Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Tuesday, 7th August 2018
There follows a detailed account of three encounters between former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani and a trio of Cornish wrestling champions. Although the rules aren’t entirely clear, they may have combined both styles in catch-as-catch-can fashion, to the effect that victory could be achieved either by a clean throw onto the back, a “pin” position in which the opponent was held so that both shoulders and one hip were pressed to the mat, or via a submission hold. Tani, as the visiting champion, was required to defeat his opponents within a particular time limit, or to pay a forfeit to them.
It’s worth noting that Tani was about 45 years old in 1926, and almost certainly had more experience in jiujitsu vs. European wrestling contests than anyone else alive at that time.
Noting, as usual, that the term “Jap” did not hold any pejorative meaning at this time, being rather a simple abbreviation like “Brit” for British.
Watching closely the opponents who have faced the celebrated Jap Yukio Tani at the Palace Theatre, the difference in the style of wrestling was most marked. Although the Japanese wear a jacket, it is close fitted to the body, held with a strap or girdle round the waist, and not like the loose jacket which is proverbial in the Cornish contests.
The Cornishman depends upon his supreme strength, strong holds, and hitches (throws) which are essential to bringing his man square down on his back. Ju-jitsu is well known to be an elaborate system self-defence based upon scientific knowledge of balance and anatomy, applied with quickness and cunning.
Fred Richards, of Old Found, age 27, weight 177lb., who is one of the finest wrestlers Cornwall has ever produced, was one of Yukio Tani’s challengers on Monday evening. Tani, knowing that he was meeting such a skilled exponent of the Cornish style, was a little wary and would not rush in. Richards, however, quickly embraced an opportunity and endeavoured to bring his man down with the fore hip, for which he is famous.
CLEVER PLAY
Here was seen the great cleverness the Jap. Tani, swinging round, endeavoured to get an arm hold and back heel. Richards’ strength enabled him to bring Tani under him, and he cleverly held him down. Tani immediately applied the under grip and leg hold, from which Richards extracted himself. Both rising rapidly, they locked again in a deadly grip.
Coming down again under Richards, Tani applied the leg half-nelson. Richards, grasping Tani, again swung him under with great determination, the Cornishman shaking the Jap and bouncing him back several times on the mat. The ten minutes in which Tani had pay forfeit had now elapsed.
Tani endeavoured again make Richards throw himself, but being wary the Cornishman eluded his wily opponent and lasted out 11 and 3/4 minutes, to the great delight of the large assembly, both wrestlers receiving a great ovation for the spirited display.
CAUTIOUS TACTICS
Harry Gregory, St. Wenn, age 22, 5ft. 8in., weight 156 1b, who also tried his skill against Tani on Tuesday, is a well-known exponent of the Cornish style, and was only narrowly defeated for the middleweight championship in September last.
Tani was very cautious, and Gregory also exercised care. Four minutes elapsed ere Gregory endeavoured to trip the Jap, but he lost his balance, and the Jap, following, was on top instantly. Gregory, by sheer strength, rose, turning over the Jap and holding him down for three minutes, during which time was an extreme trial between the Eastern and Western trials of strength and cunningness. Tani extricated himself and applied the deadly arm lock which Gregory got out of on two occasions, the second time dragging Tani down behind, a result which he had scarcely contemplated.
The ten minutes had now elapsed and cheers showed the great appreciation of the sterling contest which was taking place. Gregory, taking his man off the ground, brought him down with tremendous force on the mat, making the house ring with the thud, but, the Cornishman slightly losing his balance, the Jap was quick to embrace the opportunity of the outstretched arm and locked him in ll minutes 5 seconds.
Yukio Tani has promised to visit Cornwall next season and try his skill against the Cornishmen in their own style. He expressed great appreciation the temperament and skill of his opponents, and hoped they would not match him too heavily when competing for the first time at Cornish tournament. Such a great exponent of the art as the Jap is certain to receive a hearty welcome to Cornwall.
GEORGE BAZELEY AND TANI
There was exciting contest between George Bazeley, of St. Dennis, and Yukio Tani at the Palace Theatre, Plymouth, last night. The Cornishman had the Jap down for considerable periods, and tried desperately to pin both shoulders and a hip to the ground, but Tani wriggled free before this could be done, and in turn made every effort to bring into force his ju-jitsu service. For just over the prescribed ten minutes Bazeley held the Jap, before succumbing to the arm hold.
