K. Saito

 This is a photo that was recently posted on the Facebook page of a school that was founded by a student of an instructor of Jan de Jong's who founded his own school after JDJ passed away.

The caption to the above photo posted on the abovementioned Facebook page read: 'Possibly K.Saito, in this Photo. Instructor of Master Jan de Jong.'

Oral history tells us that JDJ was originally instructed by 'the Saito brothers' - S. Saito (8th dan) and K. Saito (7th Dan). 

Why is the K. Saito in the photo possibly the instructor of JDJ? Is it because he's Japanese and is in a martial arts outfit?

Saito is apparently the 20th most common name in Japan!

I understand that the martial arts is a bastion of anti-intellectualism, but please, at least apply a modicum of intellectual effort.

The person who posted this photo would not appear to have the faintest idea where the photo came from or even what era it came from. Thank God there was a Western person in the photo to possibly narrow the era down to, what, late 1800s-early 1900s. If he wasn't there, would this still possibly be K. Saito, the instructor of JDJ?

The photo is included in Jiu-Jitsu Tricks: The Secret Science of the Japanese Against Which Weight and Strength Does Not Count, K. Saito, New York: R.F. Fox, 1905. There is no information in that book about the author - K. Saito. In fact, given the time and that R.F. Fox published a number of articles and books about jujutsu at that time, one could question the 'authorship' of K. Saito.

I tried to inform the abovementioned Facebook party that the K. Saito they were referring to was not JDJ's instructor. How do I know for certain? Because JDJ told me so himself. He had a copy of the abovementioned book and when I raised it with him, he brought it out of his library and told me that that K. Saito was not his instructor. The aforementioned Facebook party deleted that comment as it would not appear to support their efforts of establishing credibility through dubious means. They were also the ones misappropriating images from this blog to promote themselves and their school. A subject of a post that I have subsequently deleted when they 'saw sense' and deleted their misappropriated images. No need to continue to beat someone when they appear to have learned the lesson.

By the way, the Western gentleman in the photo is not the legendary E.J. Harrison as he explains in a letter to Robert W. Smith in a letter on October 20, 1957. It may have been the gentleman that went on to introduce jujutsu to President Theodore Roosevelt.

While we can learn very little from the lazy and ignorant directly, we can learn from them by investigating their unfounded assertions.

Did JDJ learn jujutsu from the Saito brothers? Firstly, why would he credit them with his early training if nobody knows anything about them? He could have picked any number of Japanese names if he needed a Japanese origin to gain credibility.

We do know for a fact that there were Japanese brothers living in Semarang at that time, one of which was a photographer and the other a florist, which is how JDJ described the Saito brothers. That independent source is provided in Jan Ruff-O'Herne's harrowing 50 Years of Silence. Shortly before JDJ passed away, JDJ also showed me a photographic book with a photo in Semarang taken by a K. Saito. The photo was of a market place at the bottom of a hill which JDJ said they used to ride either their bikes or go-carts down and crash into market stalls. JDJ said that that photo was taken by his K. Saito.

And now for something ENTIRELY new that God forbid someone might follow up on:

Kōji Saitō (斎藤 鵠児, Saitō Kōji, born 1893, date of death unknown) was a Japanese photographer.[1]

  (in Japanese) Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, editor. 328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers (『日本写真家事典』, Nihon shashinka jiten). Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000. ISBN 4-473-01750-8 

Is this the FIRST time we have a name for the 'K' in name of the K. Saito that was one of JDJ's jujutsu instructors?