On the popularity of MMA

The rise in popularity of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) seems to have been at the expense of traditional martial arts. From the perspective of being the publisher of Fudebakudo, that's a move in the wrong direction (it's primarily why we didn't have a stand at Seni this year) because Fudebakudo is based on a very traditional model. But since popularity is massively influenced by the media, and especially broadcast media, it's fascinating and wholly correct to see MMA take over as the most popular form of martial art. It's interesting because, the way I see it, its ascendency is based largely on two things: how effective it appears to be, and how violent it is.

The reason it's especially interesting to me is because it seems that these two aspects are exactly opposed in the most traditional martial arts. Or, to put it another way, the traditional approach is almost perfectly unpopular as far as modern audiences are concerned. Of course comparing traditional MA like karate or judo with MMA as exhibited in cage fights is a little like comparing apples and oranges. Yes, they set out with different goals — one is largely about self-improvement (oh, it's spiritual, don't you know?) and the other is about winning fights. But still, even though there are crossovers and exceptions, I think it's valid to draw conclusions by considering the mainstream of each approach.

So here it is: the traditional martial arts are usually in denial about full-on tests of efficiency, and are dogmatically in denial about violence. The repetitive nature of kata (repeated patterns), the formalised approach to sparring, and the fairly rigid boundaries of syllabuses mean that it's easy for someone to practice and become proficient without ever really knowing if they can actually do any of what they have learnt outside of a training environment. (Yes of course there are exceptions — the Kyokushinkai people put themselves to the test in open tournaments (uh, standing up, mind you) — but that's why they have a reputation that sets them apart from the less rugged karate styles). And the traditional martial arts are explicit about their denial of violence: the focus is on control and technique. Mainstream aikido, for example, is wholly allergic to admitting to any violence, focussing instead on its non-aggressive ideal, but even percussive arts usually stress that it's all about correct form, clean technique, and discipline. None of the books by the karate masters will say that the prospect of giving (or watching) a good thrashing is a genuine reason for getting involved in the art. 

But the MMA have no such outward qualms, which means they simply have a better, more viscerial appeal. Yes, there are rules and split decisions, but, by the end of fight, you can usually tell, even as an inexperienced viewer, who is the winner. And, oh yes, the violence of the spectacle is absolutely acknowledged in its appeal. With a little reflection you realise that the cage isn't really a requirement of the art but that it serves to keep the non-stop, non-cornered action in front of the camera, all of the time.

This is an outward thing. Inwardly, the traditional MA practitioners may in fact be getting secret, naughty thrills from the violence even though they are not supposed to be. Similarly, serious MMA people are surely getting broadly the same benefits of self-improvement from their rigorous and technical training as the traditionalists do. There's no thrill of violence in early morning sessions in the gym seven days a week, for example. That's all about self-discipline, pure and simple.

But outwardly . . . well, this is why the MMA will be more popular. From a public point of view, coupled with an instant broadcast media, the MMA are so much more honestly pitched: easy to understand violent action. Compared with, say, the slightly bemusing spectacle of the Beijing taekwondo judging, it's fairly obvious who's got the media angle right. Judo and sumo only become compelling spectator sports when, like opera or pigeon fancying, you've taken the trouble to learn to appreciate the technicalities. There is, after all, a reason why Sky Sports haven't been clamouring for the broadcast rights to the International Aikido Federation's congress in Tanabe this year.

Rosi Sexton

Rosi Sexton: "With a bit of hand waving it could be argued that the construction P A on a frame A is the point-free analogue of the point-sensitive construction PS on a space S. However, as we will see, this is not entirely correct."
PhD thesis, p.5

I want to clarify that this is about popularity, it's not a judgement on the value of the arts, if MMA are right or wrong, or even what works "on the street" (or, as we prefer to say in Fudebakudo, "on the boulevards" — it's a class thing). Also the reasons people train in any combat art, and the benefits sought from doing so, will vary from person to person. But what gets people into the clubs in the first place is largely down to its outward appeal via the media. Bruce Lee did it for kung fu (and, by confused implication, for all the traditional martial arts) in the 1970s, with the theatre of cinema. The MMA are simply doing it today with the uncomplicated, gutsy appeal of reality TV.

I've meant to write about this for some time, and was finally motivated to do so by this recent Guardian article on Rosi Sexton. I encourage Fudebakudo readers to read her thinking-out-loud blog. And, top kudos to the number one female British MMA fighter for also linking to her Maths/CompSci thesis on point-set topology. That is just so cool.

 

Oh, and if you don't like the violent aspect, don't watch the video of her last fight with Windy Tomomi. You don't have to be an osteopath to know ankles shouldn't do that. Ugh. There's a related article in MMA News, which contains Sexton's reaction to the event.

Class Act

three disturbing characters

Disturbingly cool. Or, at the very least, disturbing.

