Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 5th July 2017
By 1910, the mystique of the Parisian “apache” street gangsters had fully piqued the curiosity of the bourgeoisie via works of tabloid journalism and popular fiction. Middle- and upper-class “slummers” eagerly consumed news reports of the most recent apache outrages, attended classes in “la langue verte” (the colourful Montmartre back-alley argot) and elevated the exploits of gangsters such as “the Panther” and “Golden Helmet” to the status of urban folklore.
Above: a postcard satirising the popular image of the apaches of Montmartre.
Manufacturers were quick to jump on the bandwagon, producing clothing and accessories that fed into (and from) the apache craze. Among these were various gimmicked walking sticks containing secret weapons that might, in theory, be employed against apache muggers, who were infamous for wielding a variety of unusual weapons of their own, including knuckle-duster rings and even porcupine armour.
Despite intimations of an ad-hoc arms race between street gangsters and bourgeois gents, most of these weapons were probably, in reality, more often simply shown off as macho accoutrements. An article in The Sphere of 17 December, 1910 displayed the latest trends in anti-apache weapon canes:
The “bayonet stick” featured a spring-loaded blade which popped out of the handle, transforming the cane into a short spear. A highly similar weapon was used by Sherlock Holmes against a pair of street ruffians in the 1965 movie A Study in Terror:
The “rifle stick” included a lightweight shoulder stock attachment, presumably to be used when fending off apache muggers from a great distance.
The elegant derby handle of the “revolver and dagger” stick pulled out to reveal a six-shot revolver and a stiletto blade.
Posted inEdwardiana, Hooliganism|Comments Off on The 1910 French Craze for “Secret Weapon” Walking Sticks
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 17th January 2019
Tani executes a rear scissor choke submission hold.
This sketch series by Percy F.S. Spence records moments from former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani’s matches at the Royal Albert Hall on July 2, 1904. The sketches were originally published in the Illustrated London News two days after the event.
The main event that night featured a “best two out of three” heavyweight Graeco-Roman wrestling championship match between George “The Russian Lion” Hackenschmidt and Tom Jenkins, which was won by Hackenschmidt.
Tani won all three of his matches within fifteen minutes.
The “Sinbad” reference may be an allusion to the similarity between Tani’s acrobatic throws and the “knockabout” style of slapstick comedy seen in Edwardian-era pantomimes.
A possibly unique depiction of Tani executing a full handstand.
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 20th December 2018
After some 16 years of intensive research, we now know a good deal about the origins and day-to-day workings of the Bartitsu School of Arms, a.k.a. the Bartitsu Club. One question that remains, though, is whether Edward Barton-Wright – the originator of Bartitsu and the founder of the Club – actually taught there.
By his own account, Barton-Wright possessed a “lifelong interest in the arts of self defence”. Even before spending three years studying martial arts in Japan, he had trained in “boxing, wrestling, fencing, savate and the use of the stiletto under recognised masters”, reportedly testing his skills by “engaging toughs (street fighters) until (he) was satisfied in their application.” By all other accounts, including those of seemingly impartial witnesses such as Captain F.C. Laing, Edward Barton-Wright was, indeed, a rugged and skilled fighter.
We also have evidence that Barton-Wright actively encouraged the Bartitsu Club instructors to teach each other their specialties. In a 1950 interview with London Budokwai founder Gunji Koizumi, Barton-Wright reminisced about trying to teach Yukio Tani to box, though he remarked that Tani “had no aptitude for the sport”. Similarly, wrestler Armand Cherpillod trained with Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi prior to representing the Bartitsu Club in a much-hyped challenge match against Joe Carroll; Cherpillod later confessed that he believed that the Japanese instructors were withholding some of their more advanced techniques from him.
Captain Alfred Hutton was rather a special case, in that although he was a Bartitsu Club instructor, his fencing classes were very likely not considered to be part of the “Bartitsu curriculum” (such as it was). Hutton himself was, however, an enthusiastic student of Pierre Vigny’s stick fighting and of Tani and Uyenishi’s jiujitsu. Hutton commented that while he was too old to practice jiujitsu as “free play” or sparring, he had nevertheless learned “about 80 kata, or tricks, which even at my age may one day or another come in useful.”
Direct evidence for Barton-Wright himself actually teaching classes is, however, scanty. English self-defence authority Percy Longhurst referred to learning a particular throw directly from Barton-Wright, while the anonymous author of the 1901 article Defence Against “Hooligans” referred to Barton-Wright keeping “an admonishing eye” over the classes instructed by Tani, Vigny et al. Allowing for journalistic license, one imagines that the instructors might rather have resented the admonishment.
The anonymous author of an interview with Barton-Wright that appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette of 5 September 1901 also described Barton-Wright teaching jiujitsu at the Club, although it isn’t entirely clear whether this was a matter of regular practice or whether a special case was made for the reporter.
While Barton-Wright was, in fact, the only Bartitsu Club principal who had active prior experience in all of the key methods taught at the Club, his own experience on a per-discipline basis paled in comparison with that of the specialist instructors. Pierre Vigny was clearly the best-qualified to instruct students in the fine points of savate and of his own method of walking stick defence, and although Tani and Uyenishi were very young men at the time, they had both started training as children and their practical jiujitsu experience clearly far surpassed Barton-Wright’s.