Posted inJiujitsu, Wrestling|Comments Off on Yukio Tani vs. the Cornish Wrestlers (Western Morning News, 12/11/1926)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Monday, 6th August 2018
Writing in The Sketch of December 1st, 1958, journalist Marjory Whitelaw looks back to the Edwardian era, when “perfect ladies” carried concealed pistols and knew just where to point them.
THE first I ever saw was at a dealer’s, when I was looking for something else entirely. He put it in my hand – a small purse, elegant, of fine black suede. It was slightly worn around the clasp, and it seemed, I remarked, oddly heavy for its size. The dealer beamed approvingly. “An Edwardian lady’s coin purse,” he said, “separated, as you see, into two useful compartments.”
He showed me, first, the side lined with silver kid where the sovereigns and sixpences would have gone, with two of those little round safety containers for coins. Then he opened the other, l equally dainty, compartment, and there, in the place of where one would expect to find the notes, was a pretty silver pistol. Delightedly, he demonstrated how the trigger was concealed on the outside, so that it was not necessary to open the purse in order to fire.
“Vital element of surprise, you see,” he said, making his point nicely. “The perfect lady’s weapon.”
Immediately there entered my mind, as clearly as if she had been in a film, the perfect lady who might have used it; tall, beautiful, wearing black with a few ostrich plumes, an imperious, passionate Edwardian who would not budge for a man. It opened up a whole new view of life for ladies.
“Of course,” said the dealer thoughtfully, “no real lady would have required one. The occasion would never arise.” He was a gentle Edwardian himself, and he dealt in manly, antique weapons – swords, daggers and old guns. It was obvious that he could not bear the idea of perfect ladies being handy with firearms.
“No,” he said firmly, “the only person who would require this would be a lady thug.” He blushed. “Forgive me. When I say lady, I mean, of course, woman. Or, perhaps, female. Yes, a female thug.”
This satisfied him, until he looked once more at the purse.
“Of course,” he said doubtfully, “it has rather a lot of taste for a thug.”
The coin purse was a provoking mystery: it had, after all, been made for some woman, be she lady or thug. And so, I discovered, had quite a number of similar little gadgets. But for whom?
My dealer’s fellow connoisseurs of antique guns were, on the whole, inclined to support his view; their own inner lives were bent backwards in tender admiration of the lovely weapons produced between 1450 and 1850 (for it seems that guns fell into a state of sad artistic decadence in the mid-1800’s); it was difficult to get them interested in the social problems of the Edwardians.
Reluctantly, they dug out their stock of the small, pretty toys: pistols in black, elegantly-chased silver, pearl with a sweet, rococo inlay in gold, a travelling model in ivory. These, they said disapprovingly, were known in the trade as “muff pistols,” for ladies forced by the demands of life to carry weapons had had a way of concealing them in large, fashionable fur muffs. How they managed in the summer perplexed me, until one old man remembered that he had once seen a charming pink parasol with a thing called a pepper-box concealed in the handle.
But it was clear that the subject pained them. Forgetting the underlying vitality of Edwardian life, they had, in their romantic minds, cherished a vision of ladies who did little except adorn life with sweet docility, doing the flowers in the morning, changing into pretty tea-gowns in the afternoon, lifting up the hearts of the gentlemen home from the day’s shooting. For these graceful, languid creatures to know any thing at all about pistols seemed to them quite out of character.
Nor would those distressing little crises, requiring ladies to think of self-protection, so common-place abroad, occur in Edwardian England; no matter how charming the lady, the English gentleman could be counted on not to lose control.
“No, it was quite unthinkable,” I was told, rather crossly, by a gentleman determined to keep his illusions.
“Confronted either with pistols or mice,” he said, “a lady would simply faint.” Alas, gentlemen, you are sitting on a shaky theory. All you have proved is that Edwardian ladies were particularly skilful at going their own way under the protective cover of a large cloud of feminine fuss and feathers.
The evidence, indeed, shows that at the turn of the century ladies who shot, and who shot well, were springing up on all sides. They were already competing at Bisley, and, equipped with sporting rifles and a convenient moral purpose, they were infiltrating on to the moors.
“They may even, by their presence,” wrote the hopeful editor of a handbook on ladies’ sports, “refine the coarse ways of men and contribute to the gradual disuse of bad language in the field.”
Nor was this trend confined to sports-lovers. The adventurous Mrs. Patrick Ness, the third white woman to get a permit to enter Kenya, took a pistol with her, and it saw her through a number of situations requiring self-protection. Elinor Glyn’s heroines, too – girls from the very best families were usually able to overcome their fear of fire-arms, without actually having to become good shots.
