Explore how Kawaishi, early Judo, and Jukido Jujutsu preserved a broader martial tradition of striking, grappling, randori, and real-world self-defense.
Jujutsu, Judo, Kawaishi, and Jukido
Bringing the Earlier Spirit Forward in Modern Martial Arts
Late classical Japanese jujutsu and early twentieth-century Kodokan Judo were, in important respects, pragmatic and multi-range martial systems. Their technical canon encompassed throws, pins, joint locks, chokes, and atemi-waza (striking). This reflected an understanding of combat that did not neatly segment itself into separate ranges or overly specialized disciplines.
This breadth served different purposes at different points in the art's development. Jujutsu evolved within a variety of combative contexts. Jigoro Kano's Judo sought to synthesize and refine jujutsu techniques into a systematic budō capable of providing physical, intellectual, and moral development. Kano placed particular emphasis on efficiency (seiryoku zen'yō) and mutual welfare and benefit (jita kyōei), while strongly emphasizing randori as a method through which techniques could be practiced safely at various levels of resistance. Techniques deemed too dangerous for randori were practiced outside that context and eventually became preserved primarily through kata.
Over the course of the twentieth century, however, Kodokan Judo increasingly developed along a competitive trajectory. The growth of organized competition brought increasingly specific rules, restrictions, governing bodies, and contest-oriented specialization. Groundwork became more constrained, certain grips and techniques were prohibited, and striking was removed from regular practice and largely confined to kata. This is not to say that modern Judo is "lesser" than its predecessors. Rather, it reflects the natural consequences of optimizing a martial system for a particular purpose.
The result, however, is a significant distinction between the broader technical and tactical world of early Judo and the highly specialized competitive form that most people associate with Judo today.
But the story did not simply end there.
Throughout the twentieth century, there remained practitioners who continued to treat Judo and/or jujutsu as fighting arts rather than allowing them to become exclusively defined by competitive practice. Among the clearest historical examples of this approach is Mikinosuke Kawaishi.
Preserving the Fighting Art
Kawaishi is of particular significance because what he was teaching and practicing was not a "recomposition" of Japanese martial arts in order to create a complete system. The material was already there.
The throws, locks, chokes, pins, escapes, strikes, and methods of practical application that appeared in his teaching were not inventions created by assembling unrelated systems. They belonged to the broader technical world of Japanese jujutsu and early Judo. What made Kawaishi distinctive was his determination to preserve, organize, and continue presenting that material as a fighting art.
Kawaishi used terms such as My Method of Judo and later My Method of Self-Defence. His method became known as the Kawaishi Method and represented a distinct way of teaching and organizing Judo, particularly in France and Europe. His 1955 My Method of Judo and 1957 My Method of Self-Defence provide unusually direct evidence of how he conceived and presented his approach. It was not uncommon in France at the time to distinguish between the Kodokan method and the Kawaishi Method, and for many years the Kawaishi Method was arguably the most highly influential in French Judo.
His approach in France is particularly important in this regard. Kawaishi taught Judo, but his conception of what Judo could encompass was considerably broader than the competitive model that would later become dominant internationally. His self-defense instruction retained striking offense and defense, practical applications, and techniques that increasingly existed outside the boundaries of Judo competition.
There are even indications that Kawaishi's conception of atemi, while not simply derived from karate, was open to elements of the developing karate tradition. His self-defense material includes references and techniques that invite comparison with karate practice, including his advocacy of makiwara training. This does not require us to conclude that Kawaishi simply imported karate into Judo. Rather, it is another reminder that the boundaries between Japanese martial traditions were never as rigid as modern organizational categories sometimes suggest.
Kawaishi was not alone.
Gunji Koizumi, Yukio Tani, and other early Japanese instructors working in the West similarly represented versions of Judo and jujutsu that retained a broader fighting orientation. Their practices existed during a significant transitional period in which the distinctions between "Judo," "jujutsu," "self-defense," and "fighting" were considerably less fixed than they would become in the mainstream martial arts community.
This history matters because it provides another way of understanding what happened to comprehensive jujutsu and early Judo.
The older material did not totally die out or disappear.
In most cases, it simply became massively overshadowed by the dominant mainstream sport trajectory of the art.
Modern Reinterpretations: Sambo and Kudo
- The techniques of Kime-no-kata are simple, direct attacks against tori the defender / demonstrator and defenses by uke the attacker against a range of basic armed and unarmed attacks (e.g., being seized, strikes, knife, and sword attacks) and practical self-defense methods characteristic of jujutsu.
