Martial fashion (part 1)

Fashion 1

Wardrobe

There’s a new image in the gallery — this one is Martial Fashion (part 1).

The fact of the matter is that dressing up is a huge part of the martial arts and it’s by no means as necessary or normal as most of its practitioners would have you believe. Even the baggy white jimjams, or keikogi, popularised and standardised in judo and copied in karate and subsequent Japanese-influenced arts, are a relatively modern invention and nowhere near as traditional as they need to be in order to have any historical credibility. In fact, people wearing them might actually be dressing up as Japanese firemen.*

Judo: dressing up as firefighters and tripping each other up.

This cartoon was drawn for the current issue of MAI magazine.

* I’m hazarding a guess that there were no Japanese firewomen at the time.