Kosho (The Prisoner)

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Kosho is a game or martial art conceived by Patrick McGoohan for the highly admired 1967 television series The Prisoner. The exact significance of the name is not clear, though 'Kosho' (which translates as 'old book, rare book' in online Japanese-English dictionaries) is apparently a word applied to certain ancient martial arts that were practised in secret at the time when karate was forbidden.

The game of Kosho is played on two trampolines set on either side of a four-foot-by-eight-foot tank of water and bordered on two sides by a wall with an angled ledge and hand-rail. Two helmeted opponents each wear a boxing glove on their left hand and a lighter padded glove on their right, and while moving freely in three dimensions attempt to knock, push or throw each other into the tank. (There are similarities between Kosho and the team game of Hussade, created by Jack Vance in his 'Alastor Cluster' novels).

Within the context of the social organisation presented in the series, one would imagine that the game provides a way for inhabitants of The Village to work off their frustrations and their aggressive energies in a 'safe' and 'controlled' setting; characteristically, however, the series makes no attempt to provide any kind of 'easy' discussion or explanation of this highly original feature of Village life.

Though apparently entirely a 'made-up' martial art, Kosho is presented within the series as having Japanese overtones: not only will viewers immediately feel the name to be Japanese in origin, but the two bouts shown (in the episodes 'Hammer into Anvil' and 'It's Your Funeral') are accompanied by heavily oriental-sounding, 'pentatonic' music played on ethnic instruments (The track is 'Osaka', a piece of stock music composed by Nino Nardini and taken from the Chappell Recorded Music Production Library).