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WWU Journalism faculty publish analysis of the early media history of jiu-jitsu in the U.S.

As martial arts grow in cultural importance in the U.S., jiu-jitsu's early years in America are worth a deeper look.

by Mary Gallagher

WWU Communications

WWU Journalism faculty Betsy O'Donovan and Jeff Shaw are also jiu-jitsu practitioners. O'Donovan is a blue belt and Shaw is a second-degree black belt.

WWU journalism faculty Jeff Shaw and Betsy O’Donovan’s exploration of U.S. media coverage of jiu-jitsu in the early 1900s was recently published by the Journal of 20th Century Media History. 

“ ‘His Huge Opponent Became Helpless’: Jiu-jitsu in the American Press, 1900-1906” follows jiu-jitsu’s early years in the U.S. 

“Media coverage of this early dispersal of jiu-jitsu to the United States … tells the story of how the art and its practitioners interacted with the economics, politics, racial and gender norms of the places they landed,” Shaw and O’Donovan write, “and ultimately transformed those places, leaving profound cultural impact that persists to this day.” 

Jiu-jitsu was viewed as a method of self-defense for women in the early 1900s. This editorial cartoon from the Water Valley (Miss.) Progress, December 2, 1905, depicts Misao Soga demonstrating in court how she dealt with a man who had been harassing her.

Though the paper is about events of the last century, the role of martial arts is growing in importance in American cultural life, Shaw said. Take, for example, the recent UFC fights that recently took place at the White House. 

“Our intent with this work is to help people in academia and outside of it get a deeper perspective on the role of martial arts in our cultural life,” Shaw said. “Jiu-jitsu was an outside art in America, practiced by immigrants, before it became mainstream.” 

The U.S. popularity of jiu-jitsu took off in the first years of the 20th century, making front-page news across the country. 

“With global perception of Japan shifting as a result of that nation’s victory in war with Russia, the American public was primed to accept Japanese martial arts as an import from a place they now recognized as a metaphorical fighter that punched above its weight,” Shaw and O’Donovan write. “Before this first phase of jiu-jitsu in American ended, the craze had spread from vaudeville exhibitions to women’s clubs to city streets and, most significantly, to Theodore Roosevelt’s White House.”

Shaw is an instructor in Western’s Department of Journalism, Public Relations & Multimedia. He is also a jiu-jitsu second-degree black belt and instructor who recently taught a WWU Honors Seminar, “This is Why We Fight: An Interdisciplinary History of Modern Martial Arts, 1600-Present.”

O’Donovan is an associate professor in Western’s Department of Journalism, Public Relations & Multimedia, the 2026 recipient of the Peter J. Elich Excellence in Teaching Award, and a blue belt in jiu-jitsu.

Find out more about Western’s Department of Journalism, Public Relations and Multimedia here. 

Learn more about Honors here.

Mary Gallagher covers Western’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences for WWU Communications and edits WWU’s Window magazine and the Family Connection Newsletter. Email her story ideas at mary.gallagher@wwu.edu