Category Archives: Judo

Judo in Taiwan, 1895-1945: The Dark Side of Martial Arts Politics

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Rafu Dojo team at the Southern California Judo Tournament, April 1940. Collection of Yukio Nakamura. Source: http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2014/5/2/more-than-a-game-2

 

Dong Jhy and J. A. Mangan. 2018. “Japanese Cultural Imperialism in Taiwan: Judo as an Instrument of Colonial Conditioning.” in Mangan, Horton, Ren and Ok (eds.) Japanese Imperialism: Politics and Sport in East Asia – Rejection, Resentment and Revanchism. Palgrave Macmillian.

 

Introduction

I have been looking for comparative sources to enrich my overall understanding of China’s use of martial arts-themed public diplomacy strategies in the 20th and 21st centuries.  These other cases take a variety of forms.  Much of this material has proved to be quite interesting. I am slowly working my way through a volume on the history of table tennis, and the surprising role it assumed in Cold War era high stakes diplomacy. Indeed, it is not a coincidence that the PRC first began to send touring groups of Wushu athletes to the West during the era of “Ping Pong Diplomacy.”  It is always helpful to be able to place developments in realm of the martial arts within a larger social and political context.

Alternatively, one can conduct a comparative study by holding the martial arts constant, and looking for other instances in which they played a critical role in a diplomatic or political process.  This is actually surprisingly easy to do as many East and South East Asian countries have turned to local hand combat traditions when attempting to exercise “soft power” on the international stage.  While Chinese efforts to promote Wushu may be the most visible of these campaigns at the moment, it falls within a long tradition that began with Japanese attempts to create a positive image through the global spread of Judo, and culminated with Korea’s successful bid to globalize Taekwondo in the 1970s and 1980s.  Even minor powers such as Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia have sought to leverage their martial arts and combat sports in the promotion of both tourism and national brand building campaigns.

Still, as J. A. Manga et. al. would quickly remind us, this tendency of connecting political and athletic ambition is not unique to East Asia.  A quick survey of European literature during the 19thcentury suggests that the West’s imperial ambitions often found expression in, and were consciously cultivated through, the development of school sports and gymnastics programs.  Such endeavors could produce the sorts of healthy bodies and disciplined spirits that the era’s militaries and civil services both required.

This tendency was developed to a greater degree on the playing fields of the UK’s public schools than one might expect.  It was there that games like cricket, or the training for track and field events, came to be seen as the crucible which shaped the soul of the nation.  Given the extraordinary reach of the British Empire, this ideological and rhetorical turn would have profound effects on the development of global culture.  The UK exported not just technology and free trade, but also an entire culture of international sporting competition which has subsequently been taken up almost everywhere in the world.

In the introduction to this volume Mangan illustrates, at some length, how the questions of sporting competition and empire have never really been as separate as they might at first appear.  No power, no matter how hegemonic, can afford the economic and military cost of ruling an empire through sheer force of arms.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that such holdings often prove so costly that alternative modes of administrations are urgently needed. Perhaps the most common of these is an attempt to instill a sense of cultural desire within the colonies for the type of life that the metropole can offer.  Once the norms, education and philosophies of the center come to be desired within the peripheries, the cost of administering one’s empire drops dramatically.  When individuals in the colonies consciously style themselves as British subjects, and attempt to succeed within the economic, social and cultural frameworks that the empire has established, it suddenly becomes possible for a small island nation to rule vast portions of the globe. And the spread of games like cricket and football are an important part of this fundamental re-ordering of cultural desire at the individual level.

Nothing about this logic is exclusively tied to the British Empire.  Indeed, as they were building their influence throughout the region another island nation and would be naval empire carefully studied these strategies.  When Japan began to assemble their own co-prosperity sphere they copied many of the lessons of other colonial empires, but added their own unique twist.  In an attempt to unify their newly seized territories they too took a strong interest in athletic endeavors, promoting some activities and banning others.  And, of course, they introduce Judo and Kendo to schools throughout the region as a central aspect of their wider strategy to pacify occupied territories by spreading Japanese norms and values.

As any good social scientist can tell you, even small differences in the way that a policy is implemented can have huge effect on eventual outcomes.  Mangan’s introduction to this edited volume begins with an interesting question.  In their time both the British and Japanese imperial influence in Asia were destructive and much resented.  Likewise, the sports that both powers introduced (football and Judo) are still widely played and have now taken on distinctly national (and at times even revanchist) characteristics.  Yet while the memory of British occupation often causes consternation, it is nothing compared to fury that can be unleashed by discussions of Japanese imperialism.  Why is this?

This anger has many sources, not the least of which was flagrant human rights violations throughout the Second World War.  Yet the authors of this volume also suggest that the Japanese approach to empire building, specifically with regard to athletics and the martial arts in the pre-war period, became a source of major resentment in areas like Korea and Taiwan.  Whereas the British had attempted to use their mastery of the athletic realm to create the sort of cultural desire that lays at the heart of “soft power,” the Japanese vacillated between policies which sought to promote Judo as a means of winning “hearts and minds” in some time periods, and mandating its practice as a tool of militarism and cultural genocide (all backed by a repressive state apparatus) in others.  Or to use Joseph Nye’s paradigm, they sought to bring the athletic practices within the realm of “hard power.”  The results of this policy were mixed in some areas (Taiwan) and simply disastrous in others (Korea).  But the very different approach of the Japanese to the question of promoting martial practice abroad, compared to either the British in the 19thcentury, or attempts to establish Wushu as a universal Olympic sport today, suggests all of this might make for a compelling comparative case.

