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柔術 is often rendered in English-speaking countries (and France, Germany, and
Brazil) as "jiu-jitsu" or "ju-jitsu", even though the actual Hepburn
romanization is "jūjutsu".

[Wiktionary's page on 柔術](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%9F%94%E8%A1%93)
writes:

> 柔術 ( _hiragana_ じゅうじゅつ, _rōmaji_ jūjutsu, _historical hiragana_ じうじゆつ)

The historical hiragana here explains how we get the "jiu" in "jiu-jitsu", but
then shouldn't it be jiuj **iu** tsu, not jiuj **i** tsu? Does rendering it as
"jitsu" have any basis in historical Japanese pronunciation or orthography, or
is it a corruption by speakers of European languages?
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pronunciation phonology rōmaji
Was 術 (as in 柔術) ever pronounced jitsu?
### The history of the character's readings

Let's look at the historical and reconstructed pronunciations of 術:

[Old Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Chinese) reconstruction:

  * **//*Cə-lut//**  
[Baxter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Baxter)-[Sagart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent_Sagart)
reconstruction

  * **//*ɦljud//**  
[Zhengzhang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhengzhang_Shangfang)
reconstruction

[Middle Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Chinese) reconstruction,
the hypothesized source of modern Chinese dialectal readings, and Japanese and
Korean borrowed readings:

  * **//ʑiuɪt̚//***

Modern [Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language)
[dialects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese):

  * **shù**  
[Mandarin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese)

  * **seot 6**  
[Cantonese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese)

  * **sṳ̆**  
[Min Bei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Bei)

  * **su̍t**  
[Hokkien](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkien) [Min
Nan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Nan)

  * **sug 8**  
[Teochew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teochew_dialect) [Min
Nan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Nan)

[Korean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language):

  * **술** **//sul//**

[Japanese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language):

  * **じゅつ** **//d͡ʑut͡su//**  
The [_goon_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-on) (the older reading)

  * **ずち** **//zut͡ɕi//**  
Alternative _goon_ reading (very rare, I don't think I've ever encountered it)

  * **しゅつ** **//ɕut͡su//**  
The [_kan'on_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kan-on) (a slightly more recent
borrowing)

Almost all of these are centered on a core vowel value of roughly //u//. Even
the outlier Cantonese has an //o//, a back-of-the-mouth sound not too far from
//u//.

### Phonology, and some of what happens when words are borrowed

In the modern English term _jiujitsu_ , we have a long vowel in the first
syllable, and a short vowel in the second. The stress is also on the first
syllable, leaving the second syllable a bit lax.

Unstressed vowels in English have a tendency to gravitate towards the front of
the mouth, often producing actually-spoken vowel values like [[ɪ]] (the short
"i" like in _hit_ ), [[ɛ]] (the short "e" sound like in _bed_ ), or [[ə]] (the
so-called "schwa" sound like the "u" in _but_ or the initial "a" in _about_ ).
So a shift in the pronunciation of this unstressed second syllable in
_jiujitsu_ is not surprising.

The う in Japanese, meanwhile, has an //u// sound that is more towards the
front of the mouth, and less open, than the English //u//. Strictly speaking,
phonologists sometimes transcribe this as [[ɨ]] or [[ʉ]]. This sound,
especially when short, may come across to English-speakers' ears as something
closer to that short [[ɪ]] like in _hit_. So that short う sound in the じゅつ of
じゅうじゅつ, when heard by an English speaker, is predisposed to gravitate towards
a short [[ɪ]], producing the odd _jiujitsu_ or _jujitsu_ spellings we see
today.
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I'm not very familiar with the diffusion process of jujitsu, but the practice
to read 術 somewhat like じつ exists(ed) in the traditional Tokyo dialect.

[Japanese
WP](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%B1%E4%BA%AC%E6%96%B9%E8%A8%80) says:

>   * 「じゅ」が「じ」、「しゅ」が「し」に転訛する。（例）準備→じんび、美術→びじつ、新宿→しんじく、趣向←→嗜好
>

This is a well-known phenomenon: //u// in Eastern dialects is generally
unrounded, so a weakened //ju// could be indistinguishable or even merged with
//i//, under the influence of the palatal //j//.

Since the modern standard language is based deeply on the native Tokyo
pronunciation in phonetics, this feature has been near-officially received in
Standard Japanese. However, along with the decline of "pure" Tokyo accent, the
pronunciation has almost faded out even in Greater Tokyo in our generation
(together with [鼻濁音](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/26227/7810) etc). I
myself only occasionally hear such accent from senior speakers (≧ 50s?).

I found a document that NHK (the national broadcaster) decided to [abandon a
recommendation that tolerated the shift of //ju// to
//i//](https://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/research/kotoba/pdf/20170401_1.pdf)
(originally defined in 1960).

Thus, it is quite possible that those who disseminated _jujitsu_ actually
pronounced the word in that way themselves, and so is it transcribed
naturally.
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# Pronunciation of じゅ

In Japanese, the "u" vowel /ɯ/ has a centralized allophone [ɨ] (sometimes
written [ɯ̈]) when occurring after /z/ and palatalised consonants /Cj/.1 This
is 'halfway between' the standard Japanese vowels /i/ and /ɯ/ (and close to
the English vowel /ɪ/ in e.g. _hit_ ).