- The proper movements and tactics of the defensive role in the kata are informed by the essential elements of classical martial arts, such as maintaining posture, controlling distance, and exploiting the biomechanical weaknesses and openings for counterattacks created by uke’s attacks.
There are also modern systems that demonstrate another response to the same historical problem.
Sambo is fundamentally grappling-oriented, combining throwing and groundwork heavily influenced by Kodokan Judo with elements of native wrestling traditions. Sometimes, fairly or unfairly, it is thought of as "Judo with an attitude” – a distinctly old-Soviet attitude. While Russian in name and developed in the Soviet era, its technical heritage is deeply saturated in Japanese grappling and fighting arts.
In Combat Sambo, striking is added to the equation, producing a substantially broader combat system than the grappling form alone. Despite the name, Combat Sambo is still a sport, but its original development was closely connected to practical military requirements. It later developed substantially as a full-contact competitive system. In both its military origins and sporting forms, Sambo reflects an emphasis on functional application without the extreme specialization found in some other combat sports.
Kudo, by contrast, begins from a striking foundation deeply grounded in the Kyokushin karate tradition. It has layered on throws, clinching, and groundwork derived largely from modern Judo. Its rules were designed to permit a broader spectrum of fighting than conventional karate competition while still providing a framework for full-contact practice.
Neither system is a recreation or one-for-one copy of early Judo. Their technical structures and competitive environments are distinct, despite significant historical and ideological overlap. Yet both can be understood as modern responses to a problem that earlier Japanese martial systems had already confronted:
How do you create a pragmatic fighting system without allowing specialization in one range to eliminate competence in another?
In that sense, Sambo and Kudo represent modern attempts to recover or recreate aspects of an older martial breadth within contemporary combat-sport frameworks. They bridge striking, throwing, clinching, and groundwork while retaining the pressure-testing and training benefits of live practice.
This does not make them equivalent to early Judo or classical jujutsu, nor does it make them inherently superior to specialized systems. They simply represent different answers to the same enduring problem of combative completeness.
The Jukido system of jujutsu takes a somewhat different path.
From Preservation to Continuation
There have certainly been efforts to recombine elements of different fighting traditions. Sambo and Kudo are good examples of modern systems that deliberately bring multiple ranges and methods of combat together within a contemporary training framework.
But Jukido Jujutsu is better understood somewhat differently.
Its development is not simply a matter of taking pieces that had become separated and recombining them. It is better understood as bringing forward an older conception of jujutsu as a comprehensive fighting art and continuing its development in a modern context.
The objective was not to recreate nineteenth- or early twentieth-century jujutsu exactly as it existed. Nor was it to reject the developments that made early Kodokan Judo such an effective system of training. Instead, the objective was to carry forward the broader martial purpose while continuing to evolve the methods.
In that sense, Jukido Jujutsu has more in common with the lineage represented by practitioners such as Mikinosuke Kawaishi than the word "recomposition" might initially suggest.
Gendai Jujutsu in General
Many gendai (modern) jujutsu systems occupy a related but distinct position.
Founded after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and in many cases considerably later, including outside Japan, these systems generally draw upon classical or early modern Japanese martial traditions while adapting their techniques, teaching methods, and priorities to contemporary circumstances.
A substantial number are explicitly goshin-jutsu oriented, emphasizing practical responses to punches, kicks, grabs, chokes, weapons, and other forms of interpersonal violence. Rather than defining success through a competitive ruleset, their primary question is generally one of application:
Does this work under the circumstances for which the art was designed?
The character of individual gendai systems varies considerably. Some maintain strong connections to Japanese terminology, etiquette, pedagogy, and traditional principles. Others are deliberately eclectic, incorporating techniques from multiple martial traditions. Some employ substantial randori or other forms of resistance training, while others rely more heavily on structured practice.
Danzan-ryu provides one particularly interesting example. Developed by Henry Seishiro Okazaki in Hawaii, it drew together Japanese jujutsu and Judo with influences from Okinawan karate, Hawaiian Lua, Chinese martial arts, boxing, wrestling, and other sources. Okazaki's system was therefore not simply the preservation of one classical ryū, but a deliberate organization of a broad body of martial knowledge into a comprehensive modern system.
Miyama-ryu offers another example of modern jujutsu developing around practical combat and self-defense rather than a purely competitive model. Founded by Antonio Pereira, the system developed in the twentieth-century American environment and has continued to present itself explicitly as combat-oriented jujutsu.
