—'No, it is not. Jiujitsu is not quite three hundred years old, since it has been systematised into an art. There are many schools, I mean styles, of jiujitsu, and naturally some are older than others. They differ somewhat from one another, the difference having arisen chiefly from the endeavour of the founders to make improvements.'
—'But what is the real purport of jiujitsu?'
—'The masters call it an art of self-defence. You see, our Samurai do not like to be arrogant or offensive to other people, and therefore they profess to use jiujitsu only when attacked, hence the name of self-defence, and this point is one of their ideals; but as a matter of fact, it is an art that can be used for attack equally well, and therefore may be called an art both offensive and defensive. The advantage of knowing this art is that we can throw an opponent without hurting or killing him, because it requires no weapons, not even a stick. It is done by catching hold of various parts of the opponent by the hands. Of course, there are many tricks, and therefore, if both parties be equally efficient in the art, the combat becomes very complicated. The term jiujitsu literally means "soft art," or an art accomplished by "sleight of body," as some people put it, so much so that one school is called "The Willow Mind Style." We have a saying, "A willow knows not a breaking by snow," meaning that a slender branch of a willow is stronger than a branch of a robust tree like the pine, an analogy showing that flexibility is often stronger than stubbornness.
'From all this it may well be imagined that a slender and small man, without any perceptible physical strength, can often become a great master of the art. Once at Shanghai, a Japanese who understood jiujitsu well was attacked by a group of Chinese roughs in the middle of a bridge, but he threw them all, one after the other, since when no Chinaman attempts to attack a Japanese, concluding wisely that we may all be masters of the art. Once in England—I believe it was in Newcastle—a number of roughs attacked a Japanese; he threw them all, one after the other, and went off. The roughs were taken into custody by constables, when they confessed that they would not have attacked the man had they known he was a Japanese, and they believed that all Japanese knew the "devilish trick of wrestling," as they called it. You now see the nature of our jiujitsu, I suppose.'
—'And suppose your best wrestler and a jiujitsu man encountered?' asked one of the young ladies.
—'A wrestler is no match for a jiujitsu man. A wrestler who can lift up a big stone, or catch hold of a bull by its horns, would be easily beaten by a youth of fourteen scarcely able to lift a small cannon ball, provided the boy were well trained in jiujitsu. In wrestling, therefore, all jiujitsu tricks are forbidden. This will explain why no Occidental, even a champion wrestler, has ever succeeded in defeating a Japanese jiujitsu man. Perhaps you remember one of our jiujitsu men, who is in England, won the Gold Championship Cup last year, and yet in Japan he is not considered a first-class man in the art. I do not, however, wish to boast of the matter. Even amongst the most undeveloped tribes one sometimes sees the greatest possible skill shown in such matters, especially in the use of the bow and arrow. I hear American Indians shoot fishes in the rivers with arrows, and that too not by aiming direct, but by sending arrows up in the air and letting them fall in the water. They do not shoot direct, because, as you know, the curve of sight in water is very different from that in plain air.'
—'I understand that,' said the duchess, 'but your jiujitsu seems to be very different from mere skill. It is the result of a long and deliberate study of physical organism, systematised upon a scientific basis, as the physician in the paper says.'
—'Maybe,' I answered.
—'But what is that book which you have brought with you?' asked the duchess.
—'It is the book I promised you the other day. It is the Kokkwa, a monthly on art. It contains, as you see, very good photogravures and chromographs of our old objets d'art.'