If you have a club where there are Japanese jiujitsu instructors teaching jiujitsu, people teaching French boxing, people teaching boxing – how do you bring those together? Well, the problem is that the instructors themselves can’t bring it together. The jiujitsu teachers can’t engage with the students in boxing, the savate people or the boxe Francaise people can’t engage with the jiujitsu people in terms of jiujitsu, because they don’t have the experience. So (Barton-Wright) was probably, initially, the only one who understood what his system was! He was probably the only “master of Bartitsu”!
So we have an embryonic art. The only way that art can develop is if you develop a body of students who can then compete against each other.
Speculatively, therefore, it may be that Barton-Wright’s main role as an instructor was to supervise the preliminary training required of all new members of the Club. The Bartitsu School of Arms offered an unusual pedagogical system in that beginners had first to complete a course of private lessons before being permitted to join the group classes. Journalist Mary Nugent noted that “no class-work is allowed to be done until the whole of the exercises are perfectly acquired individually”.
We know little about the nature of these private classes except that they included a course of physical culture exercises to prepare students for the demands of Bartitsu training. Given his “jack of all trades” status, Barton-Wright himself would, perhaps, have been the best-qualified instructor to devise and implement such a course, which may have included preparatory exercises drawn from each of the key styles; thereby also freeing the specialist instructors to concentrate on their more advanced sessions. Thereafter, Barton-Wright might have supervised classes (or simply offered tips) in blending the various specialisms together, as in his collaborations with Vigny.
We await the discovery of further details on the practical role Barton-Wright played in developing his “New Art of Self Defence”.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Monday, 7th May 2018
Bartitsu founder Edward Barton-Wright claimed “the use of the stiletto” among the variety of fighting styles he had studied during his many years as an itinerant mining engineer. Bartitsu itself, however, does not appear to have included any dagger nor knife techniques per se. Indeed, apart from some ambiguous comments by third parties who witnessed Bartitsu demonstrations, the only references to edged weapons in the Bartitsu repertoire were in terms of defending against them, via Barton-Wright’s “coat trick” or the Vigny cane system.
Barton-Wright’s remark that learning his New Art of Self-Defence should relieve students of “the feeling of disgust at having a dagger about (them)” was typical of English sentiment at the turn of the 20th century. Given that cultural bias against bladed weapons, he was careful to frame his discussions of knife attacks as being committed by “foreigners”. That said, knives were, in fact, widely used in Southern European and Mediterranean criminal subcultures.
The following is excerpted from Chapter IV of “The Pillars of Hercules, or, A narrative of travels in Spain and Morocco in 1848”. It offers a unique technical description of Spanish knife fighting/training, written by David Urquhart, an Englishman who learned the art from a Spanish master in Seville.
CHAPTER IV.
PELEA DE NAVAJA. THE OLD SPANISH SWORD.
A Sevillian whom I was questioning about the frequent assassinations, astonished me by denying that there were any. “What you hear of,” said he, “as murders are duels.” I objected the knife;—he said, “Well, the knife, that is our weapon; we fence, we do not stab; the duel has its laws, the weapon its science.” I thought this must be a figurative manner of describing some rude point of honour, and asked him to show me in what consisted the science. “I am not expert,” he said; “but if you are curious I will take you to a friend of mine, whom you can engage, as he is the best player in Seville; and, since the death of Montez, in all Andalusia.”
I begged immediately to be conducted to the yuecador, and was introduced to the inner apartment; which—as he united the calling of contrabandist to that of fencing-master—was filled with bales of tobacco. The subject was broached as a matter of business. He was willing to give me lessons, but would not undertake to teach me. If I had natural dispositions I might learn “to play” in three months, taking Time by the forelock. I proposed commencing at once; and next morning he came to me by day-light, at the inn— for it required a large room.
A wooden dagger is used for a foil: it is about eight inches long, and in form like the old sacrificial knife: it is held by the closed fingers, the thumb stretching along the blade, and the edge turned inward. Round the left arm is wound the jacket as a shield. My teacher, putting himself in attitude, at once reminded me of the fighting Gladiator. He thus commenced: “You must hold your right hand down upon your thigh; you must never raise it till sure of your blow. Your feints must be with the eye—the eye, hand and leg must move together. When you look here, you must strike there, and spring when you have cut, corta y huya. The left arm must be kept high, the right hand low, the knees bent, the legs wide, the toes forward, ready to spring back or forward. There are three cuts and three parries; one point,—the point is low and at the belly—St. George’s au bas venire: the cut must be across the muscle on the shoulder or the breast, or down well into the groin, so as to let out the bowels. Unless you know how to cut, it is of no use knowing how to fence.”
He knew nothing of our fencing, and was much surprised when I made application of it, and attributed the advantages it gave to a natural instinct for the art. The result was, that in a week he had gone through the whole course, and the last day of my stay at Seville, he brought two of the proficients, and we had a regular assault d’armes, the guests at the hotels being spectators. He honoured me at the introduction by saying, that he feared me more than either of his two compeers, because I sprang better than the one, and cut better than the other.