These examples demonstrate that the impulse toward comprehensive, applied jujutsu did not disappear with the rise of competitive Judo. While largely in the shadow of Olympic Judo, and later offshoots such as Brazilian jujutsu (jiu-jitsu), this approach continued to manifest itself through different teachers, systems, and environments.
What many gendai systems share, however, is an effort to preserve, or in some cases restore, the comprehensive character of jujutsu without necessarily transforming the art into a combat sport.
The difficulty is that even systems created with an intention toward comprehensiveness can, over time, develop competitive or sport-oriented emphases. This is not unique to any particular art. Sport provides measurable goals, standardized rules, opportunities for frequent resistance training, and a clear method of determining success. Those are powerful advantages.
But specialization can also gradually redefine what practitioners consider important.
This is one reason the historical distinction between a grappling-based fighting art and a grappling sport is so important.
A fighting art may be grappling-centered without being limited to grappling. Its throws, locks, chokes, pins, and positional controls exist within a larger tactical environment that includes strikes, weapons, movement, escape, and other realities of self-defense.
That distinction is central to understanding Jukido Jujutsu.
Jukido Jujutsu as a Specific Case Study
Jukido Jujutsu provides a particularly clear example of this approach.
In 1959, Shihan Paul Arel (1935–2009) began using the name Jukido to describe what he was teaching. Jukido developed from a foundation of pre-war and early post-war Judo combined with older jujutsu influences. While serving in the United States Marine Corps, Arel was exposed to and trained in a variety of Asian armed and unarmed fighting arts.
A particularly significant part of Arel's development came through his association with Mas Oyama and Kyokushin karate. In 1962, Arel became one of the first official Kyokushin branch chiefs in the United States. His later decision to resign from that organization, in part because of concerns about the increasingly competitive and sport-oriented direction he observed within karate, ultimately contributed to the establishment of the International Kokondo Association—an organization dedicated to preserving his understanding of, and deep belief in, karate and jujutsu as methods of real-world self-defense.
This history is important because it helps explain the character of Jukido Jujutsu.
Jukido is fundamentally grappling-centered. Nage-waza (throwing), joint locks, chokes, pins, escapes, and groundwork form a substantial portion of its technical foundation. Yet it is not designed primarily around grappler-versus-grappler competition.
Its central orientation is goshin-jutsu: real-world self-defense.
The system addresses punches, kicks, grabs, chokes, weapons, and other Habitual Acts of Physical Violence (HAPV). Randori remains an important training method, but its purpose is pressure-testing: developing timing, adaptability, composure, and the ability to apply technique against resistance and non-compliance. It is a training method rather than the ultimate objective of the art.
That distinction places Jukido in a fundamentally different relationship with randori than a competitive combat sport. The question is not simply, "Can I defeat another trained practitioner under the rules of the game?" The broader question is, "Can I make these principles and techniques function when another person is actively resisting me?"
A nuanced difference, but an impactful one over the course of time.
The Role of Atemi
Perhaps nowhere is Jukido's attempt to preserve and carry forward this broader martial character more evident than in its approach to atemi-waza.
In older Judo and jujutsu traditions, striking did not necessarily exist as a separate "striking art" in the modern sense. There simply was not a reality in which real-world combat could accommodate the artificial luxury of a "striking only" or "grappling only" approach. Integrated atemi could be used to create openings, disrupt balance, control reactions, facilitate throws and locks, or conclude an encounter outright.
Kano himself was interested in karate, and his Seiryoku Zen'yō Kokumin Taiiku, developed in the 1920s, contains striking movements that have been examined by scholars in relation to karate. This does not prove that Kano simply incorporated karate into Judo, but it does demonstrate that the relationship between Judo, striking, karate, and other martial traditions was more fluid than the later competitive form of Judo might suggest.
Kawaishi's work provides another important example of this continuity.
Jukido's approach belongs within that same broader tradition, while also reflecting Arel's own experiences.
The when and why of Jukido's striking reflects the tactical logic of jujutsu: timing, distance, disruption, kuzushi, and the creation of opportunity. However, the how – body mechanics, power generation, and delivery – reflects Arel's extensive karate background, particularly his Kyokushin experience and the subsequent development of Kokondo Karate.
The result is not simply "Judo plus karate." It is an attempt to continue a grappling-centered fighting art while incorporating and developing a sophisticated striking methodology within it.
A strike can create the opportunity for a throw. A well placed throw can create the opportunity for a joint-lock. A successful lock can create the opportunity for control. A dominant pin or positional control can create the opportunity to deliver a decisive blow.
