Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 25th November 2010
An article by “S.L.B.” from “The Sketch”, April 10, 1901:
Last year, a very interesting exhibition of self defence was given at St. James’s Hall, and was the subject of prolonged discussion by many of the people present. Mr. Edward Barton-Wright, who gave the demonstration, was honoured with an invitation to repeat it before the Prince of Wales, but he met with a bicycle accident and the exhibition became impossible. It may be that the style of self-defence introduced to public notice would have failed to attract attention by reason of its novelty alone, but Mr. Barton-Wright had not mastered it without the firm intent to give it a fair chance before the public. He proceeded to found a Club at 67b, Shaftesbury Avenue, where physical culture may be studied under Professors of all nationalities, some of the best of the world’s athletes and sportsmen being engaged as instructors. To-day the work is in full swing, stimulated by the uprising of the “hooligan”.
In his early days, Mr. Barton-Wright was an engineer, and his duties took him into strange lands and among ill-disposed people. He had to go slowly, and to learn that the knowledge of boxing under the Queensberry rules, his sole accomplishment then among the arts of self-defence, is of little or no use against men who attack their opponents with feet as well as hands, from below the belt as well as above it, from the back as well as face-to-face, and with bludgeons, life-preservers, knives and other persuasive weapons. The straightforward stroke that, catching the ruffian upon the “point” or “mark”, disables him from further attempts, is of little or no good when it cannot be delivered, and in every city he visited the young engineer found more and more to learn.
Soon he was seized with the bright idea of combining the self-defence of all nations into a system that, when properly acquired, should enable a man to defy anything but firearms or a sudden stab in the dark.
The chief point to bear in mind was that an adequate system of defence must be able to meet any form of attack; the man who endeavours to disable you by kicking you in the stomach is entitled to as much respect and consideration as he who strives to garrote you, or to try the relative resisting powers of a loaded stick and your skull.
The Bartitsu Club, through its Professors, over whom Mr. Barton-Wright keeps an admonishing eye, guarantees you against all danger. 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 could kill you and twenty like you if he so desired in the interval between breakfast and lunch – but, as a matter of fact, he never does. 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, where self-defence is taken far more seriously than here. The Champion Wrestler of Osaka, or one of the shining lights among the trainers for the Tokio police, dressed in the picturesque garb of his corner of the Far East, 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. The Japanese Champions are terribly strong and powerful; at a private rehearsal of their work, given some two months ago on the Alhambra stage, I saw a little Jap. who is about five feet nothing in height and eight stone in weight, do just what he liked with a strong North of England wrestler more than six feet high, broad, muscular and confident. The little one ended by putting his opponent gently on his back, and the big one looked as if he did not know how it was done.
There is no form of grip that the Japanese jujitsu work does not meet and foil, and in Japan a policeman learns the jujitsu wrestling as part of his equipment for active service. One of the Club trainers was professionally engaged to teach the police in Japan before he came to England to serve under Mr. Barton-Wright.
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” be behind you. You are not only safe from attack, you can do just what you like with the attacking party. He is as helpless in your well-trained hands as a railway-engine in the hands of its driver. The “Hooligan” does not understand the principles on which he works; you do, and, if it pleases you to make his machinery ineffective for further assaults upon unoffending citizens, you can do so in a way that cannot be believed until it is seen. No part of South London need have terrors for you; Menilmontant, La Vilette and the shadier side of the Bois are as safe for you in Paris as the Place de l’Opera. I find myself wishing that the Bartitsu Club had been in Shaftesbury Avenue as recently as some five or six years ago, when shortly after midnight the slums of Soho would send forth ruffians at whose approach wise men sought the light.
The work of the Club makes a strong appeal to Englishmen, because they are naturally of an adventurous disposition and have a great aversion to the use of any but natural weapons of defence in the brawls that they are bound to encounter now and again. There is a keen pleasure in being able to turn the tables on a man who tries to assault us suddenly and by means that he relies upon to give him an unfair advantage. I am well assured that a few of Mr. Barton-Wright’s pupils sent into a district infested by “Hooligans” would do more to bring about law and order than a dozen casual arrests followed by committal with hard labour, with or without the “cat”. And there is an element of sport in the Bartitsu method that should appeal to any “Hooligan” with a sense of humour.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Tuesday, 23rd November 2010
Jujutsu can not escape the mania of would-be inventions and discoveries. In the formation of the various schools of defence, undoubtedly there has been much eclectic work done. Several methods of attack and defense are borrowed from various schools and then combined into one. It is probable that some schools distinguish themselves mainly by name.