In His Hour, Tamara, well-bred, widowed and English, found herself one winter’s night stranded in a hut with a Russian prince who, being a foreigner, had no intention whatever of keeping control. Tamara’s immediate reaction was to grab a pistol. Unfortunately, since it was a man’s, the trigger was too stiff and heavy for her tiny hand, and she let it drop.
Surely it was for just this sort of occasion that the practical French had, only a few years earlier, produced the Gaulois Light, compact, in shape like a small box, it was the perfect weapon for the nervous novice, for all that was required was to point and squeeze as one would crumple a piece of paper. Ladies who, like Tamara, insisted on travelling off the beaten track could only expect trouble. But this did not deter them.
There is a heartening story of an Englishwoman who lived for a while in Chicago, at that time still a place where anything might happen. Walking in the street one day she found herself engaged in sudden battle with five or six gunmen. She held them at bay with the pistol which she carried in her bustle until the police arrived. My informant was a man; he couldn’t tell me how the bustle held the gun. My guess is that she had a cavity made under the back bow. He didn’t know, either, what type of pistol she used, but there was available at that time a pretty little round squeeze- box, rather like a powder-compact in shape, called the Chicago Protector, and I am inclined to think it was that.
Further west, of course, pistols fell readily into the category of suitable gifts for ladies. Elinor Glyn, travelling in Nevada in 1907, was visited by a delegation of miners anxious to tell her how greatly they had admired her romantic novel Three Weeks. She, in turn, visited the miners in their camp and was honoured with a presentation banquet, the gift being a small pistol mounted in pearl.
“We give you this here gun, Elinor Glyn,” the miners are reported to have said, “because we like your darned pluck. You ain’t afraid and we ain’t neither.” Elinor’s little pearl-handled beauty (she kept it to the end of her days) was probably a Colt, for this was the pistol that opened up the West. Colts’ produced the first practical revolver, and their small, beautifully-engraved and decorated products (they made Derringers also) were all the rage from 1880 up to the time of the First World War.
Many a traveller packed a Colt when setting off for the Grand Tour of Europe. My favourite is, I think, a lady who became known as the Unsinkable Mrs. Brown. Born in a shanty, she married at the age of fifteen a middle-aged miner who soon struck it rich in Colorado. When Denver hostesses (only a few years away from placer-dirt themselves) refused to accept the unlettered, naive Molly Brown, she went to Europe, with her fond husband’s twenty-million-dollar strike to back her. It wasn’t long before she spoke several languages. She dressed lavishly, she was generous, eccentric and full of zest, and she was a smashing social success in most of the capitals of Europe.
But her hour of greatest glory came on the Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912. The sea air at night was chilly and when Molly took a few turns around the deck before sleeping, she was dressed for warmth. She wore, it is reported, extra-heavy Swiss woollen bloomers, two jersey petticoats, a cashmere dress, a sportsman’s cap tied on with a woollen scarf, woollen golf stockings and a chinchilla opera cloak, and she carried a Russian sable muff, from which she had forgotten to remove her Colt’s automatic. She was, in fact, about to send a steward below with the pistol when the crash came.
A short hour or so later she had put herself in command of a boatload of frightened passengers. She had taken off as much of her warm clothing as was practicable and shared it out among the shivering older women and the children, and, stripped to her corsets and Swiss wool unmentionables, her pistol tied to her waist, she was pulling at one oar and directing the men at the others.
“Work those oars,” she roared at them, “or I’ll blow your guts out!” They rowed, unsinkable.
Molly Brown was a woman who had the knack of adventure, a robust, Edwardian quality that she shared in her own way with those spirited ladies who made their mark as adventuresses, rather than by being merely adventurous. Respectably married, of course, not in their first youth, still beautiful and always exquisitely dressed, they found life most rewarding in Paris and at Monte Carlo. Men spoke of them admiringly as “high-steppers,” wives, coldly, as “fast,” and wherever they were, things began to happen.
For one of them, perhaps a gift from an admiring victim, was the charming little gold pistol which, when the trigger was pulled, ejected a posy of gold flowers and a spray of scent. For them, perhaps, too, the more subtle weapons of self-protection; the little riding- whips with the damascened silver handles, slender but strong enough to contain a small revolver. Or (for one of the marks of an adventuress was the reckless way in which she smoked in public) those sweet two-sectional cigar-cases, velvet-lined, holding four small cigars and a gun.
Were these weapons often used, in those old gay days at Monte Carlo? Perhaps the surprise of realising that the lady could mean business was enough. For Englishwomen tend to the use of slow poison, rather than shooting to kill. Crimes of passion, as we all know, are found more in France. There was the case of the devoted and loyal Madame Cailloux, whose husband had been ruinously defamed by the editor of one of the Paris papers. Madame Cailloux went down to the newspaper office; and, pulling a pearl-handled revolver from her purse, she shot that editor dead. An English wife in this situation would have, in extremity, got up a petition to the House of Commons.
