The history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is full of disputed narratives, but one recent discovery stands out for what it reveals about how that history has been handled over time.

According to martial arts researcher Gustavo Maçaneiro, a Japanese translator appears to have deliberately removed references to the Gracie family from a book about Mitsuyo Maeda, the judoka widely credited with introducing judo to Brazil.

The book in question is the third volume of a series documenting Maeda’s travels, compiled from letters and telegrams he sent to a friend in Japan and published shortly after his death in 1941.
The volume covering his time in Brazil remains one of the few firsthand sources detailing his activities outside Japan.

In a podcast appearance, Maçaneiro, a BJJ black belt and Kodokan Judo black belt, explained how he uncovered the omission while researching the origins of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

The book includes a tribute from Captain Soto, one of Maeda’s students, originally published as a newspaper article following Maeda’s death. When Maçaneiro compared that original article to the version in the Japanese book, he found the translator had cut the section where Soto discussed the Gracie family’s connection to Maeda:

We also have Captain Soto, another guy that I have learned with Maeda. When Maeda died, he said that Maeda was very grateful for the Gracies.
It’s very interesting because later… What is written in this book is actually a translation to Japanese of the of the newspaper article of Captain Soto.

But interestingly in this book for some reason, I don’t know why the translator erased the part where they talked about the Gracies. I don’t know why.

The deletion carries weight because the relationship between Maeda and Carlos Gracie remains one of the most contested threads in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu history.

The Gracie family has long maintained that Carlos trained under Maeda in Belém during the late 1910s, while skeptics, most notably Donato Pires dos Reis, who later opened an academy with Carlos in Rio de Janeiro, have claimed Carlos never actually trained with Maeda.

Evidence supporting the Gracie-Maeda connection includes multiple sources beyond Soto.

Takeo Yano, who taught judo alongside Maeda in northern Brazil, told a Japanese reporter that the Gracie brothers studied under Maeda, a claim corroborated by others as well.
Newspaper records from 1921 also show an Oscar Gracie competing against Donato Pires, with both listed as students of Jacyntho Ferro, Maeda’s top student who took over instruction after Maeda left Brazil that year.

Maçaneiro said the translator’s motivation behind the omission remains unclear, but the fact that it was deliberate, rather than an error, raises broader questions about what else may have been altered as judo and Jiu-Jitsu history moved between languages and cultures.

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