What is the JuYukai, what does it mean, and what is the difference between Judo and Ju-Jutsu (Jiu-Jitsu)?
First off,
The JuYuKai is built around the philosophy of mutual respect and life-long learning where striking, throwing, and grappling are the actions you perform to help you practice that philosophy.
The training is conducted in an environment that encourages learning through live training in a safe and constructive manner.
JuYuKai consists of 3 Japanese characters
柔友会
The first character is 柔 and you have probably seen this character if you have studied judo, jujutsu, or jiu jitsu.
By itself it is pronounced “yawara” and translates as “flexibility” or “giving way”. When this character is combined with another character the pronunciation changes into “Ju”. That is why we say JU-do or JU-jutsu.
BTW, I prefer to use the phonetic spelling Jujutsu rather than jiu-jitsu. The spelling “Jiu-jitsu” was given to to Ju-jutsu later but that’s a topic for another time.
The second character is 友 and signifies friend. When pronounced by itself it is “tomo” and when added to another character the pronunciation changes to “yu”.
Finally we have the character 会. It is pronounced “au” when by itself and “kai” when with another character. It means to meet/join and when placed with another character signifies an organization or group.
Therefore, with the combination of all three characters we have 柔友会 (JuYuKai) which means “A group of friends gathering (to study) the art of Ju”. Ju in this case referring to Judo and Jujutsu.
A little note about JuJutsu. Way back before Judo there was Jujutsu, a blanket term for the art of striking, throwing, pinning, and submitting. There were hundreds of different schools of JuJutsu and Kano Jigoro had studied a few of those schools before he started his own brand, naming it Ju-Do. And in case you didn’t know it, there were strikes originally in JuDo but Kano took them out in order to allow his practitioners to train in a live fashion as to reduce the risk of injury.
Kano devised the “break fall” and it is what allowed Judo practitioners to spar in this live fashion without fear of falling on their head or breaking something. Breaks and injuries were apparently quite common before the advent of the break fall. This is another reason why JuJutsu instructors were also typically bone setters by occupation. Pretty good gig. Break your students then fix them up.
The difference between 術 (jutsu) and 道 (do), as in 柔術 (ju-jutsu) and 柔道 (ju-do) is that JUTSU is referred to simply as the techniques of something where DO is “the way”. In other words, the theories and principles, and values that transcend technique and are to be lived by. Not to say that “-JUTSU” schools didn’t abide by that, it was just that Kano wanted his style of JU-JUTSU to stand out and therefore he dropped the JUTSU and used DO instead.
When I was in Japan my principle Judo group later down the road was called Minato JuYuKai. It was (still is) located at the Minato District Police Headquarters and we would meet 4 to 5 days a week to practice and then compete on the weekends.
This particular group wasn’t a college team but instead composed of those who held day jobs but wanted to train and compete in judo. In other words, it was a collective of people who all had real jobs but simply enjoyed judo as a hobby. We took it seriously but not too seriously. We made sure not to injure each other and helped each other work on our favorite techniques before going out for a beer together after practice. And a couple more beers after each competition on Sunday.
There are countless JuYuKai groups in Japan, however it is primarily focused on Judo.
Flash forward to my BJJ (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) group in Japan. While it could be called a JuYuKai since it was (and still is) a group of individuals who get together to practice their own game and help each other improve, they don’t refer to themselves as Juyukai. The group name is Akatsuki. Just a fun name given to the group many, many years ago.
The interesting thing about judo groups and my BJJ group Akatsuki is that no one paid a crazy expensive monthly fee like you typically see in BJJ groups. In fact, I would only pay around $10 a month for judo and it was $30 a month. Funny thing is that, even though there were 5 black belts in the group, my instructor being a 3 stripe black belt, the majority of the time people didn’t even pay the fee for BJJ. We were just a group of people who love to learn, practice, and hang out together.
For judo and bjj we would meet at the local martial arts complex and pay the entry fee to use it which was typically only around $2 each time. In other words, even though I was being taught by some of the best people around, we didn’t pay them a monthly fee. They volunteered their time and effort as a mutual way of sharing and getting better together.
That is what a JuYuKai is all about: a group of like-minded individuals helping each other to get better and enjoy the process. In our case, “A group of friends gathering to study the art of JuJutsu.”
My hope and dream for JuYuKai is that we can all help each other not only improve our JuJutsu on the mat, but also in our lives off the mat as well. And the way to do that is to actually step on the mat as often as possible to train, share, explore, and learn from each other.