During early-mid 1902 the Bartitsu Club instructors embarked on a largely successful exhibition tour that was to prove to be their “last hurrah” as a collective unit. Their venues included the Oxford Town Hall, Cambridge University, the Shoreditch Army Camp, the Adelphi Theatre in Liverpool and the Mechanic’s Institute Hall in Nottingham.
Australian-born writer/composer Kenneth Duffield was, at that time, a student at Cambridge. According to his memoir Savages and Kings (1946), Duffield was among the volunteers who braved a close encounter with Bartitsu Club jiujitsu expert Yukio Tani when the “Anglo-Japanese Tournament” exhibition visited his alma mater:
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“I’m Twenty-One Today”
Yukio Tani, the famous Japanese Jiu-Jitsu champion, gave an historic – as far as I was concerned – exhibition of his strange (but mostly non-utilitarian) prowess during my fourth year at Cambridge. I shall never forget the occasion, because it happened on my 21st birthday, 31st May, which date more or less coincides with the end of the term and the final exams.
The Corn Exchange was packed, mostly with noisy undergraduates, and I must admit that our twelve-fold front-row contribution to the din could not be denied. After a long day of gaiety and only one lecture, we had dined most sumptuously-well off a dish or two of those notoriously good Trinity College kitchen products, to say nothing (at the moment) of a flagon or so of the famous “Audit Ale” from out those labyrinthine King Henry VIII cellars.
Towards the end of the remarkable Jiu-Jitsu performance – which consisted of chiefly of “11th Hour” escapes from murdererous Japanese clutches, grips and strangulations – Representative members of the audience were invited to go on the stage to prove for themselves how very innocuous were the demonstrations.
Of course there was no difficulty in persuading a young man who had just celebrated his majority to volunteer, and I clambered onto the platform to the accompaniment of cheers and hoots from my friends. I was given a heavy canvas jacket and a pair of shorts in place of my evening dress, and when I had donned these the “fun” began.
I was shot into the air – “with the greatest of ease” – ricocheted back into Yukio Tani’s massive arms, hurled sideways between and assistant’s open legs, and, by the infamous “scissors movement”, thrown violently to the floor upon my right ear. I should have been quite dead by this time had the stage not been well padded, and I began to take a dislike of the entire procedure, and by no means a very good view of the audience, who were by now convulsed with laughter.
So I determined on revenge – a worthy but forlorn resolution. Again I found myself flying up into the “flies”, kicked in the stomach by Yukio, who, gripping my arms, hurled me over his head and so to the stage, flat on my back …
I think the Audit Ale, which, like rum, gives one extra courage, then began to take effect, for I got on my feet, charged Yukio like a bull, straddled his body between my legs, and seized him tightly by the ears with my strong, wiry fingers.
If you have ever seen a rodeo bronco-busting show, you can visualize the buck-jumping performance that I gave as I clung like grim death to his massive body and rode him by the ears. He shook me, bounced me, rolled me on the floor (which hurt me considerably), nosedived me but failed to dislodge this Australian-born bushman.
Finally, having drawn blood – and a good deal of it, too – from his ears, I forced him to his knees and made him tap twice on the floor (the signal for surrender), to the discomfort of his attendance satellites but to the vociferous approval of my friends in the front row.
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In writing nearly five decades after the fact, Mr. Duffield clearly allowed himself some artistic licence, such as his repeated descriptions of the diminutive Yukio Tani as “massive”, let alone the above illustration portraying Tani as if he was built like a sumo wrestler.
Still, there’s enough detail here to strongly suggest that Duffield actually did grapple with Tani during the Cambridge exhibition. Did he win as described in this anecdote? Alas, that vital point has been lost to history …
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 5th January 2019
Here follows a review of the new English-language edition of the instructional DVD Bartitsu: Historical Self-Defence with a Walking Stick According to Pierre Vigny, which was originally released with German-language captions and narration. The DVD features instructor Alex Kiermayer assisted by Christoph Reinberger and was produced by Agilitas.tv, a company that has previously produced a number of instructional HEMA DVDs.
