Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 12th May 2017
From the Morning Post of 23 August, 1901:
Yesterday afternoon Mr. Barton-Wright gave a private exhibition of Bartitsu, his system of self-defence, which, though mainly founded on Japanese methods, is not exclusively confined to them. The inventor, who opened the proceedings with short explanatory speech, claims that his system combines all that is best in East or West. It is based on strictly anatomical and mechanical principles, and enables five stone of knowledge to throw twenty stone of ignorance out of the window with less apparent exertion than normally attends the pulling up of a blind.
The legs play an even more prominent part than the arms and several English principles are set at defiance. Our styles of wrestling are too conventional, too detached from life. A man who is down on three points, so far from being defeated, occupies a strong defensive and offensive position. Really, the fun has just began. Our “Don’t kick man when he is down,” should, in fact, be revised, and should read, “Keep clear of man when he is down, or he may kick you.”
The two best Japanese light-weights were in attendance, and gave a startling exhibition of their art. Not all was quite novel. Mr. Kawakami has familiarised us with some of the throws, and there were other grips and similar devices which it part of constable’s business to master. But there was an abundance of novelty.
First, the combatants, wearing bicycling skirts and barefooted, gave an exposition the various kinds of catches. It did not seem to matter where the one caught hold of the other, he was invariably thrown off and down with violence to the resonant floor. Did grasp his adversary by the hair? The adversary, with a toss of the head, jerked him over his shoulder as if he had been raindrop.
Next came the throws, not the whole three hundred of them, but just a few samples. They included some very quiet and effective means of settling your man, which might be useful to girls anxious to rid themselves of an ill-waltzing partner. Others were much more terrific and wholly unsuitable to the ball-room.
Then came some mere feats of strength. Previous invitations to test the genuineness of the display had been disregarded, but the audience had now conquered its first feeling of shyness, and there was no trouble making up a small party to stand on the exponent’s chest and otherwise prevent him from rising from the ground. He rose all the same. Then a portly gentleman vainly tried to keep him down by sitting on his head. Anon another heavy-weight pressed a long pole against his neck, much as Mr. Punch endeavours to shore up his dead, only harder. In five seconds the heavy-weight was in full retreat.
And many other strange spectacles were seen, which may not be so much as enumerated. It will readily be surmised that, in so resourceful a system, one is not accounted beaten till one gives in, the sign of surrender being smack on any part of his victor’s anatomy that happens to be handy. The display will on Monday take its place in the regular bill, of which it is certain to prove an extremely popular item.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 17th May 2017
During early 1902, the instructors of the Bartitsu School of Arms and Physical Culture hit the road for a series of touring martial arts exhibitions in Oxford, Cambridge and Nottingham. This recently-discovered report from the Sporting Life of 15 February, 1902 confirms a fourth venue – the gymnasium of the historic Shorncliffe Army Camp near Cheriton, Kent.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 18th May 2017
This detailed interview with Taro Miyake was published in the Sunday Times of September 3, 1905. Miyake, who rose to fame by defeating former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani in a London challenge match during September, 1904, subsequently joined forces with Tani in opening the Japanese School of Jujutsu in Oxford Street and in producing the “Game of Jujutsu” textbook in 1906.
Though largely a catalogue of Miyake’s various successes and accolades as a martial artist, the article is also notable for naming three of Miyake’s own instructors – Tanabe, Uyemura and Handa. Miyake’s association with Mataemon Tanabe and with Yataro Handa is significant to Bartitsu studies because both Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi are likewise associated with these sensei, whose unusual newaza (mat-grappling) techniques helped define the eclectic “British jiujitsu” of the very early 20th century.
How would you like to get up at four o’clock on a bitterly cold January morning, and wrestle for two or three hours with no covering but a thin, loose tunic and knee breeches, when the wrestling mats are frozen hard, and the garments you wear are quite stiff with frost? (asked Tarro Myaki of a London journalist).
