Michi "Street sword".
Once we got into the Heian period, the Japanese culture started to develop away from the Chinese example, although the higher levels of culture still looked to China, including the requirement to be considered refined and educated including the reading of the 5 Chinese Classics (including Sun Tzu's Art of War, the I Ching, and the Tao de Ching). There were other influences as time went on, such as the Akiyama Yoshin lineage of Jujutsu systems originating when a doctor, Akiyama, went to China, and learnt a form of Kenpo (Chuan Fa) there, bringing three techniques (kata - note, though, this is kata in the traditional Japanese form, a two person combative scenario) back with him. These three kata became the foundation of his new system, and this Chinese influence are an indication as to why the Akiyama Yoshin lines feature a higher emphasis on striking than many other systems. The Japanese side comes through in the equally high emphasis on throwing methods.
Chinese martial arts have been a much higher influence on the martial arts of Okinawa than on those of Japan, with many karate systems tracing themselves back to Chinese systems, such as White Crane. This again explains the higher emphasis on striking in karate systems as compared to "typical" jujutsu systems.
When it comes to who would have learnt it, that's a big discussion. I am personally of the opinion that martial arts, as a whole, were not really learnt by the footsoldiers, for a number of reasons. As to giving them unarmed combat training, that would be a waste of time, really. They were given a spear, taught basic thrusts, and sent out. If they lost their spear, they had to get past the spear of their opponent, and the level of unarmed skill required for that takes so long to attain that there's no reason to give it to them. When it comes to generals and commanders getting unarmed training, that's closer to the truth, I feel. But even then, not entirely. Yes, the higher ranks would have been about the only ones with the time and wealth to dedicate themselves to such things (note: that's not necessarily just the very high ranking, really just anyone over the footsoldier level, but that again is depending on era... but we'll get to that), and many unarmed systems seem to be more about teaching strategy and tactics that can then be applied on a battlefield through the medium of unarmed waza (techniques), but the core of learning strategy in Japan has always been sword. Add to that the fact that most systems (Takenouchi Ryu excepted) that had a Jujutsu syllabus before the Tokugawa period (1608 onwards) tended to only have a fairly simple, rudimentary form, it just wasn't given a high emphasis, so there's no reason to believe that it was higher level than anything else, or considered more important, and therefore given to the higher ranks only. In fact, it was considered less important, and was a kinda "if you need it, here you go" addition to most systems. Schools such as Kashima Shinryu gradually gave more and more emphasis to this side of things, embellishing and growing their Jujutsu sysllabus as the school entered peacetime. And Takenouchi Ryu, the first "jujutsu" school, when the syllabus is looked at, has most of their Jujutsu including a range of weaponry as well, typically short swords and daggers.
You then also have to look at the stance of the school itself. Katori Shinto Ryu has a tradition of not refusing entry to anyone willing to abide by their rules, and not affiliating themselves with any political faction throughout it's history, meaning that high ranking samurai, and local farmers (if they could afford the time), along with merchants were all welcome to train in the system. Other arts were what were called Otomo Ryu, inside schools of specific domains, pledged to the lord of the area. The most famous examples are Yagyu Shinkage Ryu and Ono-ha Itto Ryu, both of which were the Otomo Ryu of the Tokugawa Shoguns, supplying sword instructors to the Shogun and their sons. In these instances, it wasn't as easy for others to get in to learn the system. Another well known Otomo Ryu was the Shinto Muso Ryu, who kept to themselves quite well, revealing very little about what they did to outsiders for most of their existance (until the late 19th Century, really). Then you have systems like Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu, the school of Musashi Miyamoto (which includes some Jujutsu in the higher levels of it's teachings), where there was no affiliation to an area, and Musashi was known to just up and move on occasion, meaning his students had to follow him if they wished to continue to learn. That negates the idea of high ranking generals and lords training there as well.
Finally, you need to look at the surrounding environment, referring to the "human" factor. That means the time and place, culturally speaking. Just saying "Japan" isn't enough, is it a big town, a small village, a fishing village, or made up of farmers? Is it more like Edo (Tokyo), or is it remote? Which Island is it on? As far as time, the period is a huge influence on the development and promotion of the systems. Once we hit the Tokugawa period, many samurai suddenly didn't have much to do (no more wars to keep them occupied - leading to things such as the invasion of the Ryukyu Islands, which was influential on the development of karate), so some took to being police officers (a role formerly taken by ordinary citizens in the area, under the leadership and authority of the samurai and daimyo), others started teaching their martial skills to the public. There was a sudden boom in "commoner's yawara/jujutsu", which was a simplified version designed to be given to the general public. This increased awareness of unarmed combat then forced the more "samurai" systems to deal with a change in the violence that could be encountered in a bar room brawl, so their training adapted as well, similar to the way boxing and MMA have helped shape modern street violence, and modern self defence needing to adapt to handle that. The other influence that time period had on the development and spreading of the jujutsu systems is that, during peacetime, it's safer, and easier to get more creative, so syllabus' tend to grow, becoming more complex, and the unarmed curriculums of many schools did just that. Basically, the more there is to a system, and the more unarmed there is, the more likely it's the result of peacetime development. And this development, with more approaches, more counters, more techniques lead to more students learning longer, which added to the spread of the system outside of the samurai class.
So who learnt these systems depends on who they were, where they were, when we are talking about, and what the system is. Leaders, possibly, footsoldiers, not likely.
With what John has written, I'm not going to go through it, but there are a number of things I'd argue with. Mostly about history and usage of Jujutsu, but it's not important enough to go through here, save one thing. John wrote that "jujutsu is a technique not necessarily a label of a style of techniques, or a system". This I absolutely have to disagree with, Jujutsu is a classification of certain approaches to combat, it is not "a technique", it absolutely is a system and a style of techniques. What that system is, and what that style of technique is changes from system to system, as does the naming convention (referring to them as Taijutsu, Goho, Hade, Wa, Yawara, Yawaragei, Koshi no Mawari, Kogusoku, Kumi Uchi, Judo (150 years before Jigoro Kano used the term for his Kodokan system), Te, Gi, Yoroi Kumi Uchi, Torite, and many more, although all are, broadly speaking, Jujutsu).