A few seconds of footage of former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani watching a catch-as-catch-can wrestling championship in Finsbury Park, Middlesex. Tani would have been around 49 years old at the time this film was shot; about a decade later he suffered a debilitating stroke that ended his athletic career, though he recovered well enough to be able to coach judoka and jujutsuka from the sidelines of the famous London Budokwai.
In 1913 Tani had starred in a short silent film called Ju-Jitsu to the Rescue, now believed lost; he also (very likely) appeared on camera demonstrating Japanese unarmed combat as part of a display at London’s Kensington Palace Field in 1928 and as part of the audience watching a Budokwai judo and kendo demonstration in 1937.
Aside from a short 1905 documentary film starring Tani’s fellow Bartitsu instructor Sadakazu Uyenishi – now believed lost except as a reconstruction from the cinematographic stills featured in Uyenishi’s book – these snippets are the only known moving images of Bartitsu Club instructors.
