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A BRIEF HISTORY
The Australian Jujitsu Federation (AJF) formerly Australian Society of Ju-jitsuans (ASJJ), has a history within Australia that goes back over one hundred years to 1906 - arguably amongst the earliest forms of physical education within Australia by way of martial arts that is still active today.
The formation of the ASJJ really became structured in the mid 1950s when many different jujitsu schools joined together under a common bond. The bond between those schools brought about a standardisation in the teaching, competency and assessment criteria.
This teaching standard applied throughout the ASJJ through to the mid and late 1970s. At that time two significant developments encouraged the ASJJ to restructure its membership criteria. These developments were the proposed introduction throughout Australia of what would become the National Coaching Accreditation Scheme (NCAS) and the formation in Victoria of the Australian Martial Arts Council to satisfy a direction of the then Commonwealth Government.
Changes to the membership criteria opened the door to schools that wished to join the ASJJ while maintaining their own style in jujitsu through their teaching and assessment criteria. With these changes the ASJJ became an organization representing the views of many different styles of jujitsu. In the early 1980s the ASJJ gained recognition from the Australian Coaching Council with the responsibility for administering the NCAS program for all jujitsu instructors.
In the year 2000 members of the ASJJ took a major step towards a new vision for the organization. This culminated with a change of name to the ‘Australian Jujitsu Federation’. The objective was three fold, firstly to provide a greater involvement of members in the affairs of the organization, secondly to promote a common bond of sharing of knowledge while each school would maintain its own identity.
The third objective was to enable those members who had lineage within the teachings of the ASJJ (pre the events of the mid 1970s) to pursue a separate identity. This was achieved in 2004 with the formation of ‘Koshinryu Jujutsu Australia’, which became a member school of the AJF.
Providing representation throughout Australia the AJF is actually a federation of member schools or organisations that include jujitsu and related martial arts; modern (gendai) and traditional (koryu), both sporting and non-sporting.
During 2004 the AJF as the eminent jujitsu organization in Australia, renewed its pursuit for formal recognition for jujitsu from the Australian Government. These renewed efforts resulted in recognition being achieved on 8th June 2005. Today the Australian Government through the Australian Sports Commission recognises the Australian Jujitsu Federation to develop jujitsu at all levels in Australia.
In 2008 members amended the AJF constitution to further reinforce the membership provision for related martial arts, and in 2009 the Australian Sports Commission approved that the administration by the AJF of the NCAS accreditation program be expanded to include: aikido, aiki jujitsu, hapkido, and kenpo, this being in addition to jujitsu and Brazilian jiu jitsu.
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