 

Rifles and bayonets for a school military drill class behind two Judo students. Vintage Japanese postcard, late 1930s. Source: Author’s personal collection.

 

Bringing Judo to Taiwan

Any number of chapters in this edited volume have interesting things to say on this topic.  But for the sake of brevity I would like to narrow the focus of my discussion to the political uses of Judo in the occupation of Taiwan between 1895 and 1945.  Dong Jhy and J. A. Mangan provide what is the most extensive discussion of this topic that I have yet seen in a paper titled “Japanese Cultural Imperialism in Taiwan: Judo as an Instrument of Colonial Conditioning.” By way of quick introduction, I would like to recommend it to anyone who is interested in the complex relationships between the martial arts and imperialism, or even the formation of political identities through martial practice. This brief chapter provides a focused overview of Japan’s problematic introduction of Judo into Taiwan, and the role of martial artists in furthering the process of both colonization and modernization. Indeed, this discussion will quickly disabuse readers of the notion that all outcomes of martial practice are positive, or that these practices are somehow apolitical by nature.

After its 1894 defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War the Qing Government was forced to secede the island of Taiwan to the increasingly powerful Japanese state.  As the authors of the article make clear, Judo arrived soon after the formal handover in 1895. Of course, that same year saw the creation of the Dai Nippon Butokukai in Japan.  This organization, dedicated to the promotion of the Japanese martial arts in service of the state and the Royal family, would forge a close relationship with the state’s Interior Ministry and police forces.  These same officers would play a critical role in seeding the practice of Judo (as well as Kendo) in Korea when they were transferred there as part of the colonial government.

Indeed, by 1900 the Butokukai would begin to open its own branches in Taiwan.  Much as in Japan, local officials and police officers took the lead in raising funds to construct regional training centers.  These buildings became the locations for instruction and tournaments, all of which served to extend Japan’s cultural influence in the region.  Just as importantly, they would eventually facilitate martial arts themed “good will” travel and exchanges between Taiwan and Japan.

Educational reform was one of the first major projects undertaken by the new colonial government and in 1898 they went about regulating the sorts of physical education that Taiwanese children should receive.  In addition to promoting public health the new “gymnasium” classes were designed to both introduce children to a variety of “Japanized” sports as well as to inculcate them with the proper patriotic values.  Mandated activities included marching with Japanese flags, singing Japanese songs, learning the Japanese national anthem and developing “Japanese” norms such as team spirit and discipline.

Still, a careful reading of the author’s timeline suggests that in this earliest period most Judo practice occurred on a purely voluntary basis with local police officers (who were required to practice as part of their professional certification) acting as instructors.  They note that in this initial phase of practice the introduction of the martial arts were seen mostly as a tool to build a common community and “win hearts and minds.”  In that sense the political theory of martial practice remained within the realm of soft power.

While Taiwan was one of the Japan’s longest held territories, and its programs for subjugating the people would ultimately have some success, the colonial government suffered several violent early attacks.  Following a number of uprisings in 1915 the Japanese government responded by increasing its policy of promoting Judo classes as a form of “recreational distraction.”  But again, at this early point almost all of the instructors remained either Japanese police officers or guest teachers from Japan. Because of the long length of time needed to establish strong schools and to train competitive athletes, many of the “Taiwanese” competitors who appeared in Japanese contests during this period were actually Japanese police officers stationed on the Island.  That pattern would quickly begin to change as the practice grew more firmly established.

Between 1918 and 1920 (and largely in response to the spread of the Wilsonian ideal of the self-determination after WWI) the Japanese government in Taiwan adopted the policy of “gradualism and separatism.” This would have a major impact on how the martial arts were practiced.  In essence, the occupying Japanese force decided that the best way to head off localized calls for “self-determination” was to rapidly accelerate the trends towards cultural assimilation that had already been established in their social and educational policies.  Both individuals and groups were pressured to see themselves exclusively as Japanese subjects, and those who resisted came under increasing sanction.  For the Taiwanese middle class, the practice of Judo quickly became a sign of the acceptance of this Japanese cultural identity and an important means to get ahead in (Japanese controlled) local society. Judo was seen by the government as a tool by which the Taiwanese population could be transformed into an essential (if forever unequal) aspect of the Japanese body politic.

The formal advent of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 caused another revaluation of Japan’s martial arts policy in the region.  Whereas prior policies had vacillated between attempts to regulate activity, and the more traditional use the martial arts as a way of building an internalized desire for Japanese identity, the die was now cast.  For the remainder of its occupation the colonial government would seek only to advance the “Japanization Movement.”

As the need for military recruits and tax revenues grew, the colonial government sought to legislate a highly restrictive vision of cultural assimilation.  The use of the Chinese written language, the study of Chinese history or literature and the wearing of Chinese dress were all prohibited.  Chinese religious temples and festivals were banned.  In their place the government instituted a new brand of State Shinto.  Meanwhile Chinese customs were to be replaced with Japanese modes of dress, membership in imperial organization and even the forced adaptation of the Japanese language.  In essence the goal of these programs was to extinguish the indigenous content of Taiwanese identity, replacing it politically docile (yet physically very fit) Japanese subjects.

Once again, the Japanese martial arts were called upon to play a critical role in this national reeducation program.  Training in both Kendo and Judo became mandatory for all male students with the goal of instilling the “Bushido spirit.”  This would be critical as large numbers of Taiwanese citizens would soon find themselves serving in the Imperial military.  Indeed, the authors suggest that an awareness of shared rituals of martial practice was critical to the process of instilling a shared sense of “Japanese identity” not just at home, but within the colonies as well.

