On this book

Surgical Jiu-Jitsu is an illustrated atlas of precision grappling, presented as plates recovered from a Meiji-era surgical manual that never existed. The conceit is a frame; the techniques are real, the history notes are drawn from real public-domain sources, and the precision points are the honest details that make each procedure work.

The old texts never agreed on a spelling. Jujutsu, jujitsu, jiu-jitsu: the same art wearing different romanizations, a century apart. Neither does the internet, which is why more than one domain delivers you here.

Sources consulted for lineage notes include the early Kodokan syllabi and the English-language manuals of the early twentieth century, among them Hancock and Higashi’s The Complete Kano Jiu-Jitsu (1905), all long in the public domain. Where a quotation is styled after the old manuals rather than taken verbatim, the attribution says so.

The engravings are made now, not then: composed by machine to a fixed style bible of sumi ink on aged washi, each one drawn from a real reference so the positions and grips are true, curated by hand, one take chosen from many. AI imaging is close to perfect and getting closer, but it is not there yet. We are refining every plate toward anatomical exactness; most are near right and a few still carry small errors. If a plate looks wrong to your trained eye, it may be. The Attending, our resident physician, is a language model that has read the atlas and holds office hours for registered patients.

Nothing in this book is medical advice. Tap early, tap often, and take actual injuries to an actual physician.