An anonymous commentary on the potentials of jiujitsu from “The Outing” magazine, dating to 1904:
WHO would have said three years ago that a remote Eastern nation would become an arbiter between the athletic aims of the two extreme nations of the West? But some such relation as this is set up by the Japanese protest against the American exploitation of jiujitsu. Directly the art was discovered it was seized upon in America, advertised, practised and explained in a number of books. The explanations certainly exceeded the art, of which the scope and wonders have been greatly misrepresented, and in giving Jiu-jitsu a flair, which made it the fashionable spectacle in Paris as in New York, abstracted at the same time its chief merit. Jiu-jitsu may be an art, almost a science; but above all it is a game, and the exploiters of it have done the harm to it that they have done to other athletic games in emphasising its spectacular and combative advantages. Jiu-jitsu professionals, skilled after the fashion of ” the magnetic lady” who set silly London gossiping some years ago, will soon be a regular part of music-hall performances. This does not much matter, but it is less endurable that a game which might be a real boon to town-dwellers should be spoiled by sham gymnastic exponents who take themselves more seriously than they deserve.
For an athletic nation we are curiously backward in what may be called palaestral games. Fencing has its eminent devotees. Mr. Egerton Castle, umpiring at a bout in Gray’s Inn Gardens, where a bundle of foils leaned against the leaning catalpa, is a spectacle full of the savour of the Middle Ages. The two straightest backs in the House of Commons were trained on fencing. Captain Hutton has from time to time inspired different schools with his zeal for foils, single-sticks, broad-sword and buckler, quarter-staff, two-handed sword, or case of rapiers. Nevertheless, fencing and the sister games languish in England. They are not popular amusements, and the desire to take them up possesses very few of the many town-immured men and women who lament daily their need of exercise. On the whole, the gymnastic peoples are not the athletic. The Japanese dislike sport on the whole. The Germans prefer to develop chest and arms rather than legs; the English neglect the torso. Perhaps the French are more naturally proficient at both athletics and gymnastics than any people, except the Americans, whose competitive genius is overmastering.
Beyond all question the Japanese are the greatest gymnasts in the world, and have been for years. Two forms of wrestling, Sumo and jiu-jitsu—the first chiefly professional, the second both aristocratic and democratic, have long interested the bulk of the nation. Sumo has been regulated by a Gild of its own which is recognised by Government, used for police purposes, and exempted from taxation. The Gild has schooled its members into the strictest loyalty to the canons of art and etiquette in the same way as the Rugby Union in England, though more precisely and dictatorially, as befits an institution long and officially established, which holds its public examination and publishes its class-lists. Sumo in Japan is the counterpart, with many necessary deductions from the strictness of the analogy, of the Football League in England. It is professional, a spectacular rather than a popular game, and its players need great physical development.
Jiu-jitsu has other qualities, and these seem to me to bring it a long way ahead of any gymnastic game we have in England. And it should be English, for it is no more or less than the science of “ragging,” the exaltation of a rough and tumble, the impromptu wrestling which everyone practices and enjoys from infancy till the age when the sinews creak. It is the only game common to the nursery, the school, the university, the office, and it is greatly improved as a mere amusement by some application of science. The Japanese have especially associated the game, since its emergence in the seventeenth century, with military training, and its superiority to the stiffness of much army gymnastics
does not need argument. But the question now is not whether Woolwich or Osborne should engage a Japanese instructor, but whether many active men who cannot keep their muscles from rusting might not with advantage take their opportunities of scientific ragging in off hours. Its reputation has been spoiled by American over-emphasis. The art includes, of course, instruction in the coup-de-grace, in blows, or rather taps, and falls, and locks, and grips which can incapacitate and break limbs; but its points as a game are quite independent of such violent usage of anatomical knowledge.
The game has the minimum of paraphernalia, can be played in a small space;can be learnt, at least in rudiments sufficient for extracting amusement, from a book. It depends, unlike most gymnastics, on nimbleness more than muscle, and balance, not power, is its key. It is the fashion now to claim moral attributes for games, and the disciples of jiu-jitsu have made the common mistake. But after all “the art of self-defence ” — in England a technical phrase unfortunately restricted to boxing — deserves its constant epithet “noble”; and the jiu-jitsu game, which begins with the art of falling happily and conquering from an inferior position, has a clear symbolic claim to a moral quality. Physical inferiority tends to moral subserviency to the bully; and now no swords are worn and sticks are flimsy, jiu-jitsu is almost the only game which can teach the punier people to flourish in a fight.
This interview with author Adrienne Kress re. her upcoming young adult steampunk/superhero/girl power novel The Friday Society reveals that one of the protagonists, a Japanese teenager named Michiko, works as a martial arts instructor for a character based on “Sir Edward Barton-Wright”.
The real-world Barton-Wright was never anywhere close to being knighted, and apparently the character based on him is a pretty nasty fellow, but the book sounds fun. It’s being launched at an event in Toronto on December 7, 2012 which will include a Bartitsu demonstration by members of the Riot A.C.T. stunt team.
Those with an interest in the international expansion of Japanese martial arts during the early 20th century should read this excellent article on the early history of Australian jiujitsu:
According to the ringmaster, it was to be competed under “jiu-jitsu rules”, which according to him, meant that each of the men would be allowed, “To hit, scratch, bite, pull by the hair, kick sideways, gouge, or strangle. Practically the only forbidden action was a straight kick.” There would be no pinfalls and one man yielding to the other would only decide the match. It would be Mr. M. P. Adams of Melbourne’s job to keep the order as referee, which would prove to be no small task.