Imported martial practices may play an especially insidious role within a colonial context. According to the authors, Frantz Fanon noted that individuals often internalize a unique sense of self-hatred which causes them to seek to shed those aspects of themselves (from skin color, to lifestyle, culture and mode of education) that mark them as colonial subjects.  While Joseph Nye never seems to have considered this issue, we can actually understand Fanon’s self-loathing as the very real negative aspect of the cultural desire for the other that defines soft power.

I am not convinced that in the long-run the abuse of soft power is any more humane than its military or economic cousins. As Fanon notes, once the colonizer disappears this cultural inferiority complex can remain and maintain the institutions of hegemony long after one would have assumed that they should have collapsed (also see Robert Keohane,After Hegemony).  The martial arts come into this story as these are systems that can be mastered by “outsiders”.  They can thus be seen as confering a sort of honorary status on their practitioners, in this case signaling the perfection of one set of desired traits (the Budo values). And by offering this possibility of individual escape and redemption, the martial arts as a tool of colonial subjugation become ever more engrained within local society.

It is important to remember that long after the Japanese were forced to withdraw from the region, their martial arts remain.  Judo is still quite popular in Taiwan.  And Korea is probably the only country in the world capable of routinely fielding Kendo teams that can match the Japanese.  In their current forms these arts have been (once again) reimagined and reconfigured.  What was once a tool of national oppression is now understood as an aspect of a more positive national pride.  Yet as the authors note, when Taiwanese and Japanese (or Korean and Japanese) martial artists meet, the sudden eruption of revanchist emotions suggest just how deep the scars of imperialism run, and the degree to which these arts were implicated in the construction and maintenance of Japan’s short-lived empire.

 

Judo at Ina Middle School. Vintage postcard circa late 1930s. Source: Author’s personal collection.

 

Conclusion

No chapter, especially one as brief as this, is without its limitations.  Given the importance of the subject matter one wishes that Dong Jhy and J. A. Mangan would have been able to bring more primary source material into their discussion. For instance, I liked the comparison of overwrought writing on school sports, produced in the UK during leadup to WWI, contrasted with the equally romantic verses on the nobility of military self-sacrifice, which pepper Mangan’s introduction to this volume.  Those quotes and sources really grounded the larger theoretical argument in a specific time and place.

Sadly, similarly specific sources tend to be missing from the later discussion of the Taiwanese case.  In Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan, Denis Gainty drew on a wide range of statements by political leaders, reports in the local press, and articles in various martial arts publications to illustrate the ways in which martial artists used their agency (and practice) to gain influence in Meiji Japan.  It would have been nice to see similar statements from martial arts societies or colonial leaders who seemed to be carrying out similar (though not identical) policies in Taiwan.  The authors provide what appears to be a very credible reading of the historical record. Yet without more specific statements grounding all of this within the lives or careers of specific martial artists, it is difficult to know how much weight their reconstruction can really bear.  I fully expect this sort of material is out there.  The Butokukai seems to have liked nothing so much as a good newsletter and seeing its events reported in local newspaper.  But bringing it to the fore may be helpful.

Doing so might also shed light on one of the critical questions to arise out of Gainty’s work.  It is one thing to observe the vast sweep of a historical process.  That is basically what the authors have given us with their history of Judo in Taiwan.  And it is certainly important to see the ways that global trends (such as the spread of Wilson’s self-determination in 1918-1920) have shaped events.  Yet where did the actual causal variable lay?  How much of this outcome was really due to the structural considerations of colonial management, or global politics? Alternatively, what role did the agency of Japanese martial arts instructors, and later their Taiwanese disciples, play in promoting and maintaining these colonial systems?

Perhaps that would be a difficult subject to open up.  It is clear that the Japanese martial arts had a very mixed legacy in Taiwan during the first half of the 20thcentury, and it is impossible to discuss agency without also touching on the concept of individual and institutional accountability.  Yet if we really want to understand how the martial arts functioned within various political contexts (some innocuous and others more sinister) I don’t think we can afford to ignore this more granular level of investigation.  After all, many individuals gravitate toward the martial arts precisely because they seek a sense of personal empowerment.  Political studies of the Japanese martial arts, such as the one provided here, as well as Gainty’s prior volume, suggest that this aspiration may not have been entirely misplaced.  As such questions remain as to whether these practices will embolden or reign-in our worst impulses.  One would hope for the later, but the historical record suggests that there are no guarantees.

 

oOo

If you enjoyed this post you might also want to read: Butterfly Swords and Long Poles: A Glimpse into Singapore’s 19th Century Martial Landscape

oOo

Research Notes: Judo’s Triple Transformation in The China Press (1932)

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“London Sees Thrills Of Japanese Sport.” A self-defense demonstration by a female martial artist, choreographed to as to be humorous for the audience. Vintage Newsreel. 1932.

 

Doing the Homework

Students of Martial Arts Studies are the fortunate few.  As research areas go, ours is pretty interesting. Yet as I review the literature (even recent publications from big name academic presses), it is clear that many of us are not making the most of our good fortune.  There seems to be a tendency to approach the literature in narrow slices and not to look for the sorts of insights that are frequently turned up in broader, more comparative, explorations.  The pie can be sliced in a variety of ways. Students of Japanese martial studies rarely deal with concepts and theories laid out in works on the Chinese styles. The literatures on combat sports and traditional arts often seem to run on parallel tracks.  And there is always room for a more substantive engagement between the theoretical and historical wings of the literature.

So here is my pre-Thanksgiving public service announcement: When offered pie, always eat more than one slice. Bringing multiple lens to an investigation leads to more insightful conclusions.  Beyond that, it makes the process of doing research richer and more intellectually fulfilling.

