Jan de Jong's Birthday and Legacy

Jan de Jong OAM 9th Dan would have been 100 years old on 6 February 2021, as we were reminded by various posts on Facebook. This got me thinking about the last time I saw JDJ.

I visited JDJ about three weeks before he passed away. As always it was a meeting of minds. During our time together, JDJ gave me a scroll. Martial arts tragics might be thinking, 'scroll', the anointed one! No. It was a series of photographs photocopied from a book for a kembagan (kata) that JDJ wanted me to learn and teach to the pencak silat instructors class. There is a lot more to that seemingly simple gesture than meets the eye.

JDJ developed the entire jujutsu (aikido and pencak silat) grading system that he used in his school. A feature of that development was that JDJ COLLECTED techniques/defences. He added to his teachings, all the way up until his passing. He was Dutch; they collect things.

The scroll is an addition to his pencak silat teachings. Before that, a host of dasar etc were added to his silat teachings. They were added because of a Dutch book on Seita Hati pencak silat that I gave to him. JDJ included me in the pencak silat instructors class when he was introducing those dasar because he knew that (a) I had studied those dasar in the book, and (b) I had trained in that 'style' of pencak silat while I was living in London and in my travels in Europe. Now he wanted to introduce a new kembangan based on that 'style' of pencak silat.

In like fashion, JDJ did some 'training' with me during our last time together. He was showing me the miji gyaku (?) defences that he was 'developing' and teaching to the jujutsu instructors class. Unbeknown to the class, (a) the defences were taken from a book by Bruce Tegner that I'd given to JDJ (Tegner having been a student of Mochizuki), and (b) that JDJ studied with the aid of Adrian Dobson and Keith Hickey for months with early morning training sessions. Adrian had hours, literally hundreds of hours, of video of these training sessions that JDJ engaged in with them in order to understand these defences before they were introduced to the jujutsu instructors/black belt class.

 JDJ developed an amazing grading system, but, we don't need another JDJ. We don't need another JDJ that finds more and more techniques and defences to be added to his teachings. What we need is a JDJ that focuses on refinement. That seeks to find a 'system' rather than a collection of 'tricks', as a collection of unrelated techniques is.

Some are teaching what JDJ taught (to varying degrees). Some are tinkering around the edges. One has eliminated the mon system that JDJ introduced based on his Yoseikan experience. That person said he did so in order to get back to the 'original' Tsutsumi Hozan ryu jujutsu. That person is seriously deluded and is only interested in trying to associated themselves with a samurai warrior tradition that may not exist. One person - one person has attempted a serious revision. I may not agree with the revision process but I do applaud their attempt at using what JDJ developed to develop something better.