Yet that is what we ju-jitsu wrestlers do in Japan — at least, those of us who are very keen, and are anxious to harden our bodies and to practise endurance. Very often after such a morning I have been so sore and chafed that the clothes I wore made me smart all over. But I have turned out again next morning, all the same, until my skin got hard enough to withstand the cuts and scrapes of the hard mats.
Although, like all Japanese boys, I was in a way familiar with ju-jitsu — for is it not as much a part of our national schooling as your football, cricket, and other games? — yet it was not till I was eighteen years old that I took it up in so keen and determined a spirit as to lead me eventually to become the champion of my country. This was principally because I had other things to do, and did not have the time to devote to my favorite sport till I reached that age.
When I did begin, however, I made up for lost time. I entered upon my apprenticeship, so to speak, to the art of self defence with the fixed determination to reach the top of the tree, and with this end in view I concentrated all my attention upon learning the tricks of throw and lock which were shown me, and making myself more proficient at them than those who taught me. That I was successful in my endeavors you may guess, when I tell you that at the end of a year and a half I went in for and won my first contest.
This first success set the final spark to my enthusiasm, and two or three subsequent defeats in minor matches, such as every beginner must suffer, fanned it into a flame. My improvement during the nine months which followed was so rapid that about that time I obtained my first position as instructor.
Above: Taro Miyake and Takisaburo Tobari demonstrate a series of formal waza (techniques) for the Pathe film camera in Paris (1912).
Until I was twenty-one, and apart from my duties as instructor, I studied ju-jitsu under one of our most famous teachers, Tanabe, and, although I was still very young, he entrusted me with all the secrets of his school, for in Japan, there are distinctive “schools” of ju-jitsu, just as you have distinctive ‘schools’ of art. Each school has some special little tricks and secrets of its own, which are only fully disclosed to its pupils when they reach a certain proficiency, or years of discretion.
When I was twenty-one, I was appointed instructor to the police at Kioto, and during the time I was there I still went on learning, studying at that time in the great Uyemura School. Here, again, I proved my self so proficient that I learnt their secrets before I moved on to Osaka to teach the police there. At Osaka I worked under another great teacher, Handa, and in this way I mastered the secrets of three distinct schools of ju-jitsu.
During, and subsequent to this time I went in for numerous contests, and I am probably more proud at being able to tell you that I have never been beaten in any important match than your English gentlemen are of winning the Derby.
It was in Osaka, last May, that I went through the most trying contests I have ever taken part in, and achieved the greatest success of my career by beating all who opposed me. For this an unusual honor was paid me in the shape of a gold medal, which was presented to me by the Crown Prince of Japan. I have also received a sword of honor from Prince Komatsu, the President of the Butokukai — our national society for the encouragement of ju-jitsu, fencing, and other sports.
What I am specially proud of, however, is that at the age of twenty-two I was admitted to the fifth degree in ju-jitsu. This is rarely attained before the age of thirty five, and then is conferred more as an honorable recognition of a closing career than as the reward of real proficiency.
Now I suppose you will want to know something about my training. Well, that is soon told. My only training has been hard work. We Japanese athletes pay no attention to diet, but just eat and drink and smoke like everyone else. But those of us who are specially keen go through trials of endurance which the others will not face.
What sort of condition I am in you may judge from the fact that from ten o’clock in the morning, when I commence giving lessons in the Japanese school of Ju-jitsu, which Yukio Tani and I have founded in London at 305 Oxford-street, till eleven o’clock in the evening, when I finish my last bout on the stage, I am practically wrestling all day!
All my efforts now are centred upon trying to make ju-jitsu champions out of other people, but, although you Englishmen are eminently suited to become experts, it is difficult to get you to take it seriously. You take it up as an amusement and an exercise, but you do not persevere and stick to it till you become expert. Englishwomen, I think, are far quicker to learn it than the men. I have more than one lady pupil who is very expert, indeed, and I should be sorry for anyone who attacked them now.
