IT is worth investigating the matches between the kodokan and Fusen ryu because they set the pattern for much of the modern development of jujitsu from the 20th century to the present. The single greatest feature of the Fusen-ryu victory was the adoption of an overall strategy that was wedded to a fighting technique that left opponents at a distinct and unexpected disadvantage. The idea was to take an opponent our of his area of expertise and into a situation that he was ill-prepared to deal with, while at the same time developing one's own skills in that specific area. This is exactly the strategy adopted by Mataemon Tanabe.
He saw that the training of pre-20th century judo was woefully inadequate in ground grappling. Thus, he developed his students' skills in ground grappling to a high degree, knowing that it is a relatively easy matter to take a fight to the ground. In this way, he could rationally expect his students to rapidly put their opponents into a phase of combat that they wee simply not able to cope with. T His unexpected strategy succeeded brilliantly in the empirical test of open competition. The core element of this novel strategy is the idea that unarmed combat can be broke up into phases, each of which is quite different in character from the others. For example. fighting in a standing position is entirely different from fighting on the ground. A fighter can be proficient at one but inept in the other. In addition, fighting in the standing position is quite different when the tow combatants get a grip on each other and go into a standing clinch. At that point, the control that they can exert on each other totally changes the character of the match from the situation where neither had any hold on the other.
Tanabe realized that the judo players were skilled in the standing position when they had a grip on this opponents. This is where they had been able to trounce their opposition in the previous challenge matches, such as the Tokyo police tournament. The gripping and throwing skills honed by live training had given the judo representatives a decisive advantage against the classical jujitsu schools and tournaments. The mistake made by traditional jujitsu ryu was to take on the kodokan at heir greatest skill-namely, groping, and throwing.
Fusen-ryu representatives saw that if they could take the fights into a phase of combat that the judo players were ill-suited to deal with, the chances of success would be much greater. Ground grappling was an obvious choice. IT is easy for trained fighters to take a fight to the ground, especially if they are confident enough to simply sit down to the guard position and fight from there. In addition, the means of victory on the ground is via submission holds, something that most untrained people have no idea how to defend against. Tanabe's great insight, them, was this notion of phases of combat. It was a strategy that used these phases to take an opponent out of his comfort zone and into a phase in which he had little change of success.
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The suggestion was to obtain an opponent of expertise and into a circumstances that he was ill-prepared to treate with, while at the same time developing one's own skills in that specific area. This is exactly the strategy which is adopted by Muay Thai Kickboxing
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