I've been away for a while, including spending several days at an aikido "summer school." I am protecting the anonymity of Roy and the others in this photograph by not mentioning any names. You might be reassured to know that this is not how people normally dress for aikido, but is in fact a troupe of highly trained artistes having come offstage (well, out of the bar) after delivering the world premiere of Madonna's aikido version of Vogue. With the words changed, obviously.*

I can't help noticing that the girl looks uncannily like the one in the how to fold a hakama movie. 

 

* There were five of us them in the group (known collectively as Quality of the Dojo) but I've only come back with a photo of three. So if you were there and took a photo of the whole bunch, please let me know, so I can put that up too. I don't want Penny and Louise, who will also remain anonymous, to feel left out, obviously.

 

Only a hobby

We like to think that martial arts typically develop out of military or oppressive environments (that is, they arose to facilitate the work of soldiers, or the rugged people who were opposing them). This is a deadly serious and full-time occupation. Neither soldiers nor the oppressed peoples in this scenario would likely be described as hobbyists.

But in the modern word, to the vast majority of people who practice them, the martial arts emphatically are a hobby. Ellis Amdur has written eloquently on this topic, and has reasonably yet provocatively asserted that if you're not comfortable calling what you do a hobby, then you have an attitude problem. I know lots of people (and see a great deal more) who practice the martial arts who would be uncomfortable with this. Personally I suspect that it's less of a problem amongst the readers of Fudebakudo, because by embracing the Way of the Exploding Pen, you are pretty much acknowledging the silliness of a lot of what passes for fact and acceptable behaviour in the martial world. But perhaps I'm wrong and there are Fudebakudo practitioners who genuinely believe their martial art is a Way of Life. I can think of a handful of individuals for whom such a claim might actually be true (inevitably, though, none of them would be so pretentious as to state it in the first place).

Although I am not a nun and never have been one (bear with me on this), I have an opinion about "Way of Life" because I did work with nuns for a few years, and the contrast was stark. Being a nun is a Way of Life. Going to kickboxing or aikido or t'ai chi classes three evenings a week — or, yes, even if you do it for three months at the Shaolin temple — is a hobby. Even most professional martial arts teachers (and already you have to wonder, in most cases, what went wrong with their proper jobs) are teaching a hobby. Stamp collecting is arguably a way of life for the philatelists at Christies auction house, and it has a genuine and functional history; but still it's a hobby, even if there are a handful of professionals who are supported by it, and thousands of pounds change hands every month in its name.

Here's the nub of the matter: being a nutter is a way of life. I think that's what a lot of people are confused about when they say that their chosen martial art is a way of life.

None of this in any way diminishes the value that the practice of a martial art may bring. Certainly my own practice has had a massive influence of how I have developed as an adult, where I have lived, the people I have met and the way I relate to them. But that's simply how influential hobbies can be. (As an aside, I think it could be fairly easily argued  that throughout the Edo period in Japan the martial arts were often pretty much an institionalised hobby amongst the samurai classes, although with ritual and caste clouding the comparison a little).

Anyway . . . the relative unimportance of a hobby compared to a way of life is at its most stark when politics arise. Someone or some organisation decides to explicitly influence the way you behave. If it's benign, this means you practice in a structured and organised micro-society of hobbyists. If it's not, then this is where the trouble starts.

That's why the mantra of "it's only a hobby" is one that can serve as an important reality checkpoint. Sooner or later (later, if you're lucky) you find yourself having to deal with someone who is exercising maverick power over you, an influence beyond that to which you thought you had subscribed. Most people who have practiced seriously in the martial arts, even within the native countries of those arts, have run up against behaviour which in a place of work — or a public situation — would be seen as unacceptably tyrannical. But in the martial arts there is a dangerous potential combination of machismo and superiority and it's sadly common. Sometimes it's laughable, sometimes it's appalling.

I mention all this — not, as you might expect, because I have just witnessed a mind-numbing example of political shenanigans in the martial arts (I haven't; well, not recently, but we all have stories, of course, and — like buses — you only have to wait a while and another one is bound to turn up) — but because of a wonderful quote that I came across in the "Twisto book" Judith sent me this month. Some explanation: Judith has the unqiue honour of being the hidari-peiji proofreader of the Fudebakudo book (a bizarre experience I should document here one day). You're thinking, wow, it doesn't get much more distinguished than that; but no — for many years before that she was the editor of the Enigma, the newsletter of the National Puzzlers' League (the American NPL). Judith, or perhaps in this context I should say Sibyl, has recently put together a small book about Twisto. Twisto is the nom, that is, the pseudonym, of an exceptional member, now departed, of the NPL.

In this book, there is a throwaway exchange concerning "it's just a hobby." Yes, in the world of brain-aching cryptograms and crossword clues, just like in the parallel world of spinning kicks and wrist-locks, the ugly politics of organisation creep in, and members sometimes need reminding that their life-blood activity is in fact only a hobby. How silly the squabbling hobbyists always look from outside! (And I'm looking at you too, religious people). Anyway, after all that, here it is, attributed to Smaug (who is, by no coincidence, a senior grade in the art of Fudebakudo):

"What's in the jar?"