I find hard work agrees with me, and I have an excellent appetite. I conform to your ways now that I am in England — which is a country I like very much indeed — by eating English food at English times. That is to say, I have breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner, all of them at regular times except the last, which is what you call a ‘movable’ feast’ with me. I have it whenever I am hungry.
There is one thing which everyone over here seems very much surprised at. I have never had a cold bath in my life. We don’t go in for cold baths in Japan. If we bathe in the open air it is in the Summer time, when the sea or the river is quite warm. I have several warm baths a day— whenever I have finished practice. If I took a cold bath I should catch cold at once, and get out of trim.
Posted inBiography, Interviews, Jiujitsu|Comments Off on “How I Became a Ju-Jitsu Champion” by Taro Miyake (1905)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 19th May 2017
The following poetic tribute to the skill of jiujitsuka Taro Miyake was first published in Punch Magazine of June 7, 1905. Miyake’s name was frequently rendered as “Tarro Myake” by Edwardian journalists.
THE BALLAD OF TARRO MYAKE
(After Tennyson’s “Ballad of Oriana.”)
You challenged one and all to fight, TARRO MYAKE ; I took your challenge up one night, TARRO MYAKE ; They advertised it left and right, Thousands appeared to see the sight, TARRO MYAKE ; My prospects were considered bright, TARRO MYAKE.
A model I of manly grace, TARRO MYAKE ; Yours seemed a pretty hopeless case, TARRO MYAKE. Awhile we danced around the place, Then closed and struggled for a space, TARRO MYAKE, And you were down upon your face, TARRO MYAKE.
Oh, I would make you give me best, TARRO MYAKE. A thrill of pride inspired my breast, TARRO MYAKE. Then you were sitting on my chest, Your knee into my gullet pressed, TARRO MYAKE ; Was this the way to treat a guest, TARRO MYAKE?
You’ve got me by the neck, and oh, TARRO MYAKE, There is no rest for me below, TARRO MYAKE. You’re right upon my wind, you know ; I’m suffocating fast, and so, TARRO MYAKE, You’ve beaten me; now let me go, TARRO MYAKE.
O breaking neck that will not break TARRO MYAKE, O yellow face so calm and sleek, TARRO MYAKE, Thou smilest, but thou dost not speak; I seem to have waited here a week, TARRO MYAKE. What wantest thou? What sign dost seek, TARRO MYAKE?
What magic word your victim frees, TARRO MYAKE? What puts the captive at his ease, TARRO MYAKE? ‘Touché,” “Enough,” or “If you please,’ I keep on trying you with these, TARRO MYAKE ; Alas! I have no Japanese, TARRO MYAKE.
I am not feeling very well, TARRO MYAKE. (They should have stopped it when you fell, TARRO MYAKE.) Oh, how is it you cannot tell I am not feeling very well, TARRO MYAKE? What is the Japanese for “H-l” TARRO MYAKE?
The blood is rushing to my head, TARRO MYAKE; Think kindly of me when I’m dead, TARRO MYAKE. What was it that your trainer said – “Pat twice upon the ground instead!” TARRO MYAKE, There . . there . . now help me into bed, TARRO MYAKE.
Somewhere beside the Southern sea, TARRO MYAKE, I walk, I dare not think of thee, TARRO MYAKE. All other necks I leave to thee, My own’s as stiff as stiff can be, TARRO MYAKE; My collar’s one by twenty-three, TARRO MYAKE!
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 25th May 2017
A sad and sobering reminder of the risks inherent in even friendly wrestling, from the Nottingham Evening Post of 22 February, 1909:
AMATEUR CHAMPION EXONERATED PROM BLAME.
The Westminster’s Coroner’s Coart on Saturday, Mr. J. Troutbeck held an inquest concerning the death of Arthur Charles of 21 Margharetta-terrace, Chelsea. The deceased was practising wrestling at the Fulham Baths on Tuesday last with Frederick Knight, who won the 1st. Olympia Championship as “catch-as-catch-can” at the Stadium last year, when he received injuries to the spine, and died later at St. George’s Hospital.
