Old Print Article: “Revived By Jiu-Jitsu,” New York Times (1910)

“The patient immediately regained full consciousness.”

As far as I can tell, a Tokyo man fainted on a train platform in 1910 and got the crap beaten out of him. The New York Times had a different take in its September 4 issue of that year. The story:

Tokyo–An extraordinary story of the resuscitation of a man apparently dead by means of jiu-jitsu is printed by the Japanese Advertiser, which paper declares that, though jiu-jitsu has attracted much attention throughout the world as a marvelous art of self-defense, it has not yet received the attention it deserves as a means of restoring to life persons who are victims of shock, concussion of the brain, apoplexy or drowning.

It has long been asserted that this curious science has what may be known as an esoteric side–that there are secrets connected with it that are imparted only to those who have attained a very high degree of proficiency, and that they are pledged not to divulge these secrets. It is even said–and believed–that certain jiu-jitsu experts know how to kill a human being by what is little more than a touch.

However this may be, the story now related appears well authenticated. A man named Tanenouchi Yasutara, 23 years old, a conductor in the service of the Tokio street railway, suddenly fell apparently lifeless on the platform of the train on which he was on duty. His collapse was due to apoplexy. The man’s body was lifted to the ground and every possible means of resuscitation known to the fellow conductors and motormen, as well as others suggested by onlookers, was tried without avail. The man remained livid, without any apparent respiration or pulsation, and was on the point of being given up for dead when one Iura Hidikichi, who is a jiu-jitsu expert, happened to pass by, and, lifting the lifeless body up, tried upon it the jiu-jitsu method of resuscitation. 

The effect was an instantaneous as it was marvelous. The patient immediately regained full consciousness, to the great amazement of the onlookers who had crowded around.

Broadly speaking the method employed is as follows: The operator kneels on one knee immediately behind the patient, whom he lifts to a semi-sitting posture, placing his (the operator’s) knee between and slightly below the patient’s shoulder blades in the cardiac region, then brings his hands forward over the patient’s chest, and then gives them a powerful jerk backward. If any life remains the effect is instantaneous, not only respiration and pulsation, but full consciousness, being restored. There are, however, details in regard to this treatment which cannot be learned.”

Tags: ,