The ranges are not isolated. They are integrated. The techniques are important, but the larger objective is understanding how the pieces fit together.
Jukido and the Continuation of the Tradition
This is ultimately where Jukido's historical position becomes most interesting.
Arel did not need to "reconstruct" a lost martial art. The vast majority of the material already existed within Judo and jujutsu.
What he did was carry a particular conception of that material forward.
He inherited the pedagogical strengths that Kano had brought to Judo: systematic curriculum, strategic principles, ranking structure, ukemi, progressive training, and the focused use of randori to develop practical skill under resistance.
At the same time, Jukido retained a much broader self-defense curriculum that included striking, locks, throws, chokes, pins, escapes, weapons, and both standing and ground applications.
The goal was not to reject Judo's evolution. It was to take some of the innovations that made Judo such an effective educational and training system and apply them toward a different endpoint.
Not competition on the mat, but a combative encounter in the real world.
Method, Style, Ryu — Ways to Conceptualize Jujutsu Approaches
A useful historical parallel can be found in Mikinosuke Kawaishi.
Kawaishi called his approach My Method of Judo and later My Method of Self-Defence. His method became known simply as the Kawaishi Method. He did not present himself as having invented an entirely new martial art. Rather, he took the existing Judo and jujutsu tradition, reorganized and adapted it to his circumstances, and retained a broader emphasis on practical fighting and self-defense as opposed to the approach that would eventually characterize the whole of international competitive Judo.
In this sense, "method" may be a more useful concept than "style." The Kawaishi Method was not merely a selection of techniques from different arts combined into a hybrid. It was a particular way of understanding, organizing, teaching, and transmitting an existing martial tradition.
Jukido can be understood in much the same way.
The name Jukido identifies Arel's particular method of jujutsu: his way of carrying forward the broader fighting conception of jujutsu while incorporating the systematic training methods and innovations associated with Judo. His experience in karate systems, particularly early Kyokushin, also influenced the development of the striking component, just as martial cross-pollination had influenced Japanese martial arts before him.
In that sense, Jukido need not be understood as a "new" style assembled from previously unrelated parts. It can instead be understood as Arel's method of carrying jujutsu forward – a particular expression of the tradition, developed for his time and objectives.
Neither Kawaishi nor Arel relied on the conventional -ryū naming structure to make this distinction. Yet conceptually, there is something ryū-like in what both men accomplished: not necessarily the creation of an entirely new body of martial knowledge, but the establishment of a particular method of preserving, organizing, teaching, and transmitting that knowledge.
Human anatomy places real limits on the ways a body can be thrown, controlled, or joint-locked. The underlying physical principles are not being reinvented each time a new school or method emerges. Kano's Judo, the Kawaishi Method, Russian Sambo, and Arel's Jukido can therefore be understood as different lenses, taxonomies, and pedagogical paths through much of the same underlying body of martial knowledge.
Mathematics offers a useful analogy. The truths of mathematics do not change because different schools approach them differently. What changes is the organization, terminology, emphasis, and method of teaching. The Bourbaki tradition, the Russian mathematical school, or the Moore Method can approach the same underlying discipline through very different intellectual and pedagogical frameworks without claiming to have invented mathematics itself.
In much the same way, a martial "school" need not represent the invention of a new art. It may instead represent a particular way of understanding, organizing, teaching, and transmitting an existing body of knowledge.
The mental model we use to understand "styles" is therefore important.
The question is not so much, "What techniques belong to Jukido?"
It is more useful to ask, "What conception of jujutsu does Jukido preserve and carry forward?"
For Arel, the answer was a conception of jujutsu as a comprehensive fighting art grappling-centered, but not merely grappling; incorporating atemi, weapons awareness, standing and ground work, and live practice, while remaining fundamentally oriented toward self-defense rather than competitive sport.
The Larger Pattern
Viewed historically, this is not an unusual problem. Martial arts repeatedly oscillate between breadth and specialization.
A comprehensive martial system may be difficult to teach, difficult to pressure-test safely, and difficult to standardize. Specialization makes competition, instruction, and measurement easier. Rules create safety. Safety permits greater resistance. Resistance can produce high levels of skill. Competition creates clear objectives.
But every rule also removes something.
The history of Judo, and other martial arts, demonstrates both sides of that equation. Kano's innovations made Judo extraordinarily teachable and allowed practitioners to train against resistance in ways that earlier jujutsu systems often could not do so routinely. Yet the very process of making a system safer and more competitive also encouraged technical specialization and the removal of methods considered incompatible with competitive success.