Mr. Kiermayer and Mr. Reinberger are dressed in the simple white shirt, suspenders and dark pants ensembles that frequently stand in for Victorian/Edwardian attire in Bartitsu exhibitions. Their demonstrations take place in a large, distraction-free studio space and are well-covered with a truly impressive range of camera angles, including some high overhead shots as well as well-placed closeups. The technical presentations are methodical and crystal clear and the DVD itself is well-produced, including the new English narration. Some of the translated phrasing is a little awkward, but this is no way detracts from the value of the DVD as a training resource.
Also, the chapter select feature very efficiently allows the viewer to refer not only to particular chapters but also to technical sub-sections within those chapters.
Chapter 1: Theory first covers the general history of Bartitsu’s rise and fall at the turn of the 20th century and then offers a special focus on Pierre Vigny and his stick fighting method. These sections are well-illustrated and very highly accurate. It’s worth noting that recent (largely subsequent to the video’s original production) discoveries about the so-called “secret style of boxing”, a.k.a. “Bartitsu boxing”, have enabled us to make educated deductions about exactly how it differed from the orthodox boxing/savate practiced circa 1900.
The next section presents a variety of knob-handled and crook-handled sticks, noting their relative pros and cons for both self-defence and training purposes.
In Chapter 2: Basics, the various guard positions are clearly described and demonstrated, including the orthodox front (“right”) and rear (“left”) guards and double-handed guard variants. Gripping the stick is addressed, including the important but seldom-addressed matter of shifting into a fighting stance from the ordinary walking-stick grip position. The fundamentals of body mechanics via stance and footwork are also methodically detailed in this section.
Mr. Kiermayer also includes several lowered guards, which are shown as positions of invitation (but not defined as guards per se) in the canonical material. This section then develops into a series of exercises which serve triple duty as as warm-ups, conditioning training and dexterity drills. These include moulinets and many techniques of passing the cane from one grip to the other, emphasising the crucial ambidexterity of Vigny stick fighting.
Chapter 3: Attacks begins with a simple demonstration of preferred targets including the face and head, solar plexus, elbow, hand, knee/shin, etc. Effective use is made of graphics, as red circles are superimposed over the key areas of Mr. Reinberger’s anatomy.
The next section deals with striking mechanics, beginning with “snapping” strikes from the sabre grip (i.e., strikes made primarily from the wrist with the thumb extended along the shaft for extra support and precision, although the point is correctly made that this type of grip is not actually advocated by the Vigny style, which defers to the “hammer” grip instead). “Sweeping” strikes are described as the “bread and butter of la canne Vigny”, requiring a larger preparation but offering much greater power; these are further developed into the characteristic “fanning” strikes of the Vigny system.
Mr. Kiermayer also introduces a simple numbering system for the sake of convenience in training, comparable with the traditions of numbered positions in fencing (“cut to tierce”, etc.) and numbered angles of attack in the Filipino martial arts. This was alluded to in E.W. Barton-Wright’s Self Defence with a Walking Stick articles, which included a few references to fencing numbers. Although there is no evidence of a consistent number system being emphasised within the canonical style, it’s a useful tool for training purposes.
A range of striking exercises includes simple standing and lunging attacks employing various dynamics and drills in which the training partner spontaneously presents a striking target at various angles and positions. This section also includes logical extrapolations from the canonical material, such as strikes in which the sections of the cane held between (or extending beyond) the hands in the double-handed grip are used as striking weapons at close quarters.
In addition, it showcases the use of the “short end” of the cane as a dagger-type thrusting weapon at close quarters, which was referred to by numerous observers of Vigny’s Bartitsu demonstrations and also by Captain Laing in his 1902 article. Curiously, however, this section does not include examples of attacks in which the stick is held with both hands at one end.
The Attacks chapter closes with a series of sample combination exercises – each one finishing with the characteristic “attack while moving back into guard” tactic – and a demonstration of freestyle striking against a hanging car tire target.
Chapter 4: Defences opens with the basic parries of classical canne fencing, named after the fencing convention of numbered hand positions. Although there is some commonality with the Vigny style, classical canne also includes types of defences that are categorically not part of Vigny’s method, including parries in the tierce and quarte guards (in which the point of impact between the sticks is above the defender’s stick-wielding hand) and low parries against leg attacks.