The attitudes are a study for an artist. There are not the stiff figures and sharp angles of our fencing; but the rounded limb, the gathered-up muscle, the balanced body:—instead of the glance of the steel there is that of the eye. The weapon is concealed under the hand, and pointing down, so that not a ray betokens it. There is no boxer’s fist or cestus, no crusader’s helm or hauberk, no Roman’s sword or shield. It seemed as if the hands and the eye of the man were equal to the claw of the tiger, or the tusk of the boar. It was a combat of beasts rather than a contest of men. There was the ambling pace, the slouching gait of the panther or the lion, or, rather, it was a mixture of the snake and the frog; gliding like the one and springing like the other. This is the war of the knife, the Pelea de Navaja, falsely interpreted war to the knife.
After missing a blow with the right hand, the knife, by a dexterous player, may be jerked into the left; but this, if unsuccessful, is inevitable death. To jerk it at your antagonist is not permitted by the rules of the game. By a sudden spring an adversary’s foot may be pinned after he has failed in a blow. The most deadly of these feints is to strike the foot of your adversary sideways and so bring him down. A celebrated Juccador named Montes (not the Torero), killed in this manner eleven men, and was at last so killed himself.
The mantle or jacket round the left arm is used, not for the purpose of catching the blow, but of striking off the adversary’s arm so that he may not reach. The guarding arm is always within reach, but always avoided; for to strike at it would leave your side open, and the safety consists in keeping under your adversary. The arms of the players were all scarred; but that was in ” love fights.” The edge of the knife is then blunted, or a shoulder is put to it, as in the case of the lances which they use with the bulls.
The Sevillian was right. This is not simple assassination: it is not the stab given in the dark, though of course we could only so understand a man being killed by a knife. A popular song at Seville is, the lamentation of a man imprisoned for “stabbing” another :—he exclaims against the wrong ; justifies his legitimate defence of his maja; calls upon the gaoler to testify to his treatment; and, failing to obtain sympathy, rushes to the grates and appeals to the people:—
“Si venga gente pora aca!”
There is no song sung with more fervour by the ladies.
This is the most deadly weapon I know; the dirk, the cama, the dagger, are grasped in the hand, and impelled by the leverage of the arm. The navaja may be so used, or plunged right on end like the Hindoo dagger, and also by the motion of the wrist alone: it more resembles mowing with the scythe than thrusting with a poniard: it is accompanied by the action of the sword, in which, as in fencing, the limbs come into play, and thus serves the purpose of a defensive weapon. It is the origin of our fencing; and against adversaries not acquainted with that art, or not armed for it, it still retains all its ancient superiority:—in all cases it would be a valuable accessory to other weapons, without being an encumbrance, and serving for all the ordinary purposes of a knife.
The navaja (pronounced navakha) is a clasp knife, —those worn by professed players are a foot long when closed. There is a spring to catch it behind, to prevent it closing on the hand. When opened there is the click as in cocking a pistol, and the sound is said to delight Andalusian equally with Irish ears. The art of fencing with it is called pelea de navaja.
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Sunday, 6th May 2018
Like the shepherd’s crook-type weapon introduced to the London police circa 1904, the police shields described in the article represent an interesting local solution to a local problem. Very similar designs were, however, widely used in India and South Africa during the 20th century. They are also, perhaps, among the early ancestors of the high-tech riot shields commonly used by contemporary police forces.
The Stafford county constabulary are about to be supplied with an ingenious though simple addition to their present means of defence. Mr. Oswell, the deputy chief constable of the county, whose experience of the risks run by the police in hand to hand encounters with the rougher elements of a mining and agricultural population extends over upwards of 20 years, has invented a light wicker shield to worn by police when on night duty or under circumstances which they are likely brought into conflict with the more desperate characters of the Staffordshire districts.
The shield is oval in form, and though very light is so constructed of carefully woven willow twigs as to be at once strong and serviceable. The willow work strengthened a backbone of 1/4 inch ash, running through the centre of the shield and projecting an inch or two at each end. The dimensions of the shield are 23″ x 13″ and on the inner side there are two semi circular pieces of roundel leather, so fixed that while the forearm thrust through one the other is grasped the hand.
The shield is slung at the back by a strap passing over the right shoulder and under the left arm, in such a way that it can be instantaneously hitched round to the front. The arm having been put through the leather handles, a single pull detaches the strap supporting the shield, which can then be elevated to cover the head in case assault with stones or bludgeons.
Mr. Oswell thinks that, if padded on inner side with cotton wool, the shield would resist the ordinary gun-shot used by poachers at as short a distance as 15 yards. Two small holes left the basket work afford the constable, while protecting his head, the opportunity seeing movements of his assailants.
Posted inAntagonistics|Comments Off on “Shields for Police Constables” (Edinburgh Evening News, 15 September 1882)
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Sunday, 10th December 2017
Martial arts enthusiasts who find themselves in central London may wish to visit the site of the original Bartitsu School of Arms and Physical Culture (a.k.a. the Bartitsu Club). The Club was the first commercial school in the Western world to teach Japanese martial arts and also the site of the first known experiment in deliberately blending Asian and European fighting styles, anticipating Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do by about seven decades and the modern MMA movement by about ninety years.