Still, we all have blind spots. As I was reviewing folders of research materials, it occurred to me that I may have created the mistaken impression that the English language treaty port newspapers in cities like Shanghai or Beijing only discussed Chinese fighting systems.  Over the last few years we have examined dozens of articles in which Chinese hand combat systems were presented to a global audience during the 1920s and 1930s. Doing so is helpful as it problematizes the often-heard trope that the Chinese martial arts were unknown to Westerners prior to the 1960s, or that everything about these arts has been shrouded in impenetrable secrecy. In fact, both KMT officers and private instructors worked (with mixed success) to publicize China’s reformed and modernized physical culture as a way of demonstrating to the world the reformed and modernized nature of the Chinese state.

Focusing on these conversations has been valuable.  Yet it must be remembered that all of this was only one aspect of a much larger exploration of the martial arts and combat sports which one could find in these same newspapers. While it is easy to focus only on the guoshu or taijiquan articles, in truth these pieces need to be read in conjunction with the frequent discussions of the Japanese martial arts, accounts of vaudeville style strongmen acts, and articles on western style boxing events which also appeared in the same pages.  It is all too easy to inadvertently create a siloed vision of cultural history in which boxing, kung fu and judo all existed in their own isolated spheres.  In truth they all competed for exposure within the pages of China’s treaty port press.

In an effort to correct this bias I would like to introduce one of the more interesting Republic era articles on the Japanese martial arts that I have come across. Judo is frequently mentioned in these pieces.  We can even find several glowing accounts of judo exhibitions in Shanghai in this era. Likewise, Chinese martial arts reformers often turned to judo as a symbolic foil for their rivalry with Japan. The following article, on the other hand, is interesting as the Japanese origins of judo have been almost totally erased.  Indeed, the Western appropriation of judo as a means of self-defense is so complete that the Japanese are barely mentioned, while cities like New York and Paris are looked to as centers of martial excellence.

Nor is this the only transformation which readers will detect.  While Kano Jigoro opened his practice to women fairly early, the vast majority of Japanese judo students in the 1930s were men.  Indeed, these were men often bound for service in the Japanese military. They had well developed ideas about cultivating a certain sort of masculinity which would be placed in the service of the state.  In contrast, the current article goes to great lengths to present judo as an exclusively female practice. More specifically, it was framed as a tool of urban self-defense and a bulwark against a new “masher” panic. The dojo as a training space, white uniforms, colored belts and other aspects of Kano’s now globally famous practice are totally missing from this discussion. Instead we find a slightly updated take on the pre-war American usage of “jiu-jitsu” to basically signify “dirty fighting.”

All of this is even more interesting as one suspects that these were not errors emerging from ignorance. By the early 1930s judo was a well-established practice in the West.  It had been featured in newsreels, books and extensively debated in the sporting press. Just to give us the proper perspective, the current article “introducing” judo was written more than 30 years after Theodore Roosevelt had famously promoted the same practice from his residence in the White House. Well educated Chinese and Western readers living in Shanghai (The China Press’core audience) had ample opportunities to see Japanese demonstration teams as they visited the city on a regular basis. Indeed, the Japanese invasions of Manchuria (1931) and Shanghai (1932) had sparked renewed public debate as to the role of physical education in a state’s battlefield success.

I suspect that this article never dropped Kano’s name, or mentioned black belts, as there was simply no need. All of that was already part of the public consciousness during the 1930s.  It instead focused on the topic of women’s self-defense as that was both timely (note the repeated references to Vivian Gordon’s murder in New York City), and front-page images of petite women throwing men around like rag dolls was sure to sell papers.

It is important to take note of a few other topics that are missing from this article as well.  To begin with, The China Presswas a pro-KMT newspaper with a liberal editorial line.  It ran more (glowing) stories about the guoshu, and China’s martial practices more generally, than any other Republican era paper that I have studied.  Its editors never missed an opportunity to note that China was the true home of jiu jitsu, or to publicize the latest Jingwu demonstration.  It is thus remarkable that there is no mention of the Chinese martial arts anywhere in this piece.

While the photographs and writing style suggests that this may have originally been a newswire article intended for an American audience, I doubt that this is the entire story.  Given the levels of outrage directed at the Japanese in 1931 and 1932, it probably would have been impossible to run an article that lauded any practice with Japanese roots in such a “patriotic” paper. Yet by completely erasing Japanese culture and martial values from the discussion of judo, effectively transforming the art into a primarily female, and Western practice, the editors may have gotten the best of all possible worlds.  On the one hand they could run a sensational front-page article that would sell lots of papers.  At the same time, they could appropriate an important marker of Japanese masculinity and militarism, presenting it as a cosmopolitan and almost exclusively feminine practice. One can only guess how thrilled the Japanese military officers and government staff in Shanghai were to see this treatment of their national art.

Still, this was by no means a negative portrayal of the art.  One of the things that struck me as I read this piece was the extensive “how to” section at the end.  Such discussions are so common in Western martial arts conversations that they are easy to dismiss. Yet they were quite rare in the pages of China’s English language treaty port press.

While these papers ran hundreds of articles on the Chinese martial arts, I don’t think I have once seen them undertake a detailed discussion about a specific Chinese technique. Instead demonstrations or systems were discussed in general terms for the edification of the reader, but not their education. While there was some training of foreign students in martial arts classes in China in the 1930s, buy in large this didn’t seem to be something that many people (either Western or Chinese) were interested in. Yet this article clearly suggests that judo is something Western women can (and should) learn.  That seems to be a frank admission that while Chu Minyi and other reformers had hoped to make the Chinese martial arts a modern and cosmopolitan practice, it was Japan that had actually succeeded. Nevertheless, we as readers are left to ask if the following vision of judo remains in any way Japanese?