(Footnote) – Barton-Wright did this, although not by Japanese, but by an Englishman’s discretion; the Shinden Fudo school (style), at which I, as well as he learned in Kobe with Terajima, he called “Bartitsu” in the United Kingdom.
The school, whose basics I learned under Terajima Kunichiro, is called Shinden Fudo Ryu, which freely translates as, “Divine School of the Unshakable Heart”.
My teacher was first taught in the art of Ju Jutsu by Yata Onseisai, in Shimagawara in Miyako (Kyoto), now almost 50 years ago. I already pointed out that Bartitsu is nothing else than Shinden Fudo Ryu.
These passages are quoted from the article “Jujutsu, de Zachte Kunst”, originally published in issue # 69 of a Dutch journal, “De Gids”, in the year 1905. The author, Herman ten Kate (1858-1931) had met E.W. Barton-Wright on a steamship between Batavia and Singapore, and both men trained at the same Shinden Fudo Ryu dojo in Kobe circa 1896. Incidentally, this was apparently not the same SFR that is today associated with the Bujinkan lineage.
Ten Kate subsequently read Barton-Wright’s “New Art of Self Defence” articles, which had been published in Pearson’s Magazine in March and April of 1899. In the introduction to his second article, Barton-Wright had written:
Readers of the March Number will remember that I described therein a few of the three hundred methods of attack and counter attack that comprise my New Art of Self-Defence, to which I have given the name – “Bartitsu.”
It’s evident from Ten Kate’s article that he had taken some umbrage at this, apparently concluding that Barton-Wright was an opportunist who had simply appropriated Shinden Fudo Ryu jiujitsu and then had the gall to re-name it after himself.
This strongly suggests that Ten Kate had not seen any of the subsequent articles written by and about Barton-Wright in the English media. Those articles clearly demonstrate that Bartitsu was, in fact, intended as an eclectic combination of several different martial arts and combat sports, including jiujitsu as well as other methods:
Bartitsu has been devised with a view to impart to peacefully disposed men the science of defending themselves against ruffians or bullies, and comprises not only boxing but also the use of the stick, feet, and a very tricky and clever style of Japanese wrestling, in which weight and strength play only a very minor part.
(“The Bartitsu Club”, article in “Black and White Budget” magazine, December 1900)
When he spoke of Bar-titsu, he therefore meant real self-defence in every form, and not in one particular branch. Under “Bar-titsu” he comprised 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 in such a way as to make it practically impossible to be hit upon the fingers. Ju-do and Ju-jitsu, which were secret styles of Japanese wrestling, he would call close-play as applied to self-defence.
(“Ju-jitsu and Ju-do” – lecture by B-W for the Japan Society of London, published in “Transactions of the Japan Society,” 1902, v. 5, pp. 261-264.)
In the hundred-odd years since Ten Kate wrote his article for De Gids, the same false conclusion has been reached by a number of jiujitsu-oriented researchers. For example, Ralph Judson’s 1958 article The Mystery of Baritsu likewise missed the significance of Bartitsu as an eclectic, cross-cultural martial art, describing it simply as “a number of selected methods of ju-jutsu, adapted to European needs and costume”.
Simultaneously, throughout the early and mid-20th century, Barton-Wright was marginalised in the introductions to books on judo, which typically credited him with having introduced Japanese martial arts to England and with having been Yukio Tani’s manager, but failed to acknowledge Bartitsu as having been more than a re-branded jiujitsu. The same misapprehension occasionally appears in current Internet forum discussions about Barton-Wright and Bartitsu.
It was not until the post-Jeet Kune Do 1990s, when Richard Bowen and then Graham Noble began to look deeper into the history, that the full significance of Bartitsu as an “Edwardian MMA” began to emerge. By devising a form of martial arts cross-training between Asian and European fighting styles, Barton-Wright had actually anticipated, by about seven decades, what is arguably the single defining characteristic of the modern international martial arts movement.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Saturday, 6th November 2010
Johannes Josefsson, Who Fights With His Feet in Ringling’s Circus, Craves Meeting With Bandits
A certain degree of timidity is excusable in almost any person, owing to the increase of thuggery and crime in this city. But there is one man in town who not only refuses to quake when in dark and dangerous byways, but who actually craves the excitement that might go with a brush with a hold-up man.
