Bartitsu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bartitsu is an eclectic martial art and self defence method originally developed in England during the late 1890s and early 1900s.
In 1898, Edward William Barton-Wright, a British railway engineer who had been living and working in Japan, returned to England and announced the formation of a “New Art of Self Defence”. This art, he claimed, combined the best elements of a range of fighting styles into a unified whole, which he had named Bartitsu. The word was a portmanteau of his own surname and of "jiujitsu".
As detailed in a series of articles Barton-Wright produced for Pearson's Magazine between 1899 and 1904, Bartitsu was largely drawn from the Shinden Fudo and Tenjin-Shin'yo schools of ko-ryu ("classical") Jiujitsu and from Kodokan Judo. The art also incorporated combat techniques from British boxing and wrestling, French savate, and a defensive stick fighting style that had been developed by Professeur Pierre Vigny of Switzerland.
In 1902, Barton-Wright wrote:
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- (E.W. Barton-Wright, 1902: 261)
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[edit] The golden years of Bartitsu
Between 1898 and 1904, Barton-Wright set about publicising his art through magazine articles, interviews and a series of demonstrations or “assaults at arms” at various London venues.
He established a school known as the Bartitsu Club, which was located at #67b Shaftesbury Avenue. In an article for Sandow's Magazine in 1902, journalist Mary Nugent described the Bartitsu Club as "... a huge subterranean hall, all glittering, white-tiled walls, and electric light, with ‘champions’ prowling around it like tigers."
Barton-Wright arranged for Japanese jiujitsu practitioners Yukio Tani and Sadekazu Uyenishi to travel to London and serve as instructors at the Bartitsu Club. Swiss master-at-arms Pierre Vigny and wrestler Armand Cherpillod were also employed as teachers at the Club. As well as teaching well-to-do Londoners, their duties included performing demonstrations and competing in challenge matches against fighters representing other combat styles.
The Club also became the headquarters for a cabal of fencing antiquarians led by Egerton Castle and Captain Alfred Hutton and it served as their base for experimenting with historical fencing techniques, which they also taught to members of London's acting elite for use in stage combat.
Barton-Wright later reported that, during this period, he had challenged and defeated seven larger men within three minutes as part of a Bartitsu demonstration he gave at St James' Hall. This feat earned him a membership in the prestigious Bath Club and also a Royal Command to appear before Edward, the Prince of Wales. Unfortunately Barton-Wright then suffered an injury to his hand, due either to a fight in a Kentish country lane or a bicycling accident, which prevented him from appearing before the Prince.
[edit] Bartitsu as a self defence method
It is unclear as to whether Barton-Wright ever devised a formal curriculum for Bartitsu as a self defence method. Rather, he encouraged members of the Bartitsu Club to study each of the four major hand-to-hand combat styles taught at the Club, with the goal of mastering each style well enough that they could be used against the others if needed. This process was similar to the modern concept of cross-training.
Based on his writing on this subject, contemporary researchers believe that Bartitsu placed greatest emphasis upon the Vigny cane fighting system at the striking range and upon Jiujitsu at the grappling range. Savate and boxing were used to bridge the gap between these two ranges, or as a means of first response should the defender not be armed with a walking stick.
According to interviewer Mary Nugent, Barton-Wright instituted an unusual pedagogical system whereby students were first required to attend private training sessions before being allowed to join class groups. It is believed that both the private and group classes included pre-arranged exercises, especially for use in rehearsing those techniques that were to dangerous to be performed at full speed or contact, as well as free-sparring and fencing bouts.
[edit] The decline of Bartitsu
Despite his enthusiasm, Barton-Wright seems to have been a mediocre promoter and the fame of his associates and their Jiujitsu quickly eclipsed that of Bartitsu. By 1903, the Bartitsu Club had closed its doors for the last time; subsequent speculation had it that the enrollment and tuition fees were too high. Barton-Wright's assistants, including Jiujitsuka Yukio Tani and Sadekazu Uyenishi and Swiss self defence expert Pierre Vigny, established their own gymnasia in London. After breaking with Barton-Wright, purportedly due to an argument and a fight, Tani also continued his work as a professional music-hall wrestler under the shrewd management of William Bankier, a strength performer who went by the stage name of "Apollo".