 

 

Here’s “Judo”, the Newest Art of Self-Defense Against Mashers

The China Press, Feb, 3 1932. Page A1

 

Curious Details of the Smashing Surpise Receptions American and English Girls are Planning for “Catch-as-Catch-Can” Masculine Admirers.

 

“Wreck the necker!”

This warlike cry has gone up on both sides of the Atlantic since judo, an improved version of Jiu Jitsu, was perfected recently. Jiu Jitsu has always been primarily a man’s sport but judo is for women only. It enables the frailest flower of femininity to throw and knock out a burly assailant with ease and dispatch.

Women’s judo clubs are being formed in New York and other American cities.  In England enthusiastic feminine exponents of the method of self-defense against the Mashers have formed a team that is touring France, Germany and other European countries, giving exhibitions of this tricky and fascinating new art of self-defense.

Slight pressure of the fingers applied at the right moment, combined with sudden twists of the body by a judo expert, often results in broken limbs for the assailant.  There is no question that if judo’s popularity continues to increase at its present rate the obnoxious masher species may soon entirely disappear. Certainly nothing yet devised discourages the male flirt so quickly as a dislocated arm, or a broken head followed by several months in a jail or hospital.

Any close student of the subject will tell you how easily not only serious injury, but death, may come to the unwary roughneck who chooses to inflict his unwanted attentions upon a girl schooled in the far from gentle craft of judo.  A single lightening quick arm thrust from a girl who “knows her stuff” is sufficient in most cases to discourage any masher.  The young lady trained in Judo tactics may be outweighed by a hundred pounds and look as defenseless as a fawn but when she goes into action Mt. Necker had better run.

A famous Japanese wrestling champion once said that homicide committed by jiu jitsu provides “a lovely death, no pains from bullets, knives or violence, You just fade out in a pleasant dream—and don’t know that perhaps you will never wake again.”  The newly-perfected science of judo is equally effective in producing lethal effects although the physical instructors who teach it are careful to exclude the death dealing holds from their curriculum.

Unlike most forms of combat, judo’s effectiveness depends ironically enough on the strength and intensity of attack of one’s opponent.  The more powerful he is and or furiously he falls upon his intended victim, the more serious his injuries are going to be.

Certainly no more astonishing surprise could be imagined. Instead of screaming and shrieking the young woman who knows judo outdoes the masher at his own game.  With a minimum of effort, she can throw the strongest “he-man,” laugh at his efforts to embrace her and continue on her way, unmolested and at her leisure.

The underlying principal of this science is balance.  In judo it is vastly more important to control perfectly one’s posture than to have building muscles and enormous energy.  Japanese physical culturalists tell us that a “man without balance has no strength.”  This is particularly true in jiu jitsu and judo.  The very first thing the beginner learns is to change an opponent’s posture while maintaining her own. This is done by maneuvering him to his heels and toes, which enables one to throw him with little exertion.

As a typical example of the judo science, let us take a girl weighing about 110 pounds and say a husky 190 pound man has seized her throat in both hands. Now the ordinary young woman, unschooled in judo, would naturally concentrate her efforts on attempts to tear his hands from her throat.  The judo adept, however, would waste no time and strength on such a futile task.

Her technique, though simple, would be amazingly effective. Her first move would be to take a short step backwards with her left foot.  This will bring the attacker’s balance to his toes, naturally weakening his equilibrium.

Next, she would quickly swing her right arm sharply across his left arm, pivoting her right toe and bringing her right shoulder forward.  Her arm would pass close to her face until her right shoulder touches her chin.  In that position she would exert irresistible leverage on the man’s wrist with her shoulder.  This will break any grip, no matter how powerful, with the result that her assailant must fall slightly forward with face unguarded, leaving him a ready target for an elbow jolt to the face or a paralyzing cut on the back of the head.

If Vivian Gordon, the New York girl who was strangled to death in a taxi cab some time ago, had known such elementary judo moves she might have outwitted her slayer and escaped a gruesome fate.

The larger picture in the upper right half of the page shows a young woman swinging a husky male over her hip.  The uninformed may well ask how this slight girl could carry a powerful man off his feet and throw him to the ground.

The answer is judo and a perfect sense of timing and balance.  You will notice that the girl in the photograph is bending forward.  The man had come up behind her and seized her by the throat.  But she shot her head and shoulders sharply forward, throwing his weight on his toes and off balance.  Seizing his shoulders, she adroitly rolled him over her hips.  The picture was snapped just as she was about to throw him to the ground.

Perhaps you have seen one acrobat on the stage holding three or four partners on his shoulders.  Ordinary men cannot do this, of course, because they have not studied the science of balance and timing.  The acrobat has learned to distribute the weight of his companions evenly, to assume a posture that enables him to lift and hold an enormous number of pounds and to time his efforts so that his powers are never overtaxed. Strength is vital, but alone it is not enough.  Until he has mastered these twin sciences his efforts at great weight-lifting will fail.

The same holds true of the judo students.  The two photographs in the half center of this page demonstrate the ease with which a judo expert can disarm and knock down a stick-wielding assailant.  In one picture you see her catching his arm just above the elbow.  Her judo instructors have taught her that holding an arm above the shoulder greatly weakens the arm’s powers of resistance.  Placing her knee behind his right leg she pushes his arm backwards until he is off balance.  With this accomplished, she finds sending him backwards over her extended knee is child’s play.

