The Text-book of Ju-jutsu, by S. K. Uyenishi

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ere is another, very fine, old book on ju jitsu: "The Text-book of Ju-jutsu". It was first published in 1911, and printed in 1959 for the last time.

The book you are looking at here has no year of publication, but it is the fifth printing. I would estimate that it is from the 20's or 30's. There are some really cool shots of the author (?) sporting a very stylish mustache - trimmed facial hair that would turn any male from certain middle parts of our country, abolutely green with envy.

Sadakazu Uyenishi came to London in the early part of 1900, as an assistant to Yukio Tani. They were both invited over by E. Barton-Wright, an English engineer. Early on Barton-Wright also worked as their manager. On a side note: Barton-Wright is the man behind the term Bartitsu, a ju jitsu form made famous through the "Sherlock Holmes" books. Uyenishi later adopted the stage-name "Raku", hiring William Bankier to be his manager. Bankier himself was a wellknown "strongman", carrying the name "Apollo" when he was performing. You can read about Tani and the other people in early European ju jitsu bouts by clicking here (will open in a new browser window).

Not many techniques are actually shown in this book, and some of it is just as much Kodokan Judo as it is ju jitsu. There is a lot of text describing the techniques, and great care has been taken to describe each and every technique in depths.

There are som fine sequence of pictures describing some of the throws (sort of like stills from a movie), as well as single pictures of every technique. In addition to the methods, you will find information about ju jitsu in Japan.

This is a nice book indeed, a book that you should try to get hold of! As always, I do recommend you try Abebooks. They have a massive amount of interesting and rare books.

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