As for the situation today, I cannot do better than report my conversation with a London gunsmith.
“Ladies’ pocket pistols,” he said, musing. “Of course, ladies in Britain don’t require them much now. They do in Paris, though,” he went on. “Most countries abroad, in fact.”
I said, “Really, no lady I have ever known in Paris has required a pistol.” He looked at me, slightly exasperated at my doubt.
“Madam,” he said patiently, “all I can tell you is that every gunsmith in Paris is making them, and if you want a good cheap model I advise you to get it there.”
Ah, the delicious dangers of life abroad. They’re with us still.
The aim of this sparring match was to faithfully reproduce the techniques presented in the treatises of Charlemont, Leboucher and other savate masters who taught the French art of unarmed combat from the beginning of the 19th century through the middle of the 20th.
For comparison, see this 1896 film of savate practitioners in action:
Note that this type of stylised, light-contact sparring reflects the desire of some professional instructors during the late 19th century to separate French kickboxing from its rowdy, back-alley origins. Instructors such as the Charlemonts wished to promote French kickboxing as a relatively genteel combat game and as a method of physical culture, suitable for middle-class patrons of commercial salles de savate. Inevitably, that rather academic and courteous style drew criticism from other quarters, especially from self defence-oriented instructors and from would-be professional athletes, who advocated for a hard-hitting version of the sport influenced by the no-nonsense ethos of English and American boxing.
Light-contact, academic sparring persists as the “savate assaut” option in modern Boxe Française – Savate, contrasted with the full-contact “savate combat”.
Posted inSavate, Sparring, Video|Comments Off on Boxe Française Historique: a Reconstruction of Classical Savate Sparring
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 19th May 2018
In common with most athlete/showmen of his time and place, John Clempert (1878-1940) was not averse to spinning some tall tales about his past exploits. He claimed, among other things, to have served as an enforcer in the Russian Army and to have escaped three times from the confines of a transportation van after having been exiled to Siberia for a political infraction.
Clempert arrived in England circa 1899 and quickly began to establish a reputation as an itinerant strongman, escape artist and wrestler on the music hall circuit. Inevitably his trajectory crossed that of E.W. Barton-Wright and his jiujitsu champions, Tani and Uyenishi, who were likewise gaining fame in the music halls.
At that time, Clempert’s signature feat was as “The Man They Cannot Hang”; a stunt which apparently involved hanging by his knees beneath a trapeze suspended over the stage, only then to release his hold on the trapeze and drop some 15 feet, his descent halted by a noose looped around his neck. Whether or not there was some showbiz trickery associated with this stunt, photographs clearly show that Clempert’s neck muscles were, in fact, unusually well-developed.
Swiss grappler Armand Cherpillod was, along with Tani and Uyenishi, employed by Barton-Wright as a challenge wrestler and instructor on behalf of the Bartitsu School of Arms. In his 1933 autobiography, Cherpillod – who seems to have had consistent difficulty in recalling personal names – offered an exciting account of “Klemsky’s” bout with “Yanichi” (Sadakazu Uyenishi):
As quick as a flash, the Japanese leaped onto the Russian and seized him by the collar of the jacket, one hand on each side of his neck, by crossing the wrists, and learnedly exerted the famous pressure on the carotid arteries, which brings choking, and even unconsciousness. The hold did not seem to have any effect on the Russian, who simply smiled at the audience.
Astonished by this resistance, the Japanese wrestler’s eyes gleamed with malice. He rolled across the ground past the Russian while preserving his hold and, to increase the force of the pressure on the neck, planted his two feet in the pit of Klemsky’s stomach. This tightened the grip so extremely that a net of blood escaped from the mouth of Klemsky and sprinkled his face. It was only then that Yanichi [Uyenishi] released his hold and let fall beside him the apparently lifeless body of the Russian.
The public believed that Klemsky had died. They howled their anger and their disapproval of Yanichi. This latter, triumphant, appeared to be insensitive to the hostile remonstrations of the public. He went to sit down on the sidelines, beside his compatriot, in the manner of the tailors at work, by crossing his legs beneath him.
While the spectators redoubled their cries, our two Japanese entered into an animated conversation and even laughed together, contemplating the victim who did not give any sign of life. Suddenly, one of them rose, as if driven by a spring, and approached Klemsky. He leaned on the body of the Russian and gave some sort of vibration or massage to the cardiac area, which revived the victim gradually.