Above: instructors Pierre Vigny (left) and Hubert demonstrate stick fighting in one of the few known photographs taken inside the Bartitsu Club.
Above: Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright demonstrates one of his “heat and light ray” devices inside the Bartitsu Club’s electrotherapy clinic.
The Bartitsu Club operated from approximately April of 1900-January of 1902 and was originally located in the basement of #67b Shaftesbury Avenue in London’s Soho district.
#67 Shaftesbury very narrowly survived destruction during the London Blitz and today the exterior facade looks much like it did circa 1900, apart from the variety of modern shops at street level. It presently houses a large, modern Best Western hotel, which was known formerly as The Shaftesbury and currently as The Piccadilly (harkening back to the days of the Bartitsu School of Arms, when the building was called Piccadilly-Circus-Mansions). Note, however, that the basement which housed the Bartitsu Club gymnasium itself is off-limits to guests and visitors.
The Allen Room at St. Anne’s Church
In September of 2005, Tony Wolf launched the publication of the Bartitsu Compendium, Volume 1 via a function in the Allen Room, an oak-panelled meeting room in the St. Anne’s Church complex adjacent to #67 Shaftesbury. The exterior of #67 was shown in the 2011 feature documentary Bartitsu: The Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes and served as a rendezvous point for participants in the 2011 Bartitsu School of Arms symposium. The exterior and lobby were also featured in a 2014 mini-documentary on Bartitsu produced by the BBC:
St. Anne’s Churchyard
Pilgrims to #67 should also take time to explore the Soho neighbourhood, which features many attractions including superb West End theatres, restaurants, Victorian-era pubs and shops. Of particular note are St. Anne’s Churchyard, a small park immediately behind #67 Shaftesbury, where informal classes in martial arts from Tai Chi Chuan to kickboxing frequently take place; and nearby Cecil Court, a collection of some of the world’s finest antiquarian and specialist bookstores. Be sure to check out Storey’s Ltd., whose extensive catalogues of antique prints have been known to include rare illustrations of both Bartitsu and Captain Hutton’s historical fencing.
Above: Cecil Court Lane, a mecca for book lovers.
Finally, no Bartitsu pilgrimage is complete without a visit to James Smith and Sons, an establishment which has been manufacturing and selling fine walking sticks and umbrellas since the year 1830. The shop is only a ten-minute walk from #67 Shaftesbury and it’s been speculated that Bartitsu Club instructor Pierre Vigny’s special self-defence walking sticks may have been produced by the James Smith company. Although they no longer produce items overtly intended as weapons, the ornate Victorian-era signage still advertises “malacca canes, dagger-canes, life-preservers and swordsticks”.
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Tuesday, 17th October 2017
Of the select group of Japanese judoka and jiujitsuka who pioneered their martial arts in the West at the turn of the 20th century, Mitsuyo Maeda is almost certainly the most famous. It was Maeda who settled in Brazil, beginning the legacy of Brazilian Jiujitsu that would eventually sweep the world during the 1990s MMA boom.
This article, however, will focus on Maeda’s relatively little-known activities in England, where – very much unlike most of the other Western countries he visited – the art of Japanese unarmed combat was already somewhat established. E.W. Barton-Wright had begun lecturing on and demonstrating jiujitsu in the English capital nine years before Mitsuyo Maeda arrived there.
In the interim, a number of Japanese jiujitsuka – Kaneo Tani, Seizo Yamamoto, Yukio Tani, Sadakazu “Raku” Uyenishi, Akitaro “Daibutsu” Ono, Taro Miyake and others – had all taught, demonstrated and competed in England. Instructional manuals such as Uyenishi’s Text-book of Ju-jutsu were widely available. Thus, English wrestlers, sporting journalists and wrestling fans were largely familiar with the conventions and some of the techniques of jiujitsu, to the extent that jiujitsu matches had lost a measure of their novel sheen by 1907.
Mitsuyo Maeda was born in Hirosaki City, Aomori Prefecture during November of 1878. By 1904 he had become a seasoned and respected judoka via intensive training at the Kodokan Institute in Tokyo.
In early 1905 he followed in the footsteps of Yoshiaki Yamashita, who had introduced Japanese unarmed combat to the United States two years earlier. Yamashita’s most celebrated student, incidentally, had been none other than President Theodore Roosevelt, who had a great enthusiasm for boxing, wrestling, singlestick fencing and other “manly pastimes”.
Maeda competed in a number of mixed-styles challenge matches in the US and even started a commercial judo school in New York City. By mid-1907, however, he had left America for London.
Although little is known about the logistics or circumstances of Maeda’s stay in England, it’s evident that he quickly joined forces with former Bartitsu Club instructor Yukio Tani and their fellow challenge wrestler Taro Miyake, who were then affiliated with the Japanese School of Ju-Jitsu.
