Brief  History of  Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu

The genesis of this art can be traced back to the eleventh century, and its evolution went on for the whole Japanese feudal era. A time, told and sung in books, stories and movies and depicted in the West by the noble warrior (the bushi), or samurai (man of service) This school was handed down in secret, for almost an entire millennium, with all the fighting techniques of many different disciplines and weapons like the bow, the sword, the spear, the halberd and hand-to-hand combat, by the school heads (Soke), who were almost all members of the Takeda family.

The teachings were dedicated to the military education of the warriors and retainers of the clan based on their functions and roles. All the warriors (of every order and rank) studied from an early age, both the moral principles that would have taught them (bushido) and the techniques that they would have used in battle.

Among the military arts that the new Takeda-Minamoto clan already taught in 1087 there were the bow, horsemanship, spear, sword, military strategy (water systems, excavations and fortifications) and naturally also the hand to hand fighting, which it is told was adapted from the ancestors of Minamoto Yoriyoshi and Minamoto Yoshimitsu (founder of the art), deriving it from the tegoi. The Tegoi was an original japanese wrestling even more ancient which is rumored to have given birth also to sumo.