Today marks the 152nd anniversary of the birth of Bartitsu founder E.W Barton-Wright, who was born in Bangalore, India in the year 1860.
Cheers!
Self defence historian Emelyne Godfrey‘s article on the jujitsu training of the British Suffragettes is now available in the December issue of BBC History Magazine.
The topic of women and danger has long fascinated historians. Emelyne Godfrey’s new book, available now from Palgrave Macmillan, innovatively situates both well-known and more obscure themes within the cultural context of the development of self-defence for ladies during the period from circa 1850 to 1914. Elizabeth Robins, Mona Caird and Anne Brontë considered the role of physiognomy in spotting rogue suitors, the nature of feminine anger and the dangers inside and outside the home. H.G. Wells’s controversial novel, Ann Veronica (1909), is refreshingly re-examined as a testament to the growth of women’s sports while the accompanying proliferation of women’s martial arts classes was promoted by Edith Garrud, the trainer for the suffragette Bodyguard. Richard Marsh’s detective, Judith Lee, a lip-reader and jujitsu practitioner, has been likened to Sherlock Holmes; her encounters with the Edwardian criminal underworld are explored here. Emelyne Godfrey introduces major themes in this area, showcasing a wealth of literary sources, artefacts and archival documents.
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Text
Abbreviations
Introduction
PART I: ‘A DOOR OPEN, A DOOR SHUT’
On the Street
Danger en Route
Behind Closed Doors: Bogey-Husbands in Disguise: Mona Caird’s The Wing of Azrael (1889)
PART II: FIGHTING FOR EMANCIPATION
Elizabeth Robins’ The Convert
The Last Heroine Left?
PART III: THE PRE-WAR FEMALE GAZE
‘Where Are You Going To, My Pretty Maid?’: Elizabeth Robins on White Slavery
Read My Lips
Bibliography
Index
Note that the publishers are offering a 50% discount on both this book and the companion volume Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature until 30 November, valid in the UK and Europe. Simply enter the code WGODFREY2012a at the Palgrave Publishing website checkout.
Two skeptical view on the virtues of jiu-jitsu, courtesy of the Auckland Star.
From 1 July, 1905:
“Yes,” said little Perkins, I’ve learned jiu-jitsu.”
“Have you now,” said an admiring chorus. “Wonderful science, isn’t it?”
“It is. What is more,” he continued, “I had an opportunity a few weeks of applying my knowledge. I was attacked by an enormous hooligan one night; but I didn’t mind. I remembered what I’d learned, and I applied the ‘willy-nilly grip,’ which means you grab your victim by the right elbow and the left ear, and, thanks to jiu-jitsu, you can lead him wherever you like.”
“Excellent. That was splendid!”
“It would have been, but the hooligan didn’t know jiu-jitsu, and so he picked me up and dusted me against a lamp-post till I thought every bone in my body was broken; then he took what he wanted from my pockets at his leisure. But I’m not a bit discouraged; that fellow had never studied jiu-jitsu. If he had, he would have known that my hold had rendered him powerless.”
From 16 December 1905:
Having completed my course, I said farewell to Mr Yo San, and kept up my jiu-jitsu by practising on a chair; but after a while my better nature asserted itself, and I realised that it was cruel to hurt anything incapable of self-defence. Therefore, I was yearning to have an opportunity of trying my powers on some big human bully. My opportunities came too quickly, and I failed to grasp them. I also failed to grasp my opponents.
Sauntering down the road one morning, I saw a burly navvy abusing his wife. “You are a brute!” I said to him. “Desist at once!” He talked to me long and earnestly, and I looked for a convenient spot to catch hold of him. Curiously enough, he failed to adopt any of those attitudes which had enabled me to score such victories over Yo San’s assistant. According to the book, I ought to have gripped his fingers with my right hand, flung them across my chest, thus disabling him, and making him tap twice on the ground as a signal of defeat. He didn’t. He only tapped once, and it was on my nose, with a fist like a petrified ham; and it wasn’t a signal of defeat. Oh, no! It was the sign of a glorious victory, and when I came to myself I had a proboscis the size of a bag of cement.
Had I not had great faith in the art, this experience might have disheartened me; but I assumed that I was perhaps not sufficiently lightning-like in my movements — a matter of great importance in jiujitsu. Consequently, when I was standing gaping in a jeweller’s shop-window and felt a tug at my watch-chain, I promptly carried out Rule 27 — crooked my foot behind the thief, and smote him on the chin with the side of my hand. I drew another blank. I missed his jaw and hit the shop window.
Owing to a strange oversight, I omitted defeating a large retriever dog at jiu-jitsu. The animal belongs to a neighbour of mine. He came bounding towards me, and jumped up. I got the regulation shoulder grip on him. and reached for the fingers of his left hand, to bend them back, and complete the victory. Another mistake on my part. Dogs haven’t got any fingers, so, instead of my throwing Rover, he threw me, and wiped his feet liberally on my face before rushing off to brag about it to a fox terrier.
Since that day I have jiu-jitsued with an itinerant vendor of flowers, much to the detriment of a large box of pinks; endeavoured to stop a runaway burglar in his mad career, and been knocked down with a silver-plated presentation teapot as a result.
There is a lot in jiu-jitsu — I am convinced of it.
