MARTIAL ARTS FAMILY TREE

fifteen schools and thirteen lines of transmission — every arrow is a documented apprenticeship, not a legend

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: sport · everyone · reference · gym

The lines come from the histories of the Kodokan, the JKA, goju-ryu.jp, IKO Kyokushinkaikan, the Gracie academies, FIAS, Britannica and the founders’ own interviews; cross-checked 2026-08-12. Undocumented folk lines (taekkyon, Chinese roots of Naha-te, ancient Daito-ryu genealogies) carry no arrows on purpose.

SAMBO AND BJJ ARE COUSINS

Sambo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu are first cousins: both were created by Kodokan men. Maeda, who taught the Gracies in Brazil, and Oshchepkov with his second dan were students of Kano’s school (2 direct judo branches on this sheet).

And Shito-ryu is simply two teachers’ names: Mabuni built the style’s name from the first character of Itosu (糸, shi) and the first character of Higaonna (東, to). Gratitude sewn into the word itself.

On the sheet

The lines come from the histories of the Kodokan, the JKA, goju-ryu.jp, IKO Kyokushinkaikan, the Gracie academies, FIAS, Britannica and the founders’ own interviews; cross-checked 2026-08-12. Undocumented folk lines (taekkyon, Chinese roots of Naha-te, ancient Daito-ryu genealogies) carry no arrows on purpose.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 9 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

MARTIAL ARTS FAMILY TREE

SAMBO AND BJJ ARE COUSINS

On the sheet

Printing

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