Saturday, June 7, 2014

"Do vs Jutsu"

As someone who studied Japanese martial arts like myself(which I studied Karate, Aikido and Kendo which was all taught in one Dojo, like 2 or 3 years ago), I would like to share the meaning of the word Do and Jutsu. The informations that I obtained is from the instructors at that dojo, and the two books I've read which is "Zen in the martial arts" and "the way and the power"

You may hear the word Do at the end of martial art labels such as taekwondo, judo, kendo, aikido, hapkido, jeet kune do, tang soo do and so on. You may also hear the word Jutsu at the end of martial art labels such as kenjutsu, aikijujutsu, ninjutsu, jujutsu and so on. Do means "the way" or "the way to enlightenment, self-realization, and understanding."  Jutsu on the other hand means "art" or "techniques".

Historically most martial arts label used jutsu in Japan. Jutsu to me has more emphasis on the combative techniques which some may consider that as an art. It does not emphasize on the spiritual development. So it is basically yang as it only promote the martial combative and war. Later the martial arts label (jutsu) has transformed into Do (so more labels). So instead of the kenjutsu (the art or technique of the sword) it is kendo (the way of the sword). Do to me emphasize on the personal spiritual growth and zen. And why did it transformed? because the need for fighting skills in the Orient diminished during the sixteenth century. So the Do is a balanced of yin and yang (in Japanese it is "in and yo" but I'm just using yin and yang because it is common) as it promotes love, peace, compassion and the martial combative as well.

Real martial arts is suppose to be represented as an individual as it manifest creativity. Just remember that the martial arts labels that I mentioned are not styles, they are just labels that the founders came up with to label their expression of the martial arts. So they are just representing themselves.

So real martial arts is more like the Do whereas as the so called martial arts, the combat sports (cage fighting) is more like the jutsu. The purpose of real martial arts which was written in the book, "zen in the martial arts" is to serve as a vehicle for personal spiritual development. The purpose of combat sports is to fight. The expression of real martial arts is peaceful and artistic. The expression of combat sports is just violent.

Sometimes I may feel that the label martial arts should be dissociated in respect to the real martial arts as the martial arts label has been damaged or corrupted as some people may view it. So the real martial arts should be label as the martial way , the martial arts way or the tao of the martial arts which tao is suppose to mean the way I think? That way it dissociates with the corruption and the negativity.

I guess you can say that the label Jutsu at the end of martial arts label is corrupted as Freddie said. Again the real martial arts is suppose to be peaceful in the first place like the martial arts with the Do at the end of martial arts label, as it originally came out of China. But I'm just speaking about Japan's way of martial arts in this blog. So really the martial arts that came out of Japan which is their interpretation of the real martial arts from china, should change their label. And combat sports by the way is not martial arts.

I respect Freddie's label which is the Tao of Freddie's modern kung fu because he is promoting the way (the peaceful way) as well as Bruce Lee's label the Tao of Jeet kune do. I also respect the real aikido, judo, kendo and all the other do. I don't really know much about the Tao that is why I don't really speak about it much. But I will read the Tao te ching one day.

Hopefully I don't confuse anyone in this blog.

I know this is inappropriate on this blog but I'm just going to say it anyway just for fun. If you want me to remove it I will. If you haven't notice, basically about the word Jutsu remember that it means techniques/art. So what's funny is whenever Freddie says BJJ- blow job jujutsu, what it really means is blow job gentle technique. Ju means gentle and jujitsu means technique, just substitute the jujutsu with gentle technique. Or it can mean the art of giving BJ gently. So I don't practice BJ gentle technique. I rather have a women who loves me, practice BJ gentle technique(s) on me.

I'm just joking around so don't get mad. lol





1 comment:

  1. I loved the post and even the funny part at the end. I have read up on "Do" before but I never really researched the meaning of Jujutsu but it all really does make sense, I know there are some serious problems with disharmony when it comes to labels like jujitsu and ninjutsu, and your post pretty much explains it all. With these labels it makes if very important that we label what we practice accurately or to not label it at all. I'm glad that you have read up on what you have and I have read up on what I have, I am more familiar with the Tao rather than the Japanese expressions of Jujutsu, our communications is like a trade of information, I really like the simplified way of learning by communication, because you literally summarized critical information in a few paragraphs that an entire book would take to explain.

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