The classical canne parries are also demonstrated via three-count parry/riposte drills and then via a more elaborate drill adapted from one of Henry Angelo’s early 19th century cutlass exercises. Again, the latter includes defences which are not part of Vigny’s system, and so while these techniques and drills are of academic interest for the sake of comparison between historical styles, they run the risk of confusing beginners who may be following the exercises step by step, because they will then have to be “forgotten” when the focus shifts back to the Vigny style.
The classical canne section is followed by an examination of Vigny’s single-handed hanging guards, which are directly relevant to the practice of Bartitsu stick fighting. Again, the progression from isolated technique into defence/riposte drills is shown effectively, and there’s a useful graphic that superimposes “after-images” of the defence positions as Mr. Kiermayer runs through the sequence of five basic parries.
The “stick up” variants that follow, however, again contradict the basic defensive premise of the Vigny style, and the inclusion of these parries in the context of a Vigny-style instructional DVD is regrettable. These techniques were not featured in any of the historical Vigny sources, and in fact were actively argued against – the logic being that hanging guards better protect the weapon-wielding hand, resulting in the range of high guard positions that fundamentally characterise the style.
Although lowered guard stances are featured in the Bartitsu canon, they are exclusively used as positions of invitation (to bait the opponent into attacking an apparently exposed target), with any subsequent parry action being executed from a high or hanging guard. That said, if – in the heat of a sparring match, for example – a fighter is caught momentarily unawares while in a low guard, he or she may be forced to perform a parry in 3 or 4 out of expedience.
We then move through several variations of the canonical “guard by distance”, in which the defender invites an attack to a deliberately exposed target in order to slip the attack and riposte. The first variant is curious in that the defender invites a mid-level attack to his elbow and then counters to the attacker’s weapon-wielding hand, which requires a rather awkward, slightly upward-angled strike leaving little room for error. The equivalent canonical technique involves a low/mid-level invitation to attack the defender’s hand and the counter is performed to the attacker’s head, allowing for a more powerful and unobstructed riposte.
The Defences chapter continues with a progression of partnered attack/riposte drills, many of which are strongly reminiscent of the drills described in Captain F.C. Laing’s 1902 article The Bartitsu Method of Self Defence. These exercises gradually introduce greater complexity and degrees of “aliveness” by requiring one or both partners to react to spontaneous, rather than pre-arranged attacks.
There follows a section on using the double-handed cane grip to ward off unarmed attacks, including straight right and left punches and both front and roundhouse kicks, and then a useful study of release techniques against seizure to the cane-wielding defender’s weapon or clothing. This latter classification is notably lacking in the canonical material and the release defences presented here are martially plausible.
Chapter 5: Additional Techniques and Tactics introduces a number of the canonical sequences originally presented in Barton-Wright’s articles and in Lang’s 1923 book, especially those representing the fusion of Vigny’s cane style with Barton-Wright’s jiujitsu. It’s pointed out that Barton-Wright particularly recommended this type of technique when faced by an opponent armed with a heavier and stronger weapon.
Many of these techniques are presented with slight “neo-Bartitsu” variations, which are then extrapolated into a series of purely neo-Bartitsu close-combat cane takedowns. Some discussion or demonstration of how to best train these techniques, particularly against a non-cooperative opponent, would have been useful. In combination, however, this section illustrates the important point that the Vigny style includes a range of close-combat locking and takedown options.
The final section in Chapter 5 usefully introduces a series of basic unarmed combat techniques, with particular attention to using straight punches and low kicks in combination with the leverage-based releases covered in Chapter 4 to assist in releasing your cane if it’s seized by the opponent. It’s mentioned that a planned future DVD will focus on unarmed Bartitsu.
Chapter 6: Applications offers a series of self-defence scenarios as examples of how the previously-learned material might be applied in practice. These include the common-or-garden double-handed lapel grab, a single-handed lapel grip and punch with the free hand, a double-handed shove that pushes the defender to the floor, knife attacks, etc. As the “attacker”, Mr. Reinberger wears body protection for a number of these sequences, allowing Mr. Kiermayer to demonstrate some of the impact force that would be applied in a real attack situation.