Then, to the great astonishment of the audience who were now gasping, Klemsky opened his eyes and asked where he was. This seemed magical, and even more than before, Jiu-jitsu appeared to be a most mysterious form of fighting.
When someone asked Klemsky for his impression of the event, he said that while losing consciousness, he had heard the sound of bells.
This account is especially interesting in that it’s one of the few records of a Bartitsu Club champion actually rendering a wrestling opponent unconscious, and one of the very first records of kuatsu (Japanese manual resuscitation techniques) in any non-Japanese media.
Clempert himself later recalled his encounter with Uyenishi in a letter published in the October 17th issue of The Encore:
The first time I ever met anybody under 12 stone was when I took on one of Mr. Barton-Wright’s Japs at the Empire. Beat him in the first five seconds in Greco-Roman style, putting him fairly on his back. He felt as though he was a baby. After that he put me to sleep – not from his strength, but by some sort of magnetism he used. I did not feel any pain. I do not know exactly understand what sort of wrestlers they are. According to my idea, they are not wrestlers but magicians.
I challenge them on the following conditions; Greco-Roman, catch-as-catch-can style or Straps. I put down five pounds if I don’t beat one of them within 10 minutes. But if they want to wrestle in their own way, which is called “self-defence”, I will undertake to defend myself in my own way. This means I shall try to disable my opponent before he can disable me. Some money must be staked, as it is their own style of wrestling. I will not take any responsibility about accidents. Of course, this kind of contest would have to take place where there are no ladies, such as at Wonderland or a sporting club.
Yours truly, John Clempert
Despite this bold challenge, there seems to be no further record of John Clempert taking on a jiujitsu-trained opponent.
In February of 1903, Clempert suffered a serious injury while performing his hanging stunt and was taken to hospital suffering from a “concussion of the spinal cord”. He recovered, but seems to have retired that stunt from his repertoire, thereafter continuing his career as a wrestler and an escape artist in the manner of Harry Houdini. Circa 1909, he also produced a pitchbook, the gloriously-titled Thrilling Episodes of John Clempert, The Shining Star of the Realms of Mystery.
Houdini, however, did not suffer imitators gladly and put legal pressure on Clempert to stop performing several escapes that were a little too directly inspired by Houdini’s own. Clempert apologised and promised to desist, although he did briefly come out of retirement after Houdini’s untimely death in 1926.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Tuesday, 12th February 2013
Announcing the third international Bartitsu symposium, to take place at Beamish Museum near Newcastle, UK, between September 14th and 15th, 2013.
Update: the Google Groups email list for the School of Arms event is now live at this website.
Instructors and participants who have booked their tickets should now have received an automatic subscription notice allowing full access to the list, delivered to the email address they gave when making their bookings. You may need to check your spam folders, etc.
If you are booked to attend the event but have not received an automatic subscription or invitation, please apply for membership via the webpage link above.
Premise
Training
Schedule
Location and venue
Museum visit
Saturday night buffet and forum at the Sun Inn
Antagonisticathlon
Prerequisites
Please bring:
Local accommodation options
Registration
Premise
To preserve and extend the pioneering martial arts cross-training experiments begun by E. W. Barton-Wright at the original Bartitsu School of Arms and Physical Culture, circa 1901:
Under Bartitsu is included boxing, or the use of the fist as a hitting medium, the use of the feet both in an offensive and defensive sense, the use of the walking stick as a means of self-defence. Judo and jujitsu, which are secret styles of Japanese wrestling, I would call close play as applied to self-defence.
In order to ensure, as far as it is possible, immunity against injury in cowardly attacks or quarrels, one must understand boxing in order to thoroughly appreciate the danger and rapidity of a well-directed blow, and the particular parts of the body which are scientifically attacked. The same, of course, applies to the use of the foot or the stick.
Judo and jujitsu were not designed as primary means of attack and defence against a boxer or a man who kicks you, but are only to be used after coming to close quarters, and in order to get to close quarters it is absolutely necessary to understand boxing and the use of the foot.
– E.W. Barton-Wright, lecture for the Japan Society of London, 1902
Training
School of Arms participants will meet each morning at the Beamish Museum main entrance and then board an authentic early 20th-century electric tram for a five-minute trip back in time to “Beamish Town”, circa 1901.
The event includes an intense and immersive two days of cross-training and circuit training with fellow enthusiasts, guided by a team of Bartitsu instructors and inspired by the ideal of Barton-Wright’s School of Arms:
In one corner is M. Vigny, the World’s Champion with the single-stick: the Champion who is the acknowledged master of savate trains his pupils in another … he leads you gently on with gloves and single-stick, through the mazes of the arts, until, at last, with your trained eye and supple muscles, no unskilled brute force can put you out, literally or metaphorically.
