The Scope of Bartitsu

[Jason Taylor]

I've become recently intrigued by Bartitsu, or rather, more intrigued than I was before, because of some classes I took at CombatCon in Bartitsu, cane, and bareknuckle boxing. And it's raised a question within our group about the scope of what our own Bartitsu special interest/study group, if we were to create one would encompass. I know there's a distinction between canonical and neo-Bartitsu, but the base arts from which Barton-Wright drew (IIRC) were pugilism, jiu-jitsu, savate, and cane.

So, given that neo-Bartitsu is a continuation of the experiment Barton-Wright started (as Tony Wolf so succinctly put it during his class at CombatCon), how far do we push the envelope on what could be considered part of a neo-approach to the art?

A simple example: primarily, the grappling material appears drawn from jiu-jitsu, but there were catch wrestlers contemporary with Barton-Wright's experiment (or what I assume was catch wrestling). Is it considered kosher to include catch wrestling within one's own study of Bartitsu, or is that now considered outside of the realm of the experiment? The same question could be raised about non-French cane fighting, such as some of the Irish styles. It could also be asked about some of the han-bo material from Japanese styles, which closely resembles cane fighting.

I would guess that Barton-Wright himself would have considered anything he could find fair game, but at what point does the experiment become too far away from the original vision and just become another modern martial art?

Any insight is welcome; I don't really have a position on the question, but I'm curious what other enthusiasts think.

Jas

[Tony Wolf]

The consensus that's emerged within the Bartitsu Society over the past ten years or so is that the further away from the canonical and lineage material you get, the less sense it makes to refer to what you're doing as (neo)Bartitsu. Without that element of deliberate anachronism, it's too easy to start reinventing the Dog Brothers/Jeet Kune Do/MMA/RBSD/etc. wheels.

The second volume of the Bartitsu Compendium was actually produced specifically as a neo-Bartitsu resource; it includes extensive excerpts from about 15 self defence and combat sports manuals from the period 1899-1923, most of them produced by former Bartitsu Club instructors or by their first generation of students.

My own neo-Bartitsu approach is to use the verbatim canonical material - the formal unarmed combat and cane set-plays, etc. - as points of reference, mostly useful in that A) it's fun and culturally valuable to practice the set-plays just as Barton-Wright and his colleagues presented them c1900 and B) they offer both a wide range of specific techniques and a useful sense of the overall strategy of Bartitsu. In my classes we spend a lot of time "breaking" the formal set-plays via "segue" and "failure" drills, or folding key canonical actions into "combat improv" exercises (like the synergy drills we did at CombatCon). That said, my emphasis on intuitive, experiential training isn't necessarily typical; every instructor/club/study group works the style/technique proportions, training methods, etc. out for themselves.

Barton-Wright seems to have defaulted to Japanese unarmed combat at close range, but he was an experienced wrestler in various European styles and also hired a Swiss champion, Armand Cherpillod, to teach wrestling and physical culture classes at the Bartitsu Club. Cherpillod appears to have taught both traditional Swiss wrestling (schwingen) and the "all-in" style, which was basically a species of catch wrestling. An intelligent melding of catch and jujitsu is probably what old B-W had in mind; certainly, catch and jujitsu wrestlers began to steal from each other almost as soon as he introduced the Japanese art to the West.

There are strong technical similarities between what we know of historical Irish stick play and the Vigny cane method; both operated primarily from high guards, making extensive use of hanging parries, etc. Likewise, non-French cane methods such as Cunningham's American system, which differs materially only in that it favours low guards and lacks Vigny's emphasis on close combat (takedowns, etc.) incorporated into stick play.

This question is complicated a bit by the modern revival movement's radically apolitical, non-hierarchical and open-source stance. There's basically no yelling at each other because the idea of every club/etc. being autonomous is built in to the fabric of the revival; acceptable degrees of accuracy are largely subjective. After a while, one develops a feel for the period styles and flavour and everything after that is experimentation.

[Richard Marsden]

When learning Bartitsu, neo or otherwise, is it assumed the opponent is a hooligan in hand to hand?

Any context for the cane on cane plays?

What are some of the differences between neo and just plain Bartitsu? What would be an example of a difference the untrained eye might detect?

The 'bar tricks' in one of the volumes you compiled and wrote (can't recall which) are definite crowd-pleasers at conventions and with High School kids such as surviving the strong hand shake and resisting a strong man pushing on a stick!'

Reading the compendiums, I get a sense that people were disbelievers in Bartitsu and its ilk. After the school closed, do you know if that attitude changed?

[Tony Wolf]

When learning Bartitsu, neo or otherwise, is it assumed the opponent is a hooligan in hand to hand?

I'm not sure that I understand the question.

Any context for the cane on cane plays?

Well, the historical context was simply that walking canes were ubiquitous fashion accessories circa 1900, so it was not unlikely that a street fight might involve two men armed with sticks.

What are some of the differences between neo and just plain Bartitsu? What would be an example of a difference the untrained eye might detect?

We tend to refer to the whole art/cross-training shebang, both historical and modern, as "Bartitsu". Canonical Bartitsu refers more specifically to the fighting techniques/set-plays etc. presented under the Bartitsu banner between 1899-1902, and neo-Bartitsu refers to the panoply of modern efforts to revive Barton-Wright's experiments. They are completely interdependent, especially the way I teach it.

The 'bar tricks' in one of the volumes you compiled and wrote (can't recall which) are definite crowd-pleasers at conventions and with High School kids such as surviving the strong hand shake and resisting a strong man pushing on a stick!'