Evidence was given by Harry Mackenzie, who said he was watching a friendly wrestling bout between Knight and the deceased. They had wrestled for some minutes without a fall, when Charles buttocked Knight. He was trying to press his shoulder down, but could not succeed. Knight wriggled clear and both men got up. Knight then secured a crutch-hold and threw Charles, whose head seemed to twist round. There was nothing unusual in the way the men were wrestling, and good temper was shown. There was nothing one-sided about the match.
Frederick Bush, a gymnastic and swimming instructor at the Baths, said that Charles came down on the back of his head and shoulders. Instead of his legs shooting out in the usual way they doubled up, and the witness thought that deceased was not prepared for the throw.
Wrestling was carried out under the rules of the Amateur Wrestling Association, and the contests were allowed by the borough Council. Any persons could enter on the payment of a small fee and wrestle. There was nobody appointed to see that the rules were carried out. Witness (said he) would at once prohibit anything of a rough or unusual nature.
Benjamin Arthur Few, friend of the deceased, who witnessed the bout, said the neck and crutch hold which Knight employed was perfectly legitimate. It was not, however, a common hold and throw, as it was most difficult to make. The body would be lifted to a perpendicular position, and the hold would be retained until the shoulders were pressed on the mat. The head and shoulders usually reached the ground simultaneously, but in this instance the bead seemed to touch the mat first.
Percy W. Longhurst, of Wallington, a wrestling expert, expressed the opinion that the hold and throw as explained was perfectly legitimate. He thought that the deceased had failed to grasp the situation when be was seized. Had he arched his neck and done other necessary things this would not have happened. Witness thought that the better practice would be for a person always to be present at the practice of wrestling bouts. Witness had refereed perhaps 20 bouts in which Knight had taken part, and his opinion was that he was fair, clean, honest, and skilful wrestler who would not make use of undue strength in order to obtain a fall.
After the accident, it was stated that the deceased had remarked to a policeman; “don’t blame him (Knight) for the accident.” At the hospital it was discovered that Charles’s spine had been dislocated. Death took place on Thursday morning, and was due to the injuries.
Frederick William Knight, of New Malden, bantam-weight amateur champion of England, said that Charles showed considerable skill. Witness described how he threw the deceased, and said that he had beaten 16 men in open competition by the same methods. The Coroner said it was notorious that wrestling was not dangerous sport, and as far his experience went, he had never known a fatality resulting.
The jury returned a verdict of “accidental death” and exonerated Knight from blame.
Posted inWrestling|Comments Off on “Fatal Wrestling Bout” (1909)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 27th May 2017
Above: the stomach throw illustrated in Hans Talhoffer’s Fechtbuch (15th century) and Nicolaes Petter’s “Clear Instructions on the Excellent Art of Wrestling” (1674)
The “sacrifice throw” in which a wrestler drops to the ground, using his own falling weight to throw his opponent, was almost unknown in Europe during the late 19th century. Although earlier European systems of unarmed combat had employed this principle, the rules of late-Victorian wrestling styles generally asserted that “the man whose back touches the ground first loses”, and so those styles concentrated, by default, on standing throws.
In 1917, Sir Arthur Pearson – the publisher of Pearsons’ Magazine – reminisced about his first meeting with Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright, which had taken place in 1899:
He stood before me in a most casual attitude and invited me to throw him down. I have always kept myself very fit, and was in those days rather proud of my strength. Without any further ado I essayed the apparently simple task of putting the little man on the floor. What really happened was that in less time than it takes to dictate these words I struck the wall some 15 ft. away with quite enough force to be unpleasant! Mr. Barton-Wright had sunk before my assault and, as its violence upset my balance, had delicately poised me upon the soles of his feet and shot me into space.
E.W. Barton-Wright demonstrates the tomoe-nage (stomach throw) at the London Bath Club exhibition.