In another part of the Club are more Champions, this time from far Japan, who will teach you once more of how little you know of the muscles that keep you perpendicular, and of the startling effects of sudden leverage properly applied …
… when you have mastered the various branches of the work done at the Club, which includes a system of physical drill taught by another Champion, this time from Switzerland, the world is before you, even though a “Hooligan” may be behind you …
– “S.L.B.” in the article “Defence Against ‘Hooligans’: Bartitsu Methods in London”, from The Sketch, April 10, 1901
Following the successful model of the previous events in London and Chicago, our days will include whole-group training sessions as well as skills-based circuit training and breakout groups concentrating on particular areas of interest. Some cross-training sessions will be team-taught by instructors and others will involve peer-to-peer work.
Instructors and class themes will include:
Tony Wolf (New Zealand/USA) will be running sessions in combat tactics/biomechanics across each of the Bartitsu skill-sets of boxing, low kicking, jujitsu and stick fighting, as well as neo-Bartitsu “combat improv” drills, building upon the stylised canonical sequences through progressive levels of improvisation and resistance as a bridge between set-plays and free-sparring.
Allen Reed (USA) will concentrate on canonical jujitsu sequences and counters to those sequences arising from resistance by the opponent.- UPDATE Sept. 6– sadly, due to his wife suddenly being taken ill, Allen will not longer be able to join us at the School of Arms. The canonical jujitsu sessions will be distributed amongst the other instructors.
James Marwood (UK) will focus on practical applications of Bartitsu principles, specifically the use of boxing/pugilism and jujitsu atemi-waza and grappling to deal with assaults. Working from the premise that such an assault will be a surprise, James will show that the base arts and principles of Bartitsu can be applied to vastly increase one’s chance of a successful outcome.
Mark P. Donnelly (USA) will cover advanced tactics and techniques for employing walking stick, cane, umbrella or parasol at all ranges; using the reach advantage to best effect at long range, holding your own at medium range against a pugilist and exploiting the mechanical advantage of grappling with a cane at close range.
Schedule
Friday, September 13th: 12.00 – 5.00: optional (but highly recommended) visit to Beamish Museum, including a 1/2 hour Bartitsu demonstration to be held in either the Beamish bandstand or the Masonic Hall (see below for details).
Saturday, September 14th: Bartitsu training at the School of Arms venue 10.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m., 1/2 hour lunch break (we recommend that you bring a packed lunch); training 1.00 p.m. – 5.00 p.m.; Antagonisticathlon (weather permitting – see below); 6.00-9.00, reconvene for buffet dinner, discussions and socialising at the Sun Inn, just down the street from the School of Arms venue.
Sunday, September 15th: Bartitsu training at the School of Arms venue 10.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m., 1/2 hour lunch break (we recommend that you bring a packed lunch); training 1.00 p.m. – 4.15 p.m.; closing, presentation of participation certificates, group photos and farewells.
The 2012 School of Arms venue is Beamish Museum which is located near the town of Stanley in County Durham, UK.
Established in 1972, Beamish is a multi-award winning open-air “living history” museum spread over 300 acres, with extensive exhibitions representing transportation, engineering, agriculture, coal mining and town life during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The museum houses some 300,000 historical artifacts, ranging from thimbles to vehicles and buildings, and is staffed by costumed interpreters. Beamish has also been used as a location for TV series, including dramas based on the works of novelist Catherine Cookson.
The Bartitsu School of Arms will be established on the second floor of the historic Barclays Bank building, which is situated along the main street of “Beamish Town”:
Please click here to view a fully interactive map of the local area, plus detailed directions. You can also use this map to check routes to and from the venue and accommodation/entertainment options, etc.
Museum visit
School of Arms participants are invited to join a special day visit to Beamish Museum on Friday, September 13th. We will also present a half-hour Bartitsu demonstration for museum visitors, which will take place in the Beamish bandstand or in the historic Masonic Hall, depending on the weather.
Your School of Arms registration fee covers your ticket to take part in the Friday tour.
Saturday night buffet and forum at the Sun Inn
Our after-hours venue on Saturday night will be the Sun Inn, an authentic Edwardian-era pub translocated from the village of Bishop Auckland and now sited just down the road from the School of Arms.
We will enjoy a hot buffet meal of traditional Northeastern English fare at the Sun Inn, followed by drinks and discussion of matters Bartitsuvian.
