The History of Jeet Kune Do

As you can see from my previous post, it is indeed difficult to articulate what JKD is. Before I proceed further, I would like to discuss the history and evolution of Jeet Kune Do based on the facts I have come across.

Bruce Lee first arrived in the U.S. in 1959 in San Francisco. A few months later, Bruce moved to Seattle to begin his education at Edison Technical School. In 1960, Lee graduated from Edison Technical school and opened his first martial arts school that he called The Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute. The art he taught there was a modified version of the Wing Chun Gung Fu he had learned while living in Hong Kong. He named his art after his Chinese name, Lee Jun Fan. From 1960 to 1964, Bruce operated his school with the help of his first assistant instructor, Taky Kimura.

In the summer of 1964, Lee left Seattle and moved to Oakland, California where he started his second Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute. His assistant instructor there was a man by the name of James Yimm Lee (no relation). It was during this period, around 1965, that word of Bruce's teaching of non-Chinese students outraged the local community. A rival kung fu instructor by the name of Wong Jak Man was sent to Bruce's school to challenge Lee. If Lee lost the fight, he would have to stop teaching his gung fu. He won the match, but this event became a turning point for him. Lee realized that his modified Wing Chun Gung Fu (Jun Fan Gung Fu) was not effective enough to allow him to dispatch his opponent quickly. Bruce also realized that he was not as physically fit as he believed. This began his journey to find a more effective fighting method. Lee began to search out various martial arts that were available to him at the time to find strategies, techniques, and training methods that were more realistic and practical. Whatever he found useful, he absorbed into his evolving method of fighting. He also began to stress physical conditioning more and more.

In the Spring of 1966, Bruce moved to Los Angeles. By now, Lee's art of Jun Fan Gung Fu had undergone many alterations and modifications in order to make it a more efficient and realistic method of fighting. In February of 1967, he opened his third and last Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute in the Chinatown section of L.A. His assistant instructor there was a man named Dan Inosanto. A few months later, Bruce's art had evolved so far from his modified Wing Chun Gung Fu (Jun Fan Gung Fu) that he decided to change the name to Jeet Kune Do; which translates to "the way of the intercepting fist". Lee first taught JKD as a style that stressed intercepting an opponent before he could hurt you. Almost immediately, Bruce regretted having ever given his art a name, for it seemed to limit his 'style' of combat to a singular approach. Jeet Kune Do then became more of a philosophical approach to combat. Experiences, training methods, strategies, and concepts are what he offered his students in hopes of guiding them to finding their own personal 'way' of fighting. By December of 1969, Bruce was concerned that his students were looking upon his personal expression of JKD as THE only truth in combat and that there was no other. He ordered all three of his schools to close and Lee set off for Hong Kong to pursue his movie career.

After making four and a half movies, Bruce Lee passed away unexpectedly on July 20, 1973. He left behind a legacy that still inspires martial artists around the globe. Throughout the course of his evolution in the martial arts, Lee only certified three individuals as instructors. They were Taky Kimura, James Lee, and Dan Inosanto. All three of these individuals were certified to teach Jun Fan Gung Fu, but of the three, only Dan Inosanto was certified to teach Jeet Kune Do and authorized by Lee to give out rank. Upon Lee's request, Dan became the principle heir and authority on Bruce's art of JKD. James Lee passed away in 1972 from cancer. He made no instructors in his lifetime. Taky Kimura continued to teach Jun Fan Gung Fu, but only certified one instructor to date, his son Andy Kimura. Andy was certified by his father to teach Jun Fan Gung Fu. Today, the only legitimate line of JKD instructors stem from Dan Inosanto's lineage and no other.

For almost 40 years now, Dan has been teaching Jun Fan Gung Fu and Jeet Kune Do as well as preserving these arts as they were taught to him. The same stands for Taky Kimura and the Jun Fan Gung Fu that Lee personally taught him. Within the last decade, Dan has come under considerable scrutiny for the way some people, including original students of Bruce Lee, believe he has misrepresented the arts of Jun Fan Gung Fu and JKD. In the modern JKD scene, this debate has come to be known as "Original Jeet Kune Do vs. Jeet Kune Do Concepts" which I will address in my next post.