The first record of Maeda’s activities in England comes from an article in the Cambridge Independent Press of June 14th, 1907, describing a demonstration by Maeda and Tani held in conjunction with the Cambridge University Boxing, Fencing and Jujitsu Club:
Demonstrations of the Japanese art of Ju-Jitsu formed the most fascinating items in an attractive programme, among those assisting being two of the best exponents in this country, Maida (sic) and Yukio Tani, from the Japanese School of Ju-Jitsu, in London.
With the assistance of Mr. G. T. Lemon, Clare, Maida demonstrated the art of disturbing the balance, as practised by the people in the country of the chrysanthemum, and Yukio Tani, with Mr. E. T. Busk, King’s, as a medium, illustrated methods of causing surrender by discomfort, or, in other words, of getting an opponent in such position that he cannot move without giving his rival an opportunity to inflict bodily injury.
Maida and Mr. Z. Horikiri, a Japanese Non-Collegiate student, gave an exhibition of Shobina Kata —the ancient art of disturbing the balance by fancy throws—and there were also exciting Ju-Jitsu encounters between Mr. Z. Horikiri and Mr. E. Morse, King’s ; Yukio Tani and Mr. E. A. MacNee, Clare ; and Maida and Yukio Tani. In the contests between Englishmen and Japanese, the former, although invariably the bigger men, were no match for the Japs in dexterity. The display between the two professionals was especially exhilarating, although it was explained to the company that the men were not putting forth their best endeavours, as, if they did so, they would be likely kill one another.
Two months later, the Dundee Courier offered advance notice of a Highland Gathering to be held in Market Park, Crieff. The main attraction was advertised as a “Grand Demonstration of Ju-Jitsu”, featuring:
(…) from the Japanese School, Oxford Street, London – Tarro Miyake, Champion of Japan; Yukie (sic) Tani, who has never been Defeated; Professor Maeda, Government Instructor; and Hirano, the Lightest and Cleverest Wrestler in the World.
Open Challenge to Any Wrestler in Great Britain. Military Display by a Detachment of the Scottish Horse. The Usual Athletic and Other Events. The Celebrated Kirkcaldy Trades Band will be in Attendance during the Day.
The Dundee Courier report was mostly notable for being one of the very few to spell Maeda’s name according to the modern conventions of Japanese/English transliteration.
In late January of 1908 Maeda competed in a massive international wrestling tournament held at London’s famed Alhambra music hall. By that time he had assumed the professional pseudonym “Maida Yamato”, possibly because people who had English as their first language had difficulty pronouncing his real given name.
A Sporting Life journalist commented:
Maida Yamato (Japan) is one of the favourites of the tournament. He is still “alive” in the middles and heavies, and is the most dangerous competitor in the lighter weight. Yamato has been champion of Japan in his native style, which he says is not unlike the catch-as-catch-can method. At any rate, he says a ju-jitsu wrestler can pick the English method quite easily. “I don’t like wrestling black men,” he said.
The unfortunate racial bias displayed here was not uncommon among athletes and promoters at the turn of the 20th century. Notably, when Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright was promoting his own mixed-styles wrestling contests, he had specifically welcomed all challengers, regardless of race.
In early February, Maeda offered a general challenge via Apollo’s Magazine, which was answered, as was the general custom at the time, by a counter-challenge in the pages of the Sporting Times. A Private P.W. Brocklehurst of the 1st Battalion, Cheshire Regiment, agreed to Maeda’s terms, noting that:
I will wrestle on the same conditions that (Maeda) offered Hewitt – that he forfeits £25 if he does not defeat within fifteen minutes. When will it be convenient to meet me the “Sporting Life” office to make a match?
A classified advertisement in the Sporting Life of 9 April, 1908, announced the Maeda would again be appearing on the same bill as Tani, this time in earnest competition rather than for display purposes. Tani would be challenging a boxer known as “Young Joseph” to a jiujitsu vs. pugilism contest, while Maeda would take on Alf Hewitt, the English wrestler referred to by Private Brocklehurst, in a jiujitsu match.
As it happened, it was not Hewitt but rather Jack Madden who wrestled with Maeda on Saturday April 11th, and the result of their match does not seem to have been recorded. The novelty of Tani’s contest with “Young Joseph”, however, did attract some notice from the press.
Shortly thereafter, Mitsuyo Maeda departed for Paris and then set off for Havana, then Mexico City, Cuba and finally Brazil, where his judo skills found much less jaded audiences.
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Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Tuesday, 19th September 2017
By Tony Wolf
My friend Ran Braun, who is a fight choreographer and also a prominent stage director of operas in Europe, first proposed the idea of a Bartitsu documentary in early 2009. We developed some concepts via email, but then both became busy with other projects.
In August of that year, Ran organized a three week Bartitsu and stage combat seminar tour for me in Italy. I arrived at the first venue, which was a brand new sports center in the middle of Rome, and was surprised to meet a professional film crew there along with the students.
Tony Wolf (right) demonstrates a Vigny stick fighting “guard by distance” during the Rome seminar.
An opportunity had suddenly come up, virtually while I was in transit, and Ran had contacted some cultural associations and production companies including the Digital Room, Cletarte and Broken Art. They offered the basic technical and logistical means to start producing a documentary about Bartitsu, but because it had all happened so quickly, we didn’t have a script nor even a storyboard prepared.