Antagonisticathlon
Participants in the Antagonisticathlon represent Victorian-era adventurers fighting their way through a gauntlet of obstacles and “assassins”, inspired by Sherlock Holmes fending off Professor Moriarty’s henchmen in The Adventure of the Final Problem. Although the antagonisticathlon is not a competition, “style points” may be awarded at the judges’ discretion.
By special arrangement with Beamish Museum, and if the weather allows, we will be holding the Antagonisticathlon “after hours” on Saturday afternoon.
Prerequisites
The School of Arms is intended to benefit the Bartitsu revival as a whole by encouraging cross-training and fellowship. In order to ensure good progress for the whole group throughout the seminars, certain technical skills are required as prerequisites of participation. These include:
basic ukemi (breakfalling) – you must be able to comfortably and safely fall backwards and/or sideways to the left and right from a standing start
basic boxing – you must be able to comfortably and safely punch a hand-held, padded striking target with either fist
fitness – this will be a physically intense event and you should be in good general physical condition. We will be active all day, each day. People with significant physical challenges should contact the organisers for advice before committing to attending the event.
Though not a formal prerequisite, it is recommended that participants should also have some familiarity with the canonical armed and unarmed combat sequences recorded by E.W. Barton-Wright in his articles The New Art of Self Defence and Self Defence with a Walking Stick. These set-plays will be the basis of some drills and exercises during the School of Arms.
Please bring:
A large water or sports drink bottle
A packed lunch for each day you will be attending (note that Beamish is a popular tourist destination and that there are often long lines at lunchtime)
Exercise clothing resembling 19th century physical culture kit (typically, a plain, form-fitting t-shirt or tanktop/singlet and either yoga pants, fencing pants or gi pants in any combination of the colours black, white, navy blue, maroon or grey)
A pair of exercise shoes to be worn during training; please note that outdoor shoes cannot be worn on the School of Arms floor
A sturdy crook-handled walking stick and/or rattan rod approximately 36″ in length, with any sharp or rough edges smoothed away, or a rubber-tipped Bartitsu training cane
Participants in the antagonisticathlon are encouraged to wear clothing evocative of the Victorian/Edwardian periods, if practical.
Fencing masks, gi jackets and sashes, boxing gloves, hand protection for stick fighting, mouth guards, striking pads, additional body protection (knee/shin pads, groin guards, etc.) are not required, but will be welcome if you can bring them. A limited number of rattan canes, fencing masks and other items of protective equipment will be available for training and sparring purposes.
We suggest that you bring a light jacket or sweater as well as a raincoat and/or umbrella. Average temperatures in the Northeast of England during early September range from 63-48° Fahrenheit (17-9° celcius). The risk of rainfall is moderate.
Local accommodation options
This webpage details numerous accommodation options in the vicinity of the Bartitsu School of Arms venue. Please note that participants are responsible for arranging their own accommodation; this expense is not included in the 2012 School of Arms registration fee.
Update: A limited number of local billets (homestay options) will be available on a first come/first served basis, thanks to members of the Bartitsu Amateur Forum which is based close to the School of Arms location. Car-pooling to and from the Beamish Museum site may also be available. These details will be arranged via an email list for registrants.
Registration
The 2013 Bartitsu School of Arms is a boutique symposium and the event is strictly limited to 24 participants aged 18 years and older.
The registration fee for the event is £80.00 (€93.00, US$125.00). You can register and pay online (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express and PayPal) via this link:
Registrations will be on a first-come, first-served basis and will left open until September 6th or until the event is fully booked.
Please register as soon as possible, ensuring that your registration includes an email address at which we may reliably contact you, so that we can keep you informed of any updates, etc.
If you wish to register for a single day, or for the Friday museum tour and demonstration plus only one other day, please send £40.00 (€47.00, US$63.00) via PayPal to tonywolf@gmail.com, clearly noting which day you wish to attend.
Please note that your registration fee goes towards operational expenses associated with running the School of Arms. Participants are responsible for arranging for their own accommodation and buying their own meals and drinks, apart from the Saturday night buffet meal.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Tuesday, 3rd July 2018
The following article was originally published in the December 2nd, 1906 edition of The Referee, a then-popular sports newspaper. The journalist remarks upon a proposed upcoming contest arranged by a promoter named Lowes, pitting jiujitsu champion Taro Miyake against pugilist “Gunner” Moir.