Johannes Josefsson, the Icelandic wrestling wizard, is the intrepid one, and he has thrilled or will thrill you as one of the star attractions with the combined Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden.
Josefsson thinks with his feet, and can reduce a robust athlete to a frayed-out wreck in the twinkling of an eye by mauling him with his heel and toe. He is so confident of his skill with his feet that he would meet Georges Carpentier and Jack Dempsey in the same ring and would guarantee to toss them both off without drawing a long breath.
However, neither Jack nor Georges being a “feet fighter,” this ambition of Johannes’s life will have to go unsatisfied.
To get back to the Icelander’s indifference to the lurking highwayman or his gang. One has only to see the blond giant of the North in action to realize how much out of luck a fool outlaw would be to tackle him. The glima, the native word for this form of wrestling expert would simply “pile up” his adversary with one or two dexterous kicks and then dance an old fashioned breakdown on the hapless thug’s neck.
Josefsson explained his art yesterday in his dressing room just before his exhibition.
“There is not a man in the world who can subdue a clever glima exponent,” he said, “unless he does it with glima. It is simply the art of using one’s feet and legs instead of one hands. I finish five men at every performance, and, let me tell you, their attack on me is not staged the same way every day. They are continually trying new “stunts” to get me, but it never takes more than two minutes to stop them all.”
“Have you ever met a boxer?” the Icelander was asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “I have fought many. Roche, of France, a heavyweight, was unable to stay more than eighty five seconds with me, and a Belgian heavyweight, whose name I have forgotten, was still easier.”
Josefsson is a catch-as-catch-can wrestler of no mean ability himself, and he claims a victory over one of the Zbyszko brothers at Lodz, Poland. This bout lasted forty-seven minutes and was ended by Josefsson getting a toe-hold on his opponent. But perhaps the most notable victory In his record was scored by Josefsson in a “grudge bout” with Ota Gawa, a jiu-jitsu expert, in this city in April, 1913.
Josefsson is thirty-eight years old and is the undefeated glima champion of Iceland.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Tuesday, 26th October 2010
Masculinity, Crime and Self Defence in Victorian Literature is the title of Bartitsu Society associate Emelyne Godfrey’s new book, now available for pre-publication orders via the Macmillan website, Amazon and other booksellers.
Ms. Godfrey’s previous antagonistics-related projects have included entries in Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland, the two-volume Martial Arts of the World encyclopedia set and the article Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Bartitsu for History Today magazine. She has also lectured on the subjects of crime and self defence in the Victorian era and is among the interviewees for our forthcoming documentary, Bartitsu: the Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes.
According to the publishers:
This book considers crime fighting from the seldom explored viewpoint of the civilian city-goer. While rates of violent crime were generally declining, the period from the ‘garotting’ (strangling) panics of the 1850s to the First World War was characterized by a cultural fascination with physical threat and personal protection. As masculine violence became less tolerated, literary giants such as Anthony Trollope and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began to ask themselves which methods the pedestrian should employ in this new age. From the pistol duel to the Whitechapel Murders, the self-defence scenario provided an avenue through which contrasting visions of masculinity could be explored. Here, not only literary sources but artefacts tell some bizarre stories. Why was the truncheon-like stick known as the ‘life-preserver’ so dangerous, and what exactly was Sherlock Holmes’ mysterious skill, ‘baritsu’?
The contents include:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Note on the Text and Abbreviations Introduction PART I: THE GAROTTING FARCE: ARMOURED MASCULINITY AND ITS LIMITS: 1851-1867 Foreign Crimes Hit British Shores The Ticket-Of-Leave Man Tooled Up: The Pedestrian’s Armoury PART II: ANTHONY TROLLOPE: AGGRESSION PUNISHED AND REWARDED: 1867-1887 Threats From Below And Above Lord Chiltern And Mr Kennedy Phineas Redux PART III: PHYSICAL FLAMBOYANCE IN THE SHERLOCK HOLMES CANON: 1887- 1914 Exotic Enemies Urban Knights In The London Streets Foreign Friends Bibliography Index
Congratulations to Emy Godfrey and we’re looking forward to her book, which will surely be a fascinating and informative academic excursion through the mean streets of Victorian England.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Monday, 18th October 2010
An excerpt from Lafcadio Hearn’s “Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in New Japan”, 1895.
Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. So is it with all things. . . . Firmness and strength are the concomitants of death; softness and weakness, the concomitants of life. Hence he who relies on his own strength shall not conquer.
