Abstract: As one of the great talents who traveled eastward to Japan in the Ming Dynasty, Chen Yuanyun played an irreplaceable role in the development of Japanese kiln making, philosophy, poetry, calligraphy, painting, architecture and medicine, especially in the development of Jujitsu. However, there is very little research related to Chen Yuanyun in China, and his contribution to the historical development of Jujitsu is not well recognized. Re-recognizing Chen Yuanyun’s contribution to the development of Jujitsu in the new era is conducive to clarifying the influence of Chinese martial arts on the formation and development of the Japanese Bushido system, and has important enlightenment for overseas dissemination of Chinese martial arts at present and in the future. The research points out that: (1) Chen Yuanyun’s title as the “originator” of Jujitsu has obvious historical limitations, no matter from the origin of the retrograde school or from the early introduction of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism; (2) Yuanyun’s achievement lies in his injection of Taoist “soft” thought into Jujitsu, which enriched the Japanese Jujitsu techniques and promoted the modernization of Jujitsu; (3) It is more appropriate to call Chen Yuanyun as “the father of modern Japanese Jujitsu" rather than as “the originator of Jujitsu”. In the future, we can further explore the dissemination and morphogenesis path of Chinese martial arts in Japan through examining the dissemination of Confucianism, Taoism, Shaolin martial arts and sumo in Japan in the early time.

Key words: Chen Yuanyun, jujitsu, Chinese martial arts, shaolin martial arts, historical contribution