The proposed match was probably inspired by the “boxing vs. jujitsu” controversy that played out via numerous letters to the editors of sporting journals during 1906/7. Many correspondents argued points of technique and combative theory, while others appealed to notions of nationalism and manliness. The writer of the following article objects on rather vague grounds of “fairness” and seems to make a simple appeal to traditionalism, while exaggerating his position for comic effect. Taken as a whole, the debate closely resembled a modern Internet forum flame war.
Although the consensus was that a contest mixing boxing and jiujitsu would not, in fact, have been strictly legal at that time – they might well have been considered “brawling in a public place” – it’s clear that some such matches had alreadytaken place “behind closed doors”. Those very likely included the doors of the Bartitsu Club. It’s also clear that wrestler and self-defence authority Percy Longhurst had been party to similar experimental match-ups.
Boxing is one of the finest sports in the world, with what seems to many of us the special advantage of being essentially and exclusively English. There is no exercise equal to it, for one thing, and mentally it is as good for the honest, plucky fighter as it is physically; it teaches him quickness of decision, readiness of resource, and, better still, how to control his temper; for the man who loses it is at once handicapped.
Jujitsu is also a capital thing in its way, ingenious in the extreme as showing how a man’s powers may be most effectively utilised.
But the combination of these two sports is not — in my opinion, at any rate — in the least desirable, and it is to be hoped that if Mr. Lowes gets on his projected match with Moir we shall not have a succession of such tests. Mr. Lowes proposes to introduce a man who will take on the Gunner with 6oz. glove; rounds to be limited to three minutes each with one minute interval, Jujitsu and English boxing to be allowed.
It is not suggested that there should be any savate, or that the men should enter the ring by jumping a bar, the highest jump to win the round, or that they should leave their corners walking on their hands, the first to topple over losing a point; but these little variations would probably follow in course of time if the mixing business were once started.
If a game is worth playing, let us play it; if it is not worth playing, let us find another which is, and play that. It is not fair to British boxing to introduce Japanese details. I do not know whether this new notion is in any way due to the burlesque of golf lately devised by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, who is accustomed to pretend that an arrow is a golf hall, to shoot instead of driving off with the legitimate implement, and to substitute a ball for the arrow when on the green. Why not have another ball a foot or so from the hole, and either pot it or go in off it with a cue? Then you would get a bit of billiards in, too. I feel pretty sure that Refereaders do not approve of mongrel sports.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 31st January 2018
Thanks to Rodney Bennett for sourcing and compiling this video, which consists of a series of self-defence postcards featuring French jiujitsu pioneer Ernest Regnier (a.k.a. “Re-Nie”).
The caption of postcard series B, #3 (appearing at 1.52 in the video) is curious in that the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira was almost completely obscure outside of Brazil during the very early 20th century.
Posted inEdwardiana, Jiujitsu|Comments Off on “Sports de Defense” Postcards on Video
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 31st January 2018
In this cartoon from the Penny Illustrated Paper of March 4, 1905, the illustrator imagines a jiujitsu contest between two constables at a police fete held at the famed Crystal Palace amusement centre. Although the cartoon was intended as a joke, within a few years of its publication police constables actually did start performing jiujitsu demonstrations for the general public.
Posted inEdwardiana, Humour, Jiujitsu|Comments Off on “Police Jiujitsu at the Crystal Palace” (1905)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 31st January 2018
When E.W. Barton-Wright returned to England in 1898, after a three-year sojourn in Japan, he lost little time in starting to promote the then-almost totally unknown martial art of jiujitsu. One of his first major promotions took place via the pages of Pearson’s Magazine, a very popular journal at the time.
Barton-Wright’s two-part article titled “The New Art of Self-Defence” was literally the first detailed, illustrated exposition of Japanese unarmed combat to have appeared in the Western media, and excerpts were widely re-printed in other magazines and newspapers, notably including the American edition of Pearson’s. An extended editorial addendum to the first entry noted that:
It is possible (…) that after a consideration of the explanations which follow, many readers will exclaim, “this is all very well on paper, but in practice it will probably be otherwise.” We must confess that when Mr. Barton-Wright first came into this office with his credentials and claims (a short, good-looking man with no indications of unusual strength) we ourselves were somewhat sceptical, but a few practical tests soon showed that we were in grevious error! Others, too, have scoffed at first – professional strong men, gymnasts, and athletes generally – but not one of these has met Mr. Barton-Wright and put him to the test who has not in the end been bound to admit that his system is irresistible.
The following is excerpted from an essay in the Pearson’s Weekly of September 16, 1909, written by P.W. Everett. Mr. Everett had been the editor responsible for Barton-Wright’s article, and his reminiscence of their first encounter offers a few more details about their “practical tests” of Barton-Wright’s New Art.
