- Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 3rd March 2017
If India has not charmed us histrionically, we have to thank Japan for Sada Yacco and several eastern countries for all sorts of entertaining varieties. The Japanese wrestlers now appearing at the Empire are not only illustrating Japanese arts of self-defence, but exhibit a scheme of self-defence designed by Mr. Barton-Wright, who presents and organised the performance. This defence is said to secure immunity from every form of attack to which the unsuspecting traveller in strange or familiar lands may be subjected.
Armed with the necessary knowledge he may go at his ease through streets where the Hooligan flourishes in the outskirts of London, through Montmartre and La Villette in Paris, through the Delicias of Madrid, and the slums where-from Rome looks out towards the Campagna and Stamboul sees the Golden Horn. Mr. Barton-Wright, himself a traveller in many lands, has picked up what he deemed best of every method of self-defence and worked his collection into a comprehensive system that he explains to members of his own club in Shaftesbury Avenue.
In Japan, whence the wrestlers now appearing at the Empire come, all the police are trained in the arts of self-defence and wrestling so that they can deal in short, sharp, effective manner with disturbers of the peace. I have seen a trained wrestler, who knows all that the West of England can teach him, a man standing six feet and two or three inches in his stockings and muscular as Goliath of Gath, floored by a little Japanese instructor of police who came up to his chest. The big man had no chance.
Mr. Barton Wright’s scheme of defence provides against an attack by a man with a knife, and the only way to get rid of a master of the scheme is to shoot him at long range with a rifle. I don’t think the system protects him against that. For the rest, it is an ingenious and genuine method and comes at a fortunate hour when people want to improve their physique.