Although Barton-Wright may have continued to develop and teach his art at least until the 1920s, it never again returned to prominence. Bartitsu might have been completely forgotten if not for a chance mention by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in one of his Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. In the Adventure of the Empty House (1903), Holmes explained that he had escaped the clutches of his enemy Professor Moriarty through his knowledge of "baritsu, or Japanese wrestling". Doyle mis-spelled the name of the art; this, in addition to the anachronism of portraying Bartitsu in story set several years before the art had been invented, was enough to intrigue and confuse Holmesian scholars for the best part of the next century.
E.W. Barton-Wright spent much of the remainder of his career working as a physical therapist specialising in innovative, and sometimes questionable, forms of heat, light and radiation therapy. He died in 1951, at the age of 90, and was buried in what the late martial arts historian Richard Bowen described as being "a pauper's grave."
[edit] The Bartitsu legacy
In many ways, E.W. Barton-Wright was a man ahead of his time. He was among the very first Europeans known to have studied the Japanese martial arts, and was certainly the first man to have taught them in Europe.
Bartitsu was probably the first martial art to have deliberately combined Asian and European fighting styles towards addressing the problems of civilian/urban self-defence in an “unarmed society”. In this, Barton-Wright anticipated Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do approach by over seventy years. Barton-Wright's philosophy of pragmatic eclecticism was taken up by other early 20th century European self-defence specialists, including Percy Longhurst, George Dubois and Jean-Joseph Renaud.
A similar philosophy was later to be embraced by Bill Underwood, William E. Fairbairn and others, who were charged with developing close combat systems for use by Allied troops during the Second World War. Underwood had actually studied Jiujitsu with Yukio Tani and another Jiujitsuka, Taro Miyake, in London during the first decade of the 20th century. The systems founded by Underwood, Fairbairn and their contemporaries became the basis for most military and police close-combat training throughout the Western world during the 20th century.
E.W. Barton-Wright is also remembered as a pioneering promoter of mixed martial arts or MMA contests, in which experts in different fighting styles compete under common rules. Barton-Wright's champions, including Yukio Tani and Swiss svingen wrestler Armand Cherpillod, enjoyed considerable success in these contests, which anticipated the MMA phenomenon of the 1990s by a hundred years.
[edit] Contemporary interest in Bartitsu
In 2001 the Electronic Journals of Martial Arts and Sciences (EJMAS) website began to re-publish many of Barton-Wright's magazine articles, which had been uncovered by Richard Bowen. Almost immediately, the "Self Defence with a Walking Stick" articles attracted a minor cult following and the illustrations were reproduced, often with humorous captions or other alterations, on a number of other sites.
In 2002, an international association of Bartitsu enthusiasts, known as the Bartitsu Society, was formed to research and then revive E.W. Barton-Wright's "New Art of Self Defence". The Society communicates via an email group established by author Will Thomas and individual members occasionally offer practical workshops in Bartitsu fighting techniques.
In August of 2005 the Society published a book, the Bartitsu Compendium, which was edited by Tony Wolf. The Compendium details the complete history of the art as well as a technical curriculum for "canonical Bartitsu", the self-defense sequences that were promoted by Barton-Wright and his assistants between 1899-1902.
In October of 2006, the Bartitsu Society launched the Bartitsu.org website which includes information on the history, theory and practice of Barton-Wright's martial art.
In September of 2006, Bartitsu Society member Kirk Lawson released a DVD presentation entitled Bartitsu - the Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes, which is a presentation of Bartitsu techniques as demonstrated at the Spring '06 Cumann Bhata Western Martial Arts Seminar.
Proceeds from the sales of the Bartitsu Compendium and the Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes DVD have been dedicated to creating a memorial for E.W. Barton-Wright.
[edit] External links
- biography of E.W. Barton-Wright
- report from Sandow's Magazine (c1902) concerning a Bartitsu demonstration
- report from the Japan Times detailing a Bartitsu demonstration and tournament
- "Antagonistics"- an Edwardian-era article by W.T.A. Beare comparing several methods of self defense
- first part of Barton-Wright's article on unarmed self defense
- second part of Barton-Wright's article on unarmed self defense
- part one of Barton-Wright's article on self defense with a walking stick
- part two of Barton-Wright's article on self defense with a walking stick
[edit] References
Wolf, Tony (ed.) The Bartitsu Compendium (Lulu Publications, 2005)