Most of the example defences are logical and realistic extrapolations of the Vigny system as it was practiced at the Bartitsu Club circa 1901, combining basic savate and jiujitsu with the use of the cane; though again, some more discussion of training practices allowing for spontaneity and active resistance would have been helpful.
Finally, Chapter 7: Free Fencing offers a demonstration of several bouts of light freestyle sparring in the Vigny style. Gratifyingly, both Mr. Kiermayer and Mr. Reinberger demonstrate fluid shifting between a wide variety of guard positions and active ambidexterity in their attack and defence techniques, and there are several points where the fights continue at close quarters (although no actual locks nor takedowns are shown in this section).
In conclusion, Bartitsu: Historical Self-Defence with a Walking Stick According to Pierre Vigny is an excellent new training resource for Bartitsu revivalists. In the sense that each rendition of the style has added novel elements – from the blending of stickfighting and jiujitsu at the original Bartitsu Club, to the incorporation of Afro-Caribbean techniques by H.G. Lang in the 1920s – most of the innovations introduced here are both stylistically logical and martially plausible. The only serious criticism is, again, that the inclusion of certain classical canne parries will serve to confuse beginners and to dilute the canonical style.
The expanded range of double-handed cane techniques and the inclusion of release techniques are particularly valuable, serving to “fill in the gaps” left by the scenario-based canonical sequences from Barton-Wright’s articles. In many ways, Mr. Kiermayer’s DVD is in the spirit of Captain Laing’s 1902 essay on Bartitsu self-defence, which likewise offered a systematic progression of technical drills.
The English-language edition of Bartitsu: Historical Self-Defence with a Walking Stick According to Pierre Vigny is currently available from this website. It will soon also be available on DVD from the Freelance Academy Press and then as a series of streaming downloads via Vimeo.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 17th June 2017
Members of the Amazon Defence Corps train in unarmed combat (July, 1940).
During the fraught summer of 1940, the people of England were bracing themselves for a seemingly inevitable invasion by the German army. While politicians dithered over whether women should be allowed to serve as “Home Defenders” – and some women planned suicides – others began training themselves to repel the Nazis by force.
Venetia Foster’s London-based Amazon Defence Corps was among the first of these organizations. Legally prevented from carrying firearms, they neverthless practiced with rifles in shooting galleries set up in public amusement arcades and members’ homes. Weighted beanbags served as facsimile hand-grenades and molotov cocktails. The Amazons also studied unarmed combat, rehearsing jujitsu throws on their lawns, and scanned the skies for German parachutists with their opera glasses.
As branches of the Amazons Defence Corps got underway in areas outside London, Percy Longhurst (whose self-defence expertise dated back to the glory days of the Bartitsu Club circa 1900) contributed a series of five illustrated photo-features to the Daily Mail. Titled “At Him, Girls!”, the articles instructed readers in some basic jiujitsu techniques and also included advice on how to wield an umbrella, walking stick or fireplace poker if attacked by an invading enemy soldier.
In August of 1940 the ADC joined forces with Dr. Edith Summerskill’s new Women’s Home Defence organization and thereafter continued their training throughout wartime, as shown in this newsreel footage:
Although women were never formally admitted into England’s Home Guard as potential combatants, the former members of the Amazon Defence Corps showed true initiative and determination in preparing to resist Nazi invaders.
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In this video, instructor Argent Bracci demonstrates some examples of destructive elbow guards applied to the noble art of fisticuffs:
As Edward Barton-Wright noted in the 1901 article Bartitsu: Its Exponent Interviewed, orthodox boxing/savate defences – as typically taught to middle-class students in commercial schools, geared entirely towards relatively safe competition – could be modified and improved towards the goal of winning a street fight:
Another branch of Bartitsu is that in which the feet and hands are both employed, and which is an adaptation of boxing and Savate. The guards are done in a slightly different style from boxing, being much more numerous as well. The use of the feet is also done quite differently from the French Savate.