– Tao-te-king
Kazo and Iwao, Hearn’s eldest children, at jiujitsu practice.
There is one building in the grounds of the Government College quite different in structure from the other edifices. Except that it is furnished with horizontally sliding glass windows instead of paper ones, it might be called a purely Japanese building. It is long, broad, and of one story; and it contains but a single huge room, of which the elevated floor is thickly cushioned with one hundred mats. It has a Japanese name, too, — Zuihokwan, — signifying The Hall of Our Holy Country; and the Chinese characters which form that name were painted upon the small tablet above its entrance by the hand of a Prince of the Imperial blood. Within there is no furniture; nothing but another tablet and two pictures hanging upon the wall. One of the pictures represents the famous White-Tiger Band of seventeen brave boys who voluntarily sought death for loyalty’s sake in the civil war. The other is a portrait in oil of the aged and much beloved Professor of Chinese, Akizuki of Aidzu, a noted warrior in his youth, when it required much more to make a soldier and a gentleman than it does to-day. And the tablet bears Chinese characters written by the hand of Count Katsu, which signify: Profound knowledge is the best of possessions.
But what is the knowledge taught in this huge unfurnished apartment? It is something called jiujutsu. And what is jiujutsu ?
Here I must premise that I know practically nothing of jiujutsu. One must begin to study it in early youth, and must continue the study a very long time in order to learn it even tolerably well. To become an expert requires seven years of constant practice, even presupposing natural aptitudes of an uncommon order. I can give no detailed account of jiujutsu, but merely venture some general remarks about its principle.
Jiujutsu is the old samurai art of fighting without weapons. To the uninitiated it looks like wrestling. Should you happen to enter the Zuihokwan while jiujutsu is being practiced, you would see a crowd of students watching ten or twelve lithe young comrades, barefooted and barelimbed, throwing each other about on the matting. The dead silence might seem to you very strange. No word is spoken, no sign of approbation or of amusement is given, no face even smiles. Absolute impassiveness is rigidly exacted by the rules of the school of jiujutsu. But probably only this impassibility of all, this hush of numbers, would impress you as remarkable.
A professional wrestler would observe more. He would see that those young men are very cautious about putting forth their strength, and that the grips, holds, and flings are both peculiar and risky. In spite of the care exercised, he would judge the whole performance to be dangerous play, and would be tempted, perhaps, to advise the adoption of Western “scientific” rules.
The real thing, however, — not the play, — is much more dangerous than a Western wrestler could guess at sight. The teacher there, slender and light as he seems, could probably disable an ordinary wrestler in two minutes. Jiujutsu is not an art of display at all: it is not a training for that sort of skill exhibited to public audiences; it is an art of self-defense in the most exact sense of the term; it is an art of war. The master of that art is able, in one moment, to put an untrained antagonist completely hors de combat. By some terrible legerdemain he suddenly dislocates a shoulder, unhinges a joint, bursts a tendon, or snaps a bone, — without any apparent effort. He is much more than an athlete: he is an anatomist. And he knows also touches that kill — as by lightning. But this fatal knowledge he is under oath never to communicate except under such conditions as would render its abuse almost impossible. Tradition exacts that it be given only to men of perfect self-command and of unimpeachable moral character.
The fact, however, to which I want to call attention is that the master of jiujutsu never relies upon his own strength. He scarcely uses his own strength in the greatest emergency. Then what does he use ? Simply the strength of his antagonist. The force of the enemy is the only means by which that enemy is overcome. The art of jiujutsu teaches you to rely for victory solely upon the strength of your opponent; and the greater his strength, the worse for him and the better for you. I remember that I was not a little astonished when one of the greatest teachers of jiujutsu (1) told me that he found it extremely difficult to teach a certain very strong pupil, whom I had innocently imagined to be the best in the class. On asking why, I was answered: “Because he relies upon his enormous muscular strength, and uses it.” The very name jiujutsu means to conquer by yielding.
I fear I cannot explain at all; I can only suggest. Every one knows what a “counter” in boxing means. I cannot use it for an exact simile, because the boxer who counters opposes his whole force to the impetus of the other; while a jiujutsu expert does precisely the contrary. Still there remains this resemblance between a counter in boxing and a yielding in jiujutsu, — that the suffering is in both cases due to the uncontrollable forward impetus of the man who receives it. I may venture then to say, loosely, that in jiujutsu there is a sort of counter for every twist, wrench, pull, push, or bend: only, the jiujutsu expert does not oppose such movements at all. No: he yields to them. But he does much more than yield to them. He aids them with a wicked sleight that causes the assailant to put out his own shoulder, to fracture his own arm, or, in a desperate case, even to break his own neck or back.