First volume of the Bartitsu Compendium, and the historical context there was that Barton-Wright was exposing a set of tricks that were often performed as "feats of superhuman strength" by music hall athletes. I wrote a short article on that subject here - http://www.bartitsu.org/index.php/2011/ ... trong-man/ . The stunts are a lot of fun as performance and IMO they also teach some useful lessons about leverage, body mechanics and deception.

Reading the compendiums, I get a sense that people were disbelievers in Bartitsu and its ilk. After the school closed, do you know if that attitude changed?

I don't get that sense at all; virtually all the contemporary (again, 1899-1902) press commentary etc. was positive and enthusiastic. There was considerable controversy between B-W and members of the music hall wrestling establishment, who were basically flummoxed by jujitsu; B-W insisted that their challenge contests with the Bartitsu Club instructors, Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi, had to played according to jujitsu rules, and submission wrestling was entirely novel in London at the time, so the Japanese fighters seemed invincible. That said, a good deal of the controversy was probably the type of hype and hoop-la we'd associate with pro-wrestling today.

[Jason Taylor]

So it sounds like a good approach for our group would be to start with the canonical plays. Does the first compendium include all the base canonical plays? And it sounds like there are a fair number of resources from his students and co-conspirators and their first-generation students, so is there a good bibliography around for us to start looking through for additional resources?

I'm on the Bartitsu yahoo group already (I actually have been since about 2005, but I've only really been paying attention in the last year or two), but I don't recall seeing something like that there.

Again, any help is appreciated. If you suggest the first Compendium as a starting point, I'll pick one up and go from there.

Jason

[Tony Wolf]

Jason,

I'd honestly recommend both volumes of the Compendium, used in tandem. Vol. 1 is about 2/3 historical articles and 1/3 technical, and it includes all the canonical material we'd collated at the time of publication (2005) - we later came across a few more canonical sources. Those proportions are roughly reversed in the second volume (2008), which was produced as a resource for groups wanting to expand beyond the canon and includes almost all the significant "second generation" material, carefully cross-referenced to avoid repetition, etc. The early chapters in vol. 2 also offer some hints towards neo-Bartitsu training, although they are probably a bit out of date now; the practical revival has only really been taking off over the past two or three years.

The larger point is that the canon itself will only take you so far; the canonical set-plays and kata are basically divorced of context, because they were originally published as magazine articles rather than as part of a codified curriculum. We're not even sure that Barton-Wright actually developed a specific curriculum. Bartitsu itself seems to have been more of an ongoing cross-training process than a style that could be taught from A-Z and that perspective sometimes frustrates people who aren't comfortable with "open systems".

So, my best advice would be to use both volumes of the Compendium as your base, experiment and pressure-test between all the styles and techniques, learn the set-plays and then break them all, and create your own neo-Bartitsu. I wrote this article - http://www.bartitsu.org/index.php/bartitsu-today/modern-bartitsu-clubs-and-training/ - a few years ago, offering hints and tips for people who wanted to set up their own groups - you may find it useful.

Finally for tonight, we're holding the next Bartitsu School of Arms event at the Forteza WMA school in Chicago in early September - http://www.bartitsu.org/index.php/the-b ... cago-2012/ . It would be an ideal event for anyone interested in this subject.

[Richard Marsden]

Between B-W and members of the music hall wrestling establishment, who were basically flummoxed by jujitsu;

Yes, that. When I read your books it seems these 'giants' keep getting rolled by jujitsu and were stunned and confused. I wonder if they ever adopted it, figured it out, what happened later?

When learning Bartitsu, neo or otherwise, is it assumed the opponent is a hooligan in hand to hand?

Let me rephrase. Is Bartitsu designed to be used against those who do not know or understand it?

[Tony Wolf]

Yes, that. When I read your books it seems these 'giants' keep getting rolled by jujitsu and were stunned and confused. I wonder if they ever adopted it, figured it out, what happened later?

As far as I can recall, the only time either Tani or Uyenishi ever lost a jujitsu match in the music halls was when Tani eventually lost to the more experienced Taro Miyake, who arrived in London several years after the Bartitsu Club closed down. Some English wrestlers took a strong interest in the "new" Japanese style, most notably Percy Longhurst, who was an amateur champion and who was among the first to "test" jujitsu. I can't think of any who took it into competition, though, aside from the informal and largely undocumented melding of jujitsu with catch, etc. that became the foundation of professional (show) wrestling.

In the context of your original question, I should add that the "jujitsu vs. wrestling" controversy wasn't so much over whether jujitsu worked, as over the morality of submission wrestling per se; basically, the wrestling establishment objected to the practice of winning by stranglehold or joint-lock because they saw those techniques as being fouls, which, of course, they were from the perspective of the extant European styles. That naturally developed into the Edwardian equivalent of a flame-war about who would win in various hypothetical contests (FWIW, Tani did later successfully compete as a catch wrestler in the Lancashire style). The debate was basically repeated a few years later on the "jujitsu vs. boxing" theme.

Let me rephrase. Is Bartitsu designed to be used against those who do not know or understand it?

That's an interesting question. I'd say that it was so designed by default, in that the Bartitsu Club was literally the only place where one could actually learn Bartitsu c1900. Barton-Wright instituted stringent rules about only accepting people of "good character" as members, so it was reasonably assumed that Bartitsu exponents would have no opportunity to fight each other apart from training bouts. His demonstrations and articles generally assumed that the Bartitsu-trained defender was opposed by either an untrained hooligan or a specialist in the more common methods (offering specific tactics for using a cane against a boxer or savateur, countering boxing with jujitsu, etc.) Because jujitsu was entirely novel at the time, he evidently saw it as a type of "secret weapon".

In terms of modern practice, again, every club is different. My own preference is to run the gamut, having "attackers" role-play everything from unskilled ruffians to skilled Bartitsuka for training purposes.