Hence じゅ is commonly realized as [d͡ʑɨ] (as opposed to [d͡ʑɯᵝ]). It may be
because of this (and the contrast of its shortness with the first 'stronger'
うう in 柔) that some romanizations of the early 20th century transliterated the
word as _jitsu_.

As broccoli forest notes, the Shitamachi dialect fronts [d͡ʑu͍] to [d͡ʑi], and
in the Tōhoku dialect /i/ and /ɯ/ are neutralized generally.

  1. > One encounters a centralized allophone [ɯ̈] after /s/, /t/, /z/, and after the palatal consonants (C _y_ ), for example in the word _gyuunyuu o_ 'milk' [gjɯ̈:njɯ̈:].  
>  • [_The Phonology of
> Japanese_](https://books.google.co.uk/books?redir_esc=y&id=ix9r6CbEl6IC&q=Cj#v=onepage&q=centralized),
> Labrune (p.25)

* * *

# Early romanizations of 柔術

Note that while the
[Hepburn](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qCowAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA190&dq="ju+jutsu")
romanization _jujutsu_ was established as early as 1872,2 this was not an
ubiquitous system at the time, and even less so in works printed outside of
Japan. The earliest English references to jujutsu appear in the Japan Weekly
Mail, where it is spelled _jitsu_ :

> _Jiu jitsu_ (wrestling) is also taught, but not much practised by gentlemen.
>
>   * [_Japan Weekly
> Mail_](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VyBCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA133&dq="jiujitsu"),
> "Fu So Mimi Bukaro: A Budget of Japanese Notes" (1875)
>

This article also contains reference to a number of other Japanese
disciplines, all with the same spelling: _Gei jitsu, Ba jitsu, Ken jitsu, Ho
jitsu, San jitsu_.

While there was a mix of jutsu/jitsu spellings in the 1880's and 1890's,3 a
number of popular English books on the subject were published around 1900
which used the _jitsu_ spelling:

  * _Jiu-Jitsu Combat Tricks_ , H.I. Hancock (1888)
  * [_The Japanese Art of Jiu-Jitsu_](https://archive.org/details/reviewofreviewsw31newy/page/202), H.I. Hancock (1890)
  * [_"Ju-Jitsu,"_ The Ancient Art of Self-Defense by Sleight of Body](https://archive.org/details/transactionsand00londgoog/page/n18), T. Shidachi, illustrations by R. Isayama (1892)
  * _The Complete Kano Jiu-Jitsu (Judo)_ , G. P. Putnam & Sons (1905)
  * [_The Game of Ju-jitsu: For the Use of Schools and Colleges_](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QyoxAQAAMAAJ&q="jitsu"), Taro Miyake, Yukio Tani (1906)
  * [_Jiu Jitsu: The Effective Japanese Mode of Self-defense_](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LikxAQAAMAAJ&q="jitsu"&dq="jitsu"), Frederick R. Toombs (1913)

Looking at the [google
n-grams](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=jujutsu%2Bjiujutsu%2Bju+jutsu%2Bjiu+jutsu%2Cjujitsu%2Bjiujitsu%2Bju+jitsu%2Bjiu+jitsu%2Cjiujiutsu%2Bjujiutsu%2Bjiu+jiutsu%2Bju+jiutsu&case_insensitive=on)
data, it appears this is around the time that this orthography began to gain
widespread usage outside of Japan:

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y8UAZ.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y8UAZ.png)

  2. > Jū-jutsu, ジウジユツ, 柔術, _n._ The art of wrestling, or throwing others by sleight.  
>  Syn. yawara, jidori, sumōtori.  
>  ...  
>  Wrestling, _n_. Sumō, jidori, yawara, jūjutsu  
>  • [_Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary by J. C.
> Hepburn_](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kDE-
> AAAAYAAJ&pg=RA2-PA200&dq="jujutsu") (1872)

* * *

# "jiutsu"

As you speculate, before the widespread adoption of Hepburn the expected form
_jiu_ was indeed occasionally used:

> Chin-jiutsu-sho.......... 陳 述 書
>
> [_The
> Chrysanthemum_](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rbcRAAAAYAAJ&q="jiutsu"),
> Volume 1 (1881)

> | Jiutsu-gawa, 76, 491.
>
>   * [_Japan: Travels and Researches Undertaken at the Cost of the Prussian
> Government_](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OxYlAQAAIAAJ&q="jiutsu"),
> (1884)
>

> ... the Japanese wrestling game of **jiu—jiutsu** , which physically
> demonstrates that if you yield at opportune moments you may turn your
> adversary's force to your own end and advantage.
>
>   *
> [_Telephony_](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FUmJBTIOFAgC&q="jiutsu"),
> Volume 8 (1904)
>

> With the quickness that came of long training in the “ **Jiujiutsu** ”
> school he ran in under the weapon and knocked out his adversary's wind with
> his head, catching him round the waist and throwing him heavily backward.
>
>   * [_The Custom of the Country: Tales of New
> Japan_](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jHg6AQAAMAAJ&q="jiujiutsu"),
> Mrs. Hugh Fraser (1902)
>
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