With even this vaguest of explanations, you will already have been able to perceive that the real wonder of jiujutsu is not in the highest possible skill of its best professor, but in the uniquely Oriental idea which the whole art expresses. What Western brain could have elaborated this strange teaching,— never to oppose force to force, but only to direct and utilize the power of attack; to overthrow the enemy solely by his own strength, — to vanquish him solely by his own effort? Surely none! The Occidental mind appears to work in straight lines; the Oriental, in wonderful curves and circles. Yet how fine a symbolism of Intelligence as a means to foil brute force! Much more than a science of defense is this jiujutsu: it is a philosophical system; it is an economical system; it is an ethical system (indeed, I had forgotten to say that a very large part of jiujutsu training is purely moral); and it is, above all, the expression of a racial genius as yet but faintly perceived by those Powers who dream of further aggrandizement in the East.
(1) Kano Jigoro. Mr. Kano contributed some years ago to the Transactions of the Asiatic Society a very interesting paper on the history of Jiujutsu.
The remainder of Hearns’ essay considers jiujitsu as a metaphor in ethical, political and other spheres.
Posted inJiujitsu|Comments Off on “To Conquer by Yielding”; Lafcadio Hearn on Jiujitsu
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 15th October 2010
In early 1902, and under circumstances that remain a historical mystery, the Bartitsu Club closed its doors for the last time. Jiujitsu went on to experience a boom lasting even through the First World War, firmly establishing the mystique of the Japanese martial arts in Western pop culture. The popularity of boxing and wrestling continued unabated. Some individuals, notably Pierre Vigny, Percy Longhurst and Jean Joseph Renaud, perpetuated and expanded upon Barton-Wright’s practice of mixing Asian and European “antagonistics”. For almost all intents and purposes, however, Bartitsu itself was forgotten throughout the 20th century.
During this period, Sherlock Holmes aficionados continued to puzzle over Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s reference to “baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling”, with which Sherlock Holmes had simultaneously saved his own life and defeated his arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty, at the brink of Reichenbach Falls. Meanwhile, E.W. Barton-Wright was occasionally referenced in the introductory paragraphs of English judo manuals – as the famous Yukio Tani’s manager. Bartitsu, when it was mentioned at all, was typically described simply as “an English version of jiujitsu”.
And so the situation remained until the mid-1950s research of Ralph Judson, whose work has recently been re-discovered by Andy Stott.
Judson had studied jiujitsu under Japanese instructors for eight years in his capacity as the Commandant of the Manchester Sub-District Physical Training and Close Combat School during the Second World War. A longtime Sherlockian, he had quizzed his Japanese colleagues about Holmes’ “baritsu”, but was consistently told that no such term existed in the Japanese language:
For a long time I tried to discover the origins of the word baritsu, and the precise methods of this form of wrestling. Somebody must have invented it, some time.
After his retirement in 1955, Judson began the task of cataloging his collection of some 6,500 books, which included a number of antique 19th century periodicals. Leafing through the contents of the seventh volume of Pearson’s Magazine, dating to 1899, he was intrigued to find a series of two articles entitled The New Art of Self Defence, by one E.W. Barton-Wright:
In the second installment (Barton-Wright) wrote, “Readers of the March number will remember that I described therein a few of the three hundred methods of attack and counter-attack that comprise the New Art of Self Defence, to which I have given the name of BARTITSU.“
(emphasis in original text).
Thrilled to have finally tracked down the origins of Holmes’ mysterious art of “Japanese wrestling”, Judson learned what he could about Barton-Wright, Tani and the Bartitsu Club and offered his ground-breaking research in the form of an article. The Mystery of Baritsu: a Sidelight Upon Sherlock Holmes’s Accomplishments was published in the Christmas 1958 edition of the Baker Street Journal.
Judson’s summary of the Bartitsu story was largely accurate, although, like many prior and subsequent writers, he apparently missed the significance of Bartitsu as an eclectic self defence art, describing it as “a number of selected methods of ju-jutsu, adapted to European needs and costume”. It’s entirely possible that Judson simply didn’t read, or failed to connect Barton-Wright’s second series of Pearson’s articles (on walking stick defence) to his first, and so did not realise that Bartitsu actually encompassed four different methods of “antagonistics”.