As to boxing, we have guards which are not at all like the guards taught in schools, and which will make the assailant hurt his own hand and arm very seriously.
Pierre Vigny demonstrates a destructive guard against the opponent’s left lead punch to the body.
Thus, Bartitsu boxing guards represented an aggressive, damaging modification to the standard blocks of boxing and savate. The opponent’s strikes would be met percussively, the defender chopping into punches with elbow/forearm strikes or offering the sharp wedge of an elbow-forward shield, as well as counter-kicking into attacking shins and ankles, as a precursor to finishing the fight at closer quarters.
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Despite considerable popular interest in the jiujitsu exhibitions of Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi during 1901, many critics declared that they would withhold their judgement until they’d seen the Japanese style in earnest action against a European champion or two. Promoter Edward Barton-Wright, however, had his work cut out for him in persuading European wrestlers to test the novel system in the public arena.
Among the first grapplers to take up Barton-Wright’s challenge was Percy Longhurst. Tough, well-respected and experienced in a diverse range of traditional English styles, Longhurst was the type of plausible contender the sceptics had been looking for. His bouts with Tani, described here in the Music Hall and Theatre Review, helped to kick-start the Bartitsu Club’s brief but historically significant “golden era” of music hall challenge contests.
Noting as usual that the term “Jap” was not used pejoratively in Edwardian English, being instead a simple abbreviation in the way “Aussie” stands in for “Australian”.
ON Wednesday night Mr. Percy Longhurst, a member of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Amateur Wrestling Society, was, by permission of Mr. Barton-Wright, allowed to have a bout with one of the two Japs now giving illustrations of Japanese wrestling and the art of self-defence at the Tivoli.
A week ago Mr. Longhurst tried his skill on the Tivoli stage, and from the insight he then gained into the methods of his opponent he had a notion that a second time he could do better. The opportunity afforded him was fully availed of, and the Cumberland amateur, who struggled hard with his Japanese opponent, the one named Tani — the other, although performing, having injured his hand — found himself defeated at every move.
The contest was maintained with the utmost vigour on both sides, the little Jap, however, having it pretty much his own way, although in one or two of the bouts the North countryman gave him a good deal of trouble.
Mr. Barton-Wright informed the audience that Mr. Longhurst had expressed a desire to try his skill and strength in holding his antagonist down. Accordingly Tani lay flat on his hack on the stage, and the Cumberland wrestler did all he could think of to prevent him from rising, but all his exertions were unavailing, the Jap wriggling away from him after a very short contest, amid the loud applause of a crowded house.
The style of Eastern wrestling, some 3,000 years old, has scarcely anything in common with European methods. The Japs are eel-like in their movements, wriggling and slipping away from any grip, and doing it with the utmost celerity and without apparent effort. An expert Russian wrestler has challenged them for one night next week, and it will be interesting to see how he fares with such redoubtable champions.
Unfortunately, the “expert Russian wrestler” was to back out of his challenge at the last possible moment – while he was literally waiting in the wings of the Tivoli stage!
Percy Longhurst, however, was impressed enough with jiujitsu to learn the Japanese art himself – almost certainly at the Bartitsu Club, as he wrote of training with Barton-Wright – and seems to have maintained cordial relationships with many of the Bartitsu Club principals for some years thereafter. He went on to write numerous articles and several books on the subjects or wrestling, self defence and physical culture. Aside from Barton-Wright’s Pearson Magazine article series, Longhurst’s 1906 book Jiu-Jitsu and Other Methods of Self Defence is about the closest thing to a “Bartitsu manual” to have been published in England during the early 20th century.
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The mid-19th century moral panic over garroting gangs (urban street muggers) reached its absurdist conclusion in this Punch Magazine cartoon, suggesting the invention of a reinforced hoop skirt frame to keep garroters at a safe distance.
Sadly, while scholars agree that the garroting panic was largely driven by newspaper sales, the threat of COVID-19 is all too real. Here’s a handy guide from the BBC on the daily practicalities of keeping safe distance:
Andres Morales of Santiago, Chile performs a solo drill exhibiting techniques from his Integrated Stick Method, which largely combines the Vigny and Bonafont styles.