Ran Braun and Rocco M. Franco re-enact a private Bartitsu lesson circa 1900 in this sequence filmed at the Palazzo delle Clarisse in Amantea, Italy.
Without a script, everything was ad hoc; we started shooting sequences that we could organise in our downtime during the seminar tour, brainstorming and improvising shoots at various exotic locations. As the de facto on-camera host – which was not a role I would have chosen for myself, under normal circumstances – I remember standing on a balcony of the Palazzo delle Clarisse overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, facing the camera and beginning a monologue with the generic segue “… and so we find ourselves here …”, trusting that there would, eventually, be a script to justify the transition.
A spectacular location shoot in Amantea.
I also recall wandering through the streets of Amantea one warm evening, gazing up at the ancient castles on the hills and trying to figure out how to tie location shoots in this beautiful Italian seaside resort in to our then-scriptless documentary about an obscure Victorian English martial art. I realised that the best link was actually the Italian concept of rievocazion; the artistic revival of cultural heritage. That realisation inspired one of the major themes of the documentary.
Simultaneously, I realised that I was going to have to return to Europe in the near future, because it was clear that the nascent documentary would also have to feature location shoots in Switzerland and England.
A still from an animatic of Yukio Tani (left) throwing an English wrestler.
The next few months were a blur of activity, because at that stage we were hoping to release the documentary in late December to coincide with Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movie. I returned to the USA for about two weeks, wrote a script, bought video equipment and started organizing second-unit shoots and interviews, re-enactments, image archives, animations, etc.
The project quickly generated a lot of buzz, and many people were very generous with their time and talents. Second-unit location shoots were arranged in the UK and USA, including both martial arts demonstrations and interviews with luminaries such as speculative fiction author Neal Stephenson and mystery writer Will Thomas, both of whom were also Bartitsu enthusiasts. Ran arranged the musical score in collaboration with his colleagues, and we were also given permission to use instrumental tracks by the famed steampunk band Abney Park.
I then flew back to Europe and traveled with Ran to Meiringen in the Swiss Alps for a shoot at the famous Reichenbach Falls, where Holmes used his “baritsu” against Moriarty. I’d never driven through the Alps before – it’s a shattering, vertiginous landscape, with valleys full of massive boulders that have rolled down off the mountains.
We booked in to a Meiringen hotel late in the evening and were woken the next morning by somone in the vicinity practicing his yodeling – welcome to Switzerland! We then figured out how to get up to the Reichenbach Falls, which involves riding a terrific Victorian-era cable car a long way up one of the mountains. The falls are actually a series of cascades, with the biggest one – where Holmes grappled with Moriarty – perhaps half-way up the heavily-forested slopes.
We arrived at the cable car station, which offered a nice view, but it was at that point that we discovered that a local hydroelectric power company was channelling water from the river that feeds the falls. Apparently they regularly do this at at certain times of the year, including, unfortunately, when we were there. So, yes, it was still a large waterfall, but it was pretty far from the roaring, boiling chasm that Dr. Watson had so vividly described.
We had a long hike up, over and around the waterfall until we arrived at the “baritsu spot”, where Holmes and Moriarty (notionally) fought to the death. It’s at the end of a narrow path cut into the cliff face on the opposite side of the falls from the cable car station. Apparently the path used to extend almost within touching distance of the actual waterfall, but landslides have changed the topography over the past hundred-odd years. We shot our intro sequence there, then made our way back down the mountain into Meiringen township.
The town makes the most of its Sherlock Holmes connection – they have a great little Holmes museum and a fine bronze statue of the Great Detective. We spent the rest of the day doing pickup shots of Holmes-related Meiringen sights and scenic shots of the mountains.
The next day I flew to London to film further location shoots and interviews. The exterior shots in London were all “guerilla style”, of course, which was a great test of nerve and ingenuity. I visited the Holmes Museum in Baker Street, where an elderly actor playing Doctor Watson regaled me with an impressive in-character summary of the Final Problem plot. I wish we could have used part of that speech in the documentary.
Guerilla film-making: Tony Wolf addresses the camera in London.
We managed some quick “talking head” presentations in front of #67 Shaftesbury Avenue, where the original Bartitsu Club had been headquartered. The building now houses the Shaftesbury Best Western Hotel, but it’s much the same as it was back in Barton-Wright’s day, having been narrowly missed by a German bomb during the Second World War. Additional shoots took place at locations including the exterior of the Surbiton flat where Barton-Wright had spent his final years, and – soberingly – at Surrey’s Kingston Cemetery, where Barton-Wright was interred in an un-marked “pauper’s grave”. Sadly, because it is impossible to pinpoint exactly where an individual is buried in one of these communal plots, local ordinances do not allow memorial markers to be placed there, so instead I laid a small bouquet of white flowers at the base of a nearby tree.
Then I took a train to the Northern English village of Haltwhistle, near the Scottish border, to record some additional interviews and, during a free afternoon, navigate through a wandering herd of cattle en route to walking along a section of Hadrian’s Wall.