Shifting gears into the Sherlockian “Great Game” of pretending that Holmes and Watson had been real people, Judson pointed out that Holmes could not possibly have studied Bartitsu, because the events described in The Adventure of the Empty House took place on May 4th, 1891. Since Bartitsu was not introduced until 1899, he reasoned, Holmes must in fact have referred to jiujitsu, and Watson (writing in 1903) must have simply confused jiujitsu with the then-popular Bartitsu, further confounding future generations of scholars by misspelling the word. (1)
Ralph Judson finished his article by offering an ingenious technical explanation as to how Holmes had defeated Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. Noting that the observation path where they battled is only three feet wide, with a sheer wall of rock to one side and a sheer drop on the other, Judson suggested that:
Just before Professor Moriarty locked his grip, pinning the detective’s arms to his sides, Sherlock Holmes, having inflated to the full extent his chest and his biceps, swiftly deflated himself, and, as he said, “I slipped through his grip”. In one fast and smooth movement, dropping on one knee, he gripped with one hand Moriarty’s heel, which was closer to the abyss, and lifting the heel and with it the foot, diagonally, away from himself, he pushed hard, at the same time, with his other hand, into the groin of the captured leg, applying terrific leverage …
This caused Moriarty to lose completely his balance and gave him no time to clutch at his opponent. When Holmes let go, Moriarty “with a horrible scream, kicked madly for a few seconds and clawed the air with both his hands.”
But, for all these efforts, Moriarty could not regain his balance, and over he went – while his opponent was still crouching on the narrow path.
This is the complete picture of this unforgettable conflict – and “Baritsu” is no longer a mystery.
Ironically, though, Judson’s Mystery of Baritsu article was, itself, largely forgotten over time …
(1) A more recent theory is that the art known as baritsu was in fact founded by Holmes himself, based on his documented study of Japanese wrestling, fencing, boxing and stick fighting, and that he later gave permission to his top student, E.W. Barton-Wright, to go public with a modified version of the art.
By far the most detailed version of these events, though, is discussed here.
Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 15th October 2010
(From Womanhood Magazine, 1904)
A VERY INTERESTED GATHERING assembled at Caxton Hall, Westminster, on December 20, at the invitation of Mr. Granger, Agent General for Australia, to witness a demonstration of the Japanese School of Ju Jitsu. Mr. Granger’s talented son, whom his friends were pleased to see happily restored after a dangerous illness, explained the various points in the system, which, he said, was recognised as long ago as the fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century there was a Chinese priest who was a very great expert. Gradually the system was adopted by the Japanese Government, and is now regularly taught in the schools.
Ju Jitsu may in truth be termed the “gentle art of self-defence,” and its basis is to act upon a knowledge of the most tender spots in the human body, so that a person skilled in the art, though apparently weak, can protect himself or herself against the biggest bully that exists. In Ju Jitsu no strength must be put forth into the defence, and it is for this reason that ladies learn it more quickly than men, because men want to put strength into it, whereas women use finesse. The principle is to defeat the opponent by utilising his strength and playing upon his most vulnerable point. In Japanese school and university training the system has much the same position as established games have in England. The Japanese woman is educated in it, and it enters into the training of soldier, sailor, and policeman.
A most interesting part of the demonstration was that in which two English ladies, Mrs. Watts and Miss Roberts, took part. Mrs. Watts gave a demonstration of throws with Mr. Eida, and she and Miss Roberts also gave a demonstration of practice. The points illustrated by Mr. Miyake and Mr. Tani were various ways of falling without inconvenience, illustrations of the balance of the human body, and how to throw one’s antagonist; also what is called “the locks”— as for example, the arm lock, in which the arm of the person who attacks, however strong he be, must be broken either at the elbow or shoulder; the leg lock, where excruciating pain can be caused by pressure at a point at the bottom of the calf, or the foot may be injured; and the neck lock, in which a person becomes unconscious owing to pressure on the arteries. Mr. Granger incidentally remarked that the Japanese have no less than three ways to rapidly restore consciousness which are unknown to European medical men, but these are not made known.
Among others who took part in the demonstration were Mr. Kanaya and Mr. Uyenishi. As Mr. Granger humorously remarked, Ju Jitsu is a triumph of knowledge and skill against mere brute strength, and any lady who knows the game is more than a match for any husband who does not.
Posted inExhibitions, Jiujitsu|Comments Off on An Edwardian Jiujitsu Exposition