Thus, Sir Arthur Pearson may well have been the first gentleman in Victorian England to fall victim to a jiujitsu tomoe-nage or “stomach-throw”. Thereafter, via Barton-Wright’s articles and lectures and the challenge matches of Bartitsu Club champions Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi, the art of “giving in to get your way” in hand-to-hand combat was re-introduced to the Western world.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 17th June 2017
A parallel is drawn between the no-holds-barred ethos of Bartitsu and the military tactics of the Boer War in this article from the St James’s Gazette of 18 January, 1900.
Our army leaders might draw excellent moral from that Japanese “noble art self-defence” just imported, for which a London school is about to started. It disregards the traditional rules of boxing and of wrestling (in which many foreigners think us absurdly conservative), and fits the student for an altercation with, say, a Turkish assassin or an armed Hooligan.
We are fighting with what has occasionally shown itself, however brave, to be a Hooligan army. It may be as courageous to marchup to the cannon’s mouth in quarter column, or to wear a shining sword and despise cover, as to wait for a kick a la savate without guarding.
A general can explain that he was cut up, not by the regulation field gun, but by grossly unscientific guns of position, as a wrestler, that he was put down by an agonizing “lock” instead of a fair throw — but he goes down all the same. The Boer mounted infantry may be unsuited to a big European war, and the Hooligan’s knife to a professional boxing-match (and even a novelty therein), but both have their uses.
We are not, of course, arguing in favour of shelling either the white flag or the Red Cross. But fighting, after all, vulgar and rough-and-ready though it be, is the chief end of military training, not circus riding or playing conjuring tricks with the rifle. Not even showing how fearless we are.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 17th June 2017
Exhibitions of kobudo (weaponed martial arts) by members of the London Budokwai during 1919, 1922 and 1924 included displays of combat with a highly unusual weapon – the nabebuta or “pot lid”. Described by one journalist as resembling “wooden cymbals”, the nabebuta are rare even in koryu bujutsu (“old-school martial arts”), being particularly associated with the Takenouchi-ryu.
Above: nabebuta vs. shinai, from the 1919 exhibition.
Above: the nabebuta fighter employs his left-hand weapon as a buckler and his right-hand weapon as a knuckle-duster during the 1922 display.
Above: blocking a high-line attack and counter-striking to the brachial plexus area.
Above: a simultaneous parry and counter-attack.
Posted inAntagonistics|Comments Off on “Fighting with pot lids” – Nabebuta Displays at the London Budokwai
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 17th June 2017
For almost all practical purposes, Bartitsu – as a defined combination of martial arts and combat sport styles – ceased to exist after the closure of the Bartitsu School of Arms in early 1902. Sadakazu Uyenishi, Yukio Tani and Armand Cherpillod continued their successes as music hall challenge wrestlers; both Uyenishi and Tani also opened up their own jiujitsu dojo, while Cherpillod became instrumental in introducing Japanese unarmed combat to the European continent.
Thus, E.W. Barton-Wright’s experiment in self-defence cross-training became fragmented. Of all of the former Bartitsu Club instructors, however, Pierre Vigny came closest to perpetuating Barton-Wright’s ideals via Vigny’s “Combined System”, described in the following article from The Sportsman of 8 October 1906. Although frustratingly little is known about the details of Vigny’s system, it clearly included jiujitsu as well as boxing/savate, fencing and his proprietary method of stick fighting; albeit that the jiujitsu content appears to have been de-emphasised in comparison with Barton-Wright’s approach.
At about the same time, self-defence specialist Percy Longhurst published the first edition of his book Jiujitsu and Other Methods of Self Defence, which is certainly the closest thing to a “Bartitsu manual” to have been written in English during the early 20th century.
Uniquely, the Sportsman article also refers to a challenge by Vigny to pit his system against jiujitsu, although there seems to be no record of that challenge being taken up.
Posted inAntagonistics|Comments Off on “New Methods of Self-Defence” (1906)
