Sad to hear of the recent passing of Joe Svinth, the pioneering martial arts studies researcher whose EJMAS (Electronic Journals of Martial Arts and Sciences) website was the first to broadcast many key Bartitsu materials during the very early 2000s.
At that time I was developing a strong interest in the “antagonistics” of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and was pleased to accept Joe’s offer to edit a new EJMAS sub-journal dedicated to that subject. I’d wanted to call it the Journal of Antagonistics, which Joe liked but worried that the term was too obscure for general readers, so we settled on the tongue-in-cheek “Journal of Manly Arts”. Between JManly and the other EJMAS Journals, we were able to begin to introduce the story of Edward Barton-Wright’s New Art of Self Defence to an international audience via the new media of the Internet.
I remember that when our republication of the “Self -Defence with a Walking Stick” articles went the early-2000s version of viral, Joe was amused to see images of Barton-Wright and Vigny reproduced – often with humorous captions and other alterations – on other sites, by people who couldn’t quite bring themselves to believe that this was a thing that had actually happened in history.
Aside from his editorial, research and writing work at EJMAS, Joe significantly contributed to the then-nascent academic field of martial arts studies by co-editing, with Tom Green, the massive two-volume Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia of History and Innovation, for which I was pleased to contribute an entry on Bartitsu, and the anthology Martial Arts in the Modern World. He also wrote Getting a Grip: Judo in the Japanese American communities of Washington and Oregon, 1900-1950.
Also germane to Bartitsu studies, circa 2007-8 Joe was instrumental, along with myself and Japan-based researcher Lance Gatling, in rediscovering the legacy of the then-little-known Handa dojo of Osaka, whose innovative approach to newaza (mat-wrestling) had a significant impact upon Bartitsu and then the wider field of submission wrestling throughout the world.
Here is a fairly recent interview with Joe Svinth, courtesy of the Martial Arts Studies podcast.
It was always a pleasure to correspond and otherwise work with Joe, who combined an old-school journalistic sensibility with a Sherlockian curiosity about little-known and little-appreciated aspects of martial arts lore and history.
Our sympathy to his friends and family in this trying time.