Another photo on this page illustrates another effective judo maneuver that can be used when the assailant comes up behind his intended victim and seizes her by the throat.  Instead of trying to wriggle from his strong grip, the girl merely grasps his elbows and bends quickly forward, catapulting him over her head and shoulders.  This is called the shoulder throw.

Brutal attackers often use the chancery hold, which consists of encircling the victim’s neck with one arm and battering her face with the other fist.  Judo teaches girls how to break easily this painful hold.  If the assailant has gripped her neck in his left arm and strikes her face with his right fist, she reaches quickly up his back and over his right shoulder with her right hand and places the inner edge of her finger under his nose, where there is an extraordinarily sensitive nerve center.  Pressing on this diagonally towards the back of the head will quickly cause the fellow to release his grip.

The next move is to extend the pressure backwards and downwards.  If at the same time the girl grips him under the knee, raising him upward and forward, the gentleman will soon be spilled upon the ground with much violence.

The photograph depicting the young woman jamming the heel of her hand against the man’s chin demonstrates the perfect counter offensive against the mashers who sieze women about the waist.  You can be sure when the roughneck caress is returned in this manner the likelihood of a repetition of the Casanova tactics is very small.

Possibly the most spectacular of the group of extraordinary photographs is the one which portrays the young woman lying on the ground and kicking her surprised assailant in the stomach.  In this case the girl has fallen backwards to the ground, pulling the man into a flying fall.  As she fell, she drew up her foot and, on reaching the ground, she sent him sprawling over her head with a powerful and well-directed kick to his abdomen.

This startling defense should only be employed by experts who have been adequately instructed in the science of relaxing. Like football coaches, the teachers of this new art and fascinating study teach their students to go limp when falling.  A limp body does not strike the ground with half the violence that a stiff one does.

When Benny Leonard was the world’s Lightweight Boxing Champion he often attributed much of his extraordinary punching powers to his knowledge of anatomy.  He exactly knew what spot to hit and consequently opponents crumpled up before what seemed likely fairly light punches.  A knowledge of anatomy is even more necessary to girl judo experts than it is to boxers.

The new judo vogue began by a woman who saw in it a chance to reduce the ever-growing number of fatalities and injuries suffered by girls attacked in lonely sections of towns and cities.  Certainly it equips young women with an excellent defense against the cave-man tactics of roughneck admirers.

 

oOo

If you enjoyed this article you might also want to read: Addiction, Wellness and Martial Arts

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Seeking Identity with a T-Shirt: Uniforms in the Martial Arts

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A vintage photo captioned “Acrobatic School, Hong Kong” in pencil. Note the simple matching shirts and hats. Source: Author’s personal collection.

 

The Varieties of Uniformity

 

My Monday evening study-group just passes a milestone. Somehow it never even occurred to me that this was on the horizon, though I was the one who (inadvertently) set things in motion.  An acquaintance organizes a local street festival and she generously offered to give our group booth space and some time for small demonstrations. I accepted her offer and, as I was starting to pull things together, decided that we could really use some T-shirts. Nothing all that formal, just enough to let people know who we were.

Many martial arts communities have standardized, highly “traditional,” uniforms. The elements of the Chinese martial arts world that I spend most of my time with do not. The Wing Chun school where I did most of my training even managed to resist the social pressure to adopt a system of colored belts or sashes. The only formal ranks we have are student, assistant instructor and Sifu.  Likewise, we all trained in T-shirts and jogging pants.  Some people wore shirts with the school’s logo, often the mementos of a previous seminar or summer-camp.  The more vintage such a shirt was the more respect it commanded. But most people just wore random athletic clothing. Matching T-shirts were generally reserved for some sort of public event.

So, with a public event of my own on the horizon, it seemed high-time to order a bunch of shirts for my training group here in New York. That announcement unleashed a fair amount of enthusiasm and my students have spent the last few weeks designing images, selecting colors and comparison shopping for price quotes.  These shirts have taken on a much more complex set of meanings than simply being a way to signal who we are in a crowd.  In a way its all very predictable. Everyone in this group has been working hard for months, and the class is developing into a tight knit community. I suspect that all of this emotional energy has been invested into the process of buying these shirts.  I hope they end up looking great as they now have a lot to live up to!

All of this got me thinking about the role of uniforms in the martial arts, and the differences that we see between styles and communities. Why is the training gear in some arts more formalized than others?  What are they attempting to signal, and to who?  Where did our notions of the “proper” martial arts uniform come from, and why does it change over time?

I suspect that pretty much everyone who practices martial arts wears a uniform, even if they are not aware of it. This does not mean that all uniforms have the same meaning, or that they come from the same place. Indeed, there is a huge amount of variation in the social construction of training clothing. While my Sifu’s school never had any sort of rules about training clothing, it was clear that a well-understood informal dress-code was in effect.  Everyone wore nearly identical darkly colored T-shirts and jogging pants.  Nor are they alone in this. As I have gone to various seminars and visited multiple schools, that same unspoken dress code seems to have spread quite widely throughout the Wing Chun community.  From a sociological standpoint such a widely shared “uniform” is quite interesting, even if few of these communities would admit to having a “dress code.”

Still, it is the differences in the ways that schools approach this aspect of material culture that is truly revealing.  To simplify what is a complex topic, one might think of any uniform as occupying a distinct place within a theoretical cube defined by three axis.  The vertical axis might represent the question of centralization.  Is your uniform defined and enforced by a central authority (high), or is it more a matter of group culture (low)?

