Jeet Kune Do
There has been much debate over the true definition of Jeet Kune Do (JKD). The actual definition of the words "Jeet Kune Do" is "The Way of The Intercepting Fist".
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Bruce Lee would probably be very pleased and yet amazed that people are "fussing" over the name. (If they are "fussing" over the name it means that JKD has not yet been truly categorized into a mummified, embalmed "style.")
At this time there are several "camps" that are purporting to be the "true interpretation" of JKD.
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There are several terms being added to the front of JKD to differentiate it from the other camps, such as:
Functional JKD, Original JKD, and Hardcore JKD.
There are also other names in circulation such as:
(note: Jun Fan was Bruce Lee's Chinese name.)
Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do (aka:JFJKD), Jeet Kune Do Concepts (aka: JKD Concepts),
Jun Fan Gung Fu, Jun Fan Chinese Kickboxing, Jun Fan Modified Wing Chun Gung Fu.
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To sort all this out would take volumes of material. I will try to give a non-partisan, simplified dissertation.
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Bruce Lee was born Lee Jun Fan in San Francisco, CA., Nov. 27th, 1940. He moved to Hong Kong when he was about 6 months old. At age 13, Bruce began training in Wing Chun Kung Fu under Grandmaster Yip Man. He was introduced to Wing Chun by William Cheung, The current Grandmaster of The World Wing Chun Kung Fu Association (Melbourne, Aus.)
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Bruce trained in Wing Chun for 5 years (with lots of practical application experience in roof top fights in Hong Kong against other kung fu stylists).
In 1959, at the age of 18, Bruce claimed his U.S. citizenship by moving back to the United States. He landed in San Francisco, but quickly moved to Seattle to work for a family friend in a restaurant while he attended high school and eventually started in college.
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During his time in Seattle, he began to modify the Wing Chun he knew to enable him to deal with larger opponents and to fill in the blanks of the parts of Wing Chun that he had not learned before leaving Hong Kong. He called this modified system "Jun Fan Gung Fu". His students in Seattle included: Jesse Glover, James DeMille, Taky Kimura, and others.
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I consider this (Seattle) as Phase 2 of Bruce's martial development TOWARD the JKD he would eventually develop.
Shortly after marrying Linda, they moved to Oakland, CA. to open a school with James Yimm Lee. They also lived with James during this time. Bruce and James began promoting what they called, "Jeet Kune Do". By this time a lot of the training had moved away from traditional Wing Chun. I consider this (Oakland) to be Phase 3 of Bruce's martial development. He finally had a name for the general idea that he was trying to develop.
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Later when Bruce moved to Los Angeles, CA., he began integrating more of the kickboxing type of training. This (Los Angeles) was Phase 4 of Bruce Lee's way of combat that he called Jeet Kune Do.
What was taught to the Seattle group was largely missing from the training of the Los Angeles group.
One thing I believe is certain is that Bruce never considered his path nor his method of fighting to be "complete". Many look at what Bruce taught and say, "This is JKD', "This is what Bruce Lee taught". The thing that was missing in most of his teaching to his students, was his base of Wing Chun. What Bruce taught worked. But even though it worked, he, himself was constantly evolving and progressing in his own abilities, so he constantly changed what he taught to his students.
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Bruce was not trying to establish a string of systemized schools (the idea had been toyed with and dismissed because Bruce did not believe that you could mass produce fighters that fought with their full potential.) Since he was not trying to build a "following", he taught as a way to:
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1. Make a living.
2. Have someone to train with that would help him hone his skills.
His fundamental belief was that combat was combat and that no "style" had all the answers. He was not trying to establish a style, he was trying to find all the answers. In doing so, his method of fighting began to take on certain characteristics that followed certain principles that he found held true.
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Anything he taught before Oakland, cannot be truly called "JKD", especially since he did not even coin that name until Oakland. Generally, the material from that phase should be, and is called "Jun Fan Gung Fu".
(Technically, anything Bruce ever taught could be called Jun Fan Gung Fu, because it would all be "Bruce Lee's Gung Fu".) Eventually Bruce even developed in his thinking until he actually became more "human combat" oriented and moved away from the ethnical thinking of "Chinese" martial arts. At that point he stopped using the term "Gung Fu" and used the term "combat" or "fighting."
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In 1969 Bruce wrote a letter to William Cheung stating that he had moved away from Wing Chun and was "drawing up" a "style" that he called Jeet Kune Do and he believed that this JKD would offer more in terms of efficiency. When Bruce left L.A. for Hong Kong to begin making movies, he told Dan Inosanto to shut down the L.A. school. When Bruce Lee passed away July 20th , 1973 in Hong Kong while filming "The Game of Death", all of his students were left without a clear direction in which to proceed. Each of his students continued teaching small groups in non-commercial "clubs" (backyards, etc.).
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Shortly after this, Bruce became a world-wide phenomenon and everyone wanted to learn his "style" of fighting. Very little was known by the general public about what Bruce taught. In his interviews he made mention of certain concepts or principles such as not using any way as the way.
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Since none of his students would openly teach, many people began trying to figure out on their own what he meant by such statements as: "Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own". Since these statments are so vague many began putting together various kicks from one style with punches from another and calling it "Jeet Kune Do."
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Eventually, pressure was put upon Dan Inosanto (Lee's Ass't. Instructor in the L.A. school) to share what he had learned from Bruce. Since Dan had promised Bruce that he would not teach JKD commercially, he began applying the "concepts" he had learned from Bruce to other martial arts such as Filipino Kali, Pentjak Silat, etc. This, he called "JKD Concepts". Essentially it comes down to studying a cultural/ethnical martial art and then applying the "JKD Concepts" to make it fit the trainee better.