After I returned to the US, however, it quickly became obvious that, even given the terrific run of enthusiasm and luck that carried us through that initial production period, there was simply no way we could produce the entire documentary before Christmas. We were, however, able to develop a successful trailer for the project:
Early and mid-2010 were marked by a series of false starts and technical problems. These issues are typical of most media projects, but they were compounded by the fact that we were producing an independent multi-media documentary, staffed entirely by volunteers spread between several countries. There would be intense bursts of activity – including filming a re-enactment of a circa 1914 suffragette jiujitsu training session in Chicago – followed by long delays as DVD packages of raw footage went missing in transit, personnel left the project, etc.
During post-production my father, Michael, and wife, Kathrynne – who were both professional actors and voiceover specialists – were prevailed upon to record in-character narration for the documentary, all taken verbatim from speeches and articles written during the heyday of the Bartitsu Club. Kat provided the voice of Mary Nugent, the Edwardian-era journalist whose article “Barton-Wright and His Japanese Wrestlers” offered shrewd insight into E.W. Barton-Wright’s character. My father performed the voices of Barton-Wright, Dr. John Watson, an anonymous c1900 newspaper reporter and Captain Alfred Hutton, giving each of them different accents and delivery styles – a significant feat of vocal gymnastics!
We regained our momentum in September. In Rome, our colleagues and co-producers at Broken Art, Paolo Paparella and Angelica Pedatella, collaborated with editor Emanuele Pisasale during post-production, and there was a very great deal of communication back and forth between Italy and the USA. Meanwhile, I had arranged an art contest that produced some lovely cover art for the DVD, and a publishing deal with the Freelance Academy Press, while continuing to gather seminar footage from the US and Italy to represent the Bartitsu revival.
Co-producer/director Ran Braun checks camera angles while filming a Bartitsu stick fighting demonstration in Italy.
The documentary DVD finally launched in March of 2011. It gathered some great reviews, which were very gratifying to those of us who had been working so long and hard behind the scenes. With permission of the producers, Bartitsu: The Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes has subsequently been publicly screened at a number of libraries, Western martial arts conferences and similar events. It is available on DVD from the Freelance Academy Press.
Posted inDocumentary, Editorial, Video|Comments Off on A Memoir of the Production of “Bartitsu: The Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes”
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 23rd June 2017
By Tony Wolf
Recent History
The modern Bartitsu revival is now fifteen years old and, like all teenagers, it’s undergoing some significant changes.
Most of the original cadre of Bartitsu revivalists, dating back to circa 2002, were members of the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) movement, which coalesced out of many disparate sources including modern fencing, historical re-enactment, stage combat, Asian martial arts and various combat sports.
Communicating via the Bartitsu Forum established by author Will Thomas, they set about recreating E.W. Barton-Wright’s cross-training system in the manner of numerous other “extinct” fighting styles, from Medieval German longsword fencing to the use of the rapier and dagger, polearms, abbracciare (Italian unarmed combat), etc., which were being similarly revived at that time.
In most cases, likewise, the challenge of the reconstruction was its own justification; the object being to revive the original style, as closely as possible to the way it was originally practiced, via a combination of academic scholarship and intensive martial pressure-testing.
As such, the original Bartitsu revivalists comprised a small and relatively cohesive “fringe of a fringe” interest group, whose collaboration produced both volumes of the Bartitsu Compendium (2005/08) and established most of the characteristics of modern Bartitsu training, including the essentially “open-source” nature of the revival and the concepts of canonical and neo Bartitsu.
Individualism and diversity are inherent to Bartitsu revivalism and, therefore, attempts to “police” that revival are instantly doomed to failure. People are free to do exactly as they want to do. That understanding is why the Bartitsu Society has always been, and remains, a basically informal association of colleagues rather than a hierarchical, bureaucratic “governing body”.
In more recent years, and most especially since the explosive success of the Sherlock Holmes movies (2009/11) firmly embedded an awareness of “Victorian English martial arts” in the popular consciousness, the number of Bartitsu clubs and study groups has grown significantly and a new generation of enthusiasts has emerged.
“To create again”: recreational Bartitsu
While Bartitsu was, literally, the reality-based self-defence of its own time and place, and certainly can be undertaken purely for entertainment at pop-culture conventions and so-on, I would argue that its greatest value today is something quite different, by virtue of the many decades that have passed since its brief heyday at the turn of the 20th century. Therefore, the remainder of this essay simply advocates for a “recreational Bartitsu”.
Consider that the word “recreation” means “an activity done for enjoyment” and that it is derived from the Latin re-creare, meaning “to create again” – the latter definition being especially appropriate when applied to the activity of reviving an extinct martial art.
Although both self-defence and performance/LARP-oriented revivalisms could also be described as “recreational” in certain senses, I’m using that term to refer to a third approach; that which prioritises the notion of “art for art’s sake”. Recreational Bartitsu, therefore, is primarily geared towards recreating Barton-Wright’s original art, embracing the canonical and lineage materials as cultural artifacts of intrinsic historical value.