The front axis can be thought of representing a uniform’s symbolic vs. functional attributes. Victor Turner noted that most material artifacts have both a practical and symbolic value.  Both are always present, but possibly not in the same degree. The stylized helmets worn in Kendo suggest a high degree of practicality, whereas the stripes of colored tape that adorn the Taekwondo belts of my many nieces and nephews would seem to function only as motivational tools.

The back axis of our graph might be thought of as measuring the degree of individual expression that one sees in a uniform. They function as markers of community identity precisely because of their ability to make everyone appear “uniform.”  And yet they must also express more individual characteristics, such as one’s rank or position in a community. On one end of the spectrum these markers may be kept to an absolute minimum (perhaps just a belt color). On the other side of the spectrum we might find the highly personalized armor favored by various HEMA fighters, or the explosion of patches on some Kempo uniforms.  One might also think of this axis as a measure of the degree to which consumer power can be used to personalize one’s image within the fighting community.

Any of these uniforms can tell us, at a glance, where someone stands within the larger martial arts community. Kendo players do not look like silat students, and they all appear quite different from the guys who gather for “open mat night” at the local BJJ school.  Yet I suspect that if we think about these uniforms in terms of the three axis of analysis outlined above, we might come up with some unexpected hypothesis about the differing social needs and functions that each of these communities fulfills, based on the sorts of material culture they exhibit. Alternatively, we might take a single school and think about how its uniform conventions have changed over time as a way of understanding that style’s unique historical evolution.

 

 

Rafu Dojo team at the Southern California Judo Tournament, April 1940. Collection of Yukio Nakamura. This photo was probably taken in the same decade as the one above. Source: http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2014/5/2/more-than-a-game-2

 

 

The Japanese and Chinese Cases

 

Perhaps there is no more striking example of this possibility than to consider the large archive of vintage photographs that I have collected on this blog over the years. A thought occurred to me as I looked over the various newspaper photographs, tourist pictures and postcards that I have posted.  About half of these images show Chinese martial artists, and most of the rest focus on Japanese subjects. Yet instances of easily identifiable uniforms are not equally distributed across these two groups.

Looking at just my collection of vintage (pre-WWII) postcards I noted only one example where civilian Chinese martial artists could be seen wearing a martial arts training uniform. And even in that instance the significance of their clothing was probably lost on Western viewers as not everyone in the picture was wearing exactly the same thing.  The only time that Chinese martial artists were reliably uniformed seemed to be when they were lion dancing or otherwise part of a public festival.  On the flip side, every single postcard of Japanese martial artists featured crisp white training uniforms, or matching rows of kendo gear.

Without a sufficient background in the social and cultural history of both countries, one might well misinterpret what was going on in these photographs, or extrapolate too much from them.  For instance, one might look at these two sets of images and erroneously conclude that the uniforms tell a story about modernism, in either its economic, cultural or national sense. In that case the prominence of standardized uniforms within the Japanese martial arts might be taken as a sign of the country’s successfully modernization and the victory of nationalism over regional identity.  Likewise, their absence in the Chinese case could indicate a certain “failure to launch.”  Indeed, it seems likely that this was exactly the message that many Westerners absorbed when they encountered these images in the early and mid 20thcentury. But was it really the case?

Let us begin by considering developments in Japan.  While many martial arts historians have written on the appearance of colored belts (first in judo, then in karate and other arts), I would like to instead turn our attention to the development of the ubiquitous training gi that they adorned.  The samurai did not train in these garments, so where did they come from?

As is the case with so much else in the modern martial arts, they sprung from the fertile mind of Kano Jigoro. Lance Gatling, a student of Japanese martial arts history with an interest in the history of uniforms, notes that in the 19thcentury Kano drew his students from two vastly different backgrounds. Naturally these sociological cohorts dressed quite differently.  Those coming from wealthy and socially elite households wore the latest fashions.  His less privileged students, who often lived with him and acted as houseboys in exchange for tuition, lacked hygienic and functional training clothing of any kind.  Calling on his background as an educator, it was clear to Kano that some sort of uniform was needed for both practical and symbolic reasons (Gatling, The Kano Chronicles).

 

 

 

Gatling notes that Kano adapted the hada juban, an inner-tunic worn underneath the kimono, for use as a training garment.  This was done by commissioning examples made from heavier fabrics that could withstand judo’s jacketed throws.  Later the garment was expanded to cover the knees and elbows to prevent abrasions or injuries on the rough training mats of the day. Simple belts were worn to keep the jacket in place.  Of course Kano later introduced a simplified system of symbolically colored belts when his classes became large enough that he could not easily visually locate his senior students.

All of this set a pattern that still conditions much of the public’s imagination as to how a proper martial art should appear.  For instance, when karate was introduced to mainland Japan from Okinawa, judo style uniforms were introduced to improve the arts’ public image and bolster its claims to social respectability.  And while colored belts are in no way traditional to the Chinese martial arts, it seems that most kung fu schools today have some sort of colored sash system simply to placate the demands of consumers.

Kano’s many marital arts reforms did not come about in a vacuum.  Japan was a rapidly modernizing and industrializing nation. He actively sought to create a corps of patriotic young men who could advance the Japanese cause at home or abroad, in military service or civil society.  Thus, the creation of truly uniform training gear, recognizable in any dojo one might enter, had important symbolic meanings.  This was an outward sign of the creation of an inwardly powerful and cohesive national consciousness.  To wear a gi and participate in judo training was to experience Kano’s vision of the modern Japan nation on an embodied level.

