Page:Japanese Physical Training (Hancock).djvu/30

4 took up much of the time of the Japanese knights. Of course the active outdoor life, combined with frugal, sensible diet, made these samurai powerful men.

But there was yet vastly more to come in the physical development of these little men. One bright fellow discovered that by pressing thumb or fingers against certain muscles or nerves momentary paralysis could be produced. He also discovered that by employing the hardened edge of his hand to strike a piece of bamboo at a certain angle of impact he could break the stick. If he could paralyse his own nerves and muscles, why not another's? If he could break a stick by a sharp blow with the edge of his hand, why could he not train himself in the same way to break the arm of a dangerous antagonist? And that was the beginning of the creation of the science of jiu-jitsu.

If it were possible to verify the guess, it would be interesting to speculate as to how the originator of jiu-jitsu made his first discovery. It is as likely as not that he started from an accidental bumping of his