Modern martial systems have responded to this in different ways.
Some, such as Sambo and Kudo, deliberately created modern rulesets that brought multiple ranges together.
Others, including many gendai jujutsu systems, maintained a more explicit self-defense orientation outside the competitive paradigm. Jukido Jujutsu is a prime example of a gendai system that sought to continue the older fighting-art conception directly into the modern era.
The important distinction is therefore not simply between "old" and "new," or between "traditional" and "modern." It is between different directions of development.
A martial art can evolve toward competition. It can evolve toward specialization. It can evolve toward broader integration. It can also continue to develop while deliberately preserving self-defense as its organizing purpose.
Bringing the Earlier Spirit Forward
This is why "bringing the earlier spirit forward" may be a more accurate description of Jukido's place in the history of jujutsu than "recomposition."
The earlier spirit was not necessarily lost in an absolute sense. Elements of it survived in the work of practitioners such as Kawaishi, Koizumi, Tani, and many others. Nor was the technical material itself somehow rediscovered by later generations.
What changed was the center of gravity.
As Judo became increasingly defined by competition, and as other martial arts developed their own specialized sporting identities, the complete martial art became less central in mainstream expressions.
Jukido represents a commitment to keep that broader conception at the center.
Its foundation is grappling, but it is not merely a grappling art. Its atemi is substantial, but it is not merely a striking art. Its randori is important, but it is not a competitive endpoint.
Its curriculum includes standing and ground work, throws and controls, strikes and locks, escapes and weapons—not because comprehensiveness is valuable merely for its own sake, but because self-defense does not reliably present itself one range at a time.
In that sense, Jukido is not looking backward in an attempt to recreate the past.
It is looking backward in order to continue moving forward in the same general direction.
The objective is not to preserve every technique exactly as it existed in 1900. Nor is it to reject innovation in the name of tradition. It is to preserve the underlying conception of jujutsu as a practical fighting art while allowing the art itself to continue evolving.
That is the significance of the Arel tradition.
It is also why Jukido's relationship to Judo, jujutsu, karate, and modern combat sports is best understood not simply in terms of what techniques it contains, but in terms of what those techniques are ultimately for. The question is what organizes those techniques. For Jukido, that organizing principle remains self-defense.
This is not an argument that Jukido is superior to Judo, Sambo, Kudo, karate, or any other martial discipline. Those systems have overlapping yet unique histories and different objectives, and they should be judged according to the purposes they were designed to serve.
It is instead an analysis of divergence and continuity in our martial arts heritage.
The martial traditions of Japan produced systems that were remarkably broad in their conception of combat. Modern martial arts subsequently specialized, hybridized, sportified, and evolved those traditions in countless ways.
Jukido is one expression of that continuing process. Its particular contribution is the attempt to preserve the comprehensive spirit of jujutsu while retaining the systematic training advantages of Judo and incorporating the striking methodology developed through Arel's karate experience, without allowing competitive sport to become the organizing principle of the art.
In that sense, Jukido does not represent a return to the past.
It represents a continuation of a path that was already there.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Arel, Paul. Jukido Jujitsu: The Realistic Ryu. 1994.
Arel, Paul, and Robert E. Robert. Sankosho: The Warrior's Path to Kokondo Martial Arts. IKA Publications, 2005.
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Kawaishi, Mikonosuke. My Secret Judo. 1960.
Rego, George. The Founding of Jujutsu & Judo in America. 2022.
Secondary and Historical Sources
Brousse, Michel. Les racines du judo français: Histoire d'une culture sportive. Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2005.
Liu, Chang, Kyungwon Jung, and Fumiaki Shishida. “A Technical Analysis of Seiryoku Zen'yō Kokumin Taiiku from a Karate and Chinese Martial Arts Perspective as It Affected Kano Jigoro.” Idō Movement for Culture: Journal of Martial Arts Anthropology, vol. 16, no. 1, 2016.
Lewis, John J., and Antonio Pereira. Introduction to Miyama Ryu Jujutsu. 2015.
Institutional and Online Historical Sources
American Judo and Jujitsu Federation. “Notes on Master Okazaki and the Origins of Danzan Ryu.”
American Judo and Jujitsu Federation. “What is Danzan Ryu Jujitsu?”
Fédération Française de Judo. “À la découverte de la méthode Kawaishi.”
International Judo Federation. Judo for the World: A French History.
Miyama Ryu Jujutsu. “History.”
© 2026 by George Rego