This contrasts with the situation in China.  Perhaps the most traditional form of training attire seen in that country’s many hand copied martial arts manuals (and a number of European postcards), was simply to strip to the waist, wrap one’s que around the head or neck, and get to work at a dusty or muddy outdoor “boxing ground.” Such attire was practical, yet it signaled little about the relationship between the martial arts and the community at large.  In other cases Qing era boxers can be seen performing in markets wearing generic heavily padded jackets to ward off the cold.  If Japan signaled its modernism and nationalism through its uniforms, one might conclude that China’s backward and politically fractured status also came out in its lack of standardized training attire.  That is probably why later Republican groups, like the Jingwu Association, went to such great lengths to create signature uniforms of their own (in their case the white buttoned jacket with the Jingwu logo).

While an attractive narrative, I think that this risks missing much of what was actually happening. The danger is that we have focused only on a single axis when in fact uniforms represent a more complex field of meaning.  For instance, Gatling notes that most early training gi were not purchased from a martial arts supplier as might be the case today.  Rather they were made by Japanese housewives and mothers according to patterns that were distributed in either magazines or by schools. Indeed, it may be just as interesting to consider the ways in which huge numbers of Japanese women experienced Kano’s nationalism as they painstakingly hand sewed these uniforms for their sons and husbands, rather than engaging in training themselves. Thus we need to be careful that we do not equate vertically enforced uniformity with economic industrialization or a lack of individual artistic expression.

There is also the interesting question of who gets photographed.  Most of the Japanese postcards in my collection were produced by Japanese photographers for sale to Japanese consumers. As such, they tended to focus on the sorts of progressive, middle class, scenes that Japanese consumers wanted to see. When modern scholars examine this ephemera we tend to see well stocked martial arts schools in reasonably urban areas.  We forget that in the countryside most students toiling in their school’s dojo lacked gi’s and many practiced in regular physical education uniforms.  Likewise, as more students were rushed into judo and kendo training as these disciplines were militarized in the run-up to WWII, it was increasingly common to find students simply putting their armor over their normal school uniforms. Gatling finds that while one might think that the rise in militarism would manifest itself in the spread of uniforms and the tightening of dress codes, in fact the opposite happened. In any case, this sort of nuance was unlikely to show up on commercially produced postcards.

 

A typical pre-1911 market place demonstration featuring socially marginal martial artists.

 

Most postcards showing Chinese martial artists were produced by European photographers and were sold to Western audiences.  They typically focused on more “rustic” street performances, poor soldiers or questionable bandits.  All of these groups were relatively marginal and (with the exception of the soldiers) unlikely to wear any sort of uniform. Images of bare chested martial artists remained common throughout the 1920s. But this doesn’t mean that uniforms were absent within the Chinese martial arts.

The Republic period actually saw a proliferation of uniforms.  The situation was different than in Japan as no single template emerged as the clear winner. Instead many things were happening at the same time. Most of these Chinese efforts were forward looking and modern in their sentiment.  This could be seen in the Jingwu Association’s crisp white jackets, or the sportscoats, knickers and canvas belts that Ma Liang dressed his military exhibition teams in.  Many reformers filled their manuals with photos of teachers and students who looked as though they were about to head out for a round of golf.  In other cases the traditional robes of Confucian scholars were favored by more senior members of the community. I have often wondered whether relatively affluent Chinese martial artists during the 1920s-1930s insisted on working out in their street clothes in an effort to draw a conscious distinction between their understanding of community and the one advanced by the Japanese martial arts.

More practical were the working-class schools in cities like Guangzhou and Hong Kong. During the Republic period innumerable classes and lion dance societies began to adopt identical, mass-produced, t-shirts.  Some of these were marked with the name of a school, while others were simply blank. Indeed, the practice of matching t-shirts being worn at a street festival has a long and distinguished history with the Chinese martial arts.  In actual fact they may be just as “traditional” as karate’s signature uniform, both of which date roughly the same period during the interwar years.  And both have proven to be remarkably stable over time.  They succeed precisely because they signal different sets of values and understandings of the community.

 

I made this slide for another paper, but it gives us a nice comparison of the “traditional” and “modern” training uniforms in the Southern Chinese martial arts. And there is always that one guy who doesn’t get the memo…

 

Conclusion

 

Uniforms are inevitably symbolic representations of the communities that produced them.  My students are excited to order a group of T-shirts not because of any practical need. Instead they are an expression of a new set of relationships, values and understanding of the self.  Clothing speaks both to the individual and larger audiences, stabilizing and celebrating our collective achievements.

When reviewing the Martial Arts Studies literature I am often surprised that we have little to say on the question of material culture within the martial arts. We explore these fighting traditions as both embodied practices and media discourses.  We look at their history and engage in conceptual debates.  Yet little thought is given to the systematic examination of the uniforms, the training tools, the weapons and even the real estate that we all depend on.

When studying “primitive” societies Anthropologists took a keen interest in understanding and analyzing the various facets of material culture. They realized that these objects held both utilitarian and symbolic value. They were the physical manifestation of social and cultural values.  Some of the insights that they suggest could not really be grasped through other modes of analysis.

I would like to propose that all of this also holds true for students of martial arts studies. Purchasing objects is one of the main modes of social activity that we see in an andvanced industrialized society, and that makes it doubly important to look carefully at the physical culture that is being consumed.  I suggested a fairly simple framework to help us think more carefully about the varieties of uniforms in this article, and I am sure that there are other models that would have been just as helpful. Regardless of what theoretical lens you choose to adopt, the next time you are visiting a school and someone hands you a t-shirt, a uniform or a training weapon, think carefully about the full range of values that they are expressing. Our material culture often says more about our communities than we might care to admit.

 

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If you enjoyed this reflection you might also want to read: Folklore in the Southern Chinese Martial Arts: A Means to Create Economic “Value” or to Construct Social “Values?”

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