In other words, the primary value of the canonical material is, precisely, that it is canonical; it is our most direct link to the original cross-training system that was being developed at the Bartitsu Club circa 1901. From this perspective, modern self-defence applications are of secondary or tertiary priority, alongside demonstration of the canonical material for public display.
Further, the close and serious study of the canonical and lineage material reveals just enough of the tactical and mechanical principles behind Barton-Wright’s original system to enable practitioners to make truly educated deductions about the rest of the system. That study must include not only the Pearson’s Magazine article series, but also the panoply of supplementary sources that have been unearthed by researchers over the past fifteen years, offering crucial context to the modern revival.
Is this recreational approach any different, then, from “living history”? Does it simply result in martial arts museum pieces, beautifully preserved but lacking real utility?
No. A martial art worthy of that name must be functional, and so the aim of recreational Bartitsu is to first reassemble, and then to prove by pressure-testing, the original system on its own terms, as a method of cross-training between, specifically, c1900 boxing and kicking, the eclectic “British jiujitsu” of the Edwardian era and the Vigny style of stick fighting.
As with any martial arts reconstruction project, the aim is to get as close as possible to the original methods. Some of this reassembly is verbatim (from the canon) and some is speculative, referring to the great corpus of Bartitsu lineage materials produced by the Bartitsu Club instructors and their first generations of students, as outlined in the second volume of the Compendium.
The Japanese concept of takemusu, implying “martial creativity”, is inherent to this recreational approach. The process is collaborative and on-going. Rather than attempting to complete Barton-Wright’s abandoned work-in-progress, recreationalists are engaged in a continual state of “combat lab” experimentation.
“All-in” sparring in an identifiably “Bartitsu” style is the apex of this form of recreation. The acid test is simple – if you can fight successfully in a manner that’s closely evocative of the original method, then your recreation is good. If not, keep testing and experimenting until you can.
Posted inAntagonistics, Editorial, Video|Comments Off on Art for Art’s Sake: the Value of Recreational Bartitsu
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 12th May 2017
Aside from the curious demonstrations of “baritzu” by Australian soldierscirca 1906, E.W. Barton-Wright’s martial art may have inspired at least one other Aussie enthusiast during the early 20th century – although the latter took pains to deny any such influence.
Above: calisthenics at the Ballarat Amateur Athletic Club (1904)
Starting in May of 1902, members of the then-newly formed Ballarat Amateur Athletic Club began to perform exhibitions of a “new art of self defence” that was claimed to have been devised by the Club president, Mr. John Trekardo. During a packed and diverse athletic display that included gladiatorial tableaux and interludes of song alongside the more standard boxing, fencing and wrestling bouts, Mr. Trekardo and his assistant took the stage to demonstrate:
(…) first, “a new way to cope with a footpad” and, second, “a new art of self-defence.” In the first it was demonstrated how easily the staid citizen, who is accosted by a garrotter or rough on his way home, might by the exercise of a little ingenuity and physical force capsize his would-be assailant before the latter could attack him, while in the second part an entirely new method of stopping the rush of an assailant in the street was cleverly demonstrated.
Mr. Trekardo performed several similar displays throughout the remainder of 1902, always to extravagant praise if the newspaper reviews are to be believed. During a demonstration in August, the Trekardo system was introduced by his student Captain Olden, who claimed that:
(…) the system had been invented by Mr. Trekardo before the introduction of the Barton-Wright system in London.
Records indicate similar self-defence exhibitions in connection with the Ballarat Amateur Athletic Club’s annual displays between 1903-09. There do not, however, appear to be any records of Trekardo actually teaching the “new art”.
The last records of exhibitions of Trekardo’s system are from 1909, during which his associate, a Mr. Lazarus, remarked that Mr. Trekardo had “instituted the teaching of grips in 1899, long before the jiu-jitsu of the Japanese was spoken about here”.
It’s probably true that jiujitsu per se was not known in Australia during 1899; in fact, that word appears in Aussie newsprint for the first time in February of 1904. Granting that it’s possible that Trekardo invented his own system independently, it does, however, seem highly likely that it was inspired by, if not actually copied from, Barton-Wright’s first series of articles for Pearson’s Magazine. Those articles were published in England during March and April of 1899 and were widely available in Australia during that year.
A takedown from Barton-Wright’s second article for Pearson’s.
Notably, Barton-Wright’s articles did not refer to jiujitsu by name, but clearly do describe and illustrate Japanese unarmed combat – under the title “The New Art of Self Defence”.
It should be noted that, during this period, it was quite common for “colonial” entertainers and athletes to jump on the bandwagon of novel, popular trends originating in Europe and the United States. Vaudeville acts and so-on were regularly undertaken by performers who had no actual connection to the “real thing” but whose experience allowed them to pull off a more-or-less convincing imitation.
By 1909, of course, jiujitsu had become internationally famous, and Australians were even able to witness the art performed by an expert in earnest. The jiujitsuka Ryugoro Shima (1885-1958) had arrived in the Land Downunder during 1905, and four years later he was well-established on the wrestling challenge circuit. Possibly Mr. Trekardo took that opportunity to retire his own system; in any case, he went on to some success in local politics, serving as the mayor of Ballarat between 1937-38.