"Some bees."

"You collect bees?"

"That's right."

"Oh. I see there aren't any air-holes in the lid."

"That's right."

"But then the bees will suffocate and die."

"Well, it's only a hobby."

Firehoses were invented in Japan

So, in the UK we are once more having the "Samurai Sword" debate in the press as the government heads towards banning them. There is a lot wrong with this, but it's dangerous to say so because the legislation is a reaction to nutters who slash at people with such swords, and to argue against such legislation makes it sound like you think people should be allowed to do it. Obviously, anyone slashing with a "Samurai Sword" ought to be incarcenated — the Japanese katana is a filing weapon, not a slashing weapon, tsk tsk, but strangely that's not the point that many commentators pick up on when these incidents are reported.

No, the problem is that it's already illegal to attack someone with a sword, whether that sword is Japanese or European. Passing a law to make ownership of such a thing illegal unless you have a good excuse is fundamentally silly for a number of reasons. But the main one is that it is too specific. The law will need to decide and declare when a sword is a sword and not a machete. For example, the nutters who buy their "Samurai Swords" from the internet are encouraged to buy them in pairs, and the shorter of the two (ahem, the wakizashi) is barely longer than a carving knife (oh all right, a big carving knife) or, say, a carpenter's saw, so it's not quite as simple as saying "sword".

And then you have the problem of what exactly constitutes a good excuse. The problem is that being enrolled as student of a martial art may well constitute a good excuse. That's troubling because a sizable proportion of people doing martial arts, as the normal people who train can attest, absolutely are nutters. (Earlier this year there was a petition on the Number 10 website on which people could sign their disapproval of the forthcoming "Samurai Sword" ban. You can bet that that list of names is now the first item in the folder marked "Potential Nutters" in the "Samurai Sword" unit of the Home Office — of course not everybody on that list is a dangerous nutter, just some (many) of them, and it's a good a place to start as any).

The bizarre thing about this is that iaido, of all the martial arts, is one of the best at self-policing. Not because of the heightened moral standards that the rituals of the art require, or the rigorous selection criteria of the registered teachers in the UK. It's because iaido, perhaps with the exception of t'ai chi, is the least rewarding art for someone looking for some instant gratification. It's not an art that really needs legislating, so it's unfortunate that they are unhelpfully at the sharp end of the media attention on "Samurai Swords". You spend fifteen years making your knees hurt and your thighs tremble before you can feel confident about slashing — uh, cutting — at anything. Of course I'm not a criminal profiler, and people who put themselves through this may well be nutters (inevitably I know several (you know who you are)) but not the kind of nutters we need to be worrying about.

The legislation on gun ownership in the UK was changed after terrible public shootings such as Hungerford. Maybe that has worked. I'm used to living in a society where unarmed police shout "Stop! Or I'll shout stop again!" and it's still a wee bit alarming to see a real gun in real life (such as the ones on display for shooting terrorists at Heathrow airport) and naturally I am used to seeing this as a good thing. But one silly consequence of the law was that the GB Olympic shooting teams have to train on the continent, and legislation was changed for the Commonwealth Games (and will need to be excepted again for the 2012 Olympics). Will the "Samurai sword" ban affect the UK Fencing Teams? Will their swords be excepted because they are European? Or because they aren't sharp enough? A legal test for the sharpness of a sword? Oh dear. Ultimately this will end up as lawyers arguing as to how many fairies can dance on the tip of a sword.

Probably, yes, the best solution will ultimately be a rigorous licensing of swords like we have of firearms. But the problem is you can't legislate the problem of nutters away by simply forbidding them to own the weapons. All you're really doing is making it harder to get their weapons cheaply, which is a start, but it's a very heavy handed start. And perhaps our parliament has more important things to be concentrating on than passing such specific and uneffective laws.

Ah yes, the firehoses. Firehoses were invented by the Japanese as an effective way of dealing with a swordsman. Japan is an island nation with an abundant supply of water, so it was an obvious element to use. Northern Irish firefighters recently found themselves being attacked by a "Samurai sword"-wielding nutter. They quickly did some reasearch on the Internet and discovered the historical fact that the Japanese footsoldiers often defeated advancing samurai with powerful jets of water (I'm not sure but I think it's somewhere on the British Museum's website). And so they were able to successfully defend themselves.

 

How to fold a hakama 2

From a dojo down in the south of Japan some time ago. I just saw this going on and filmed it.  I never learned how to do it — when I asked to be shown how to fold mine the same way, they said it was a special technique which they wouldn't teach "visitors".

Update: I've put the original movie on the site if you want to see it in all its glory. I needed to tidy it up a bit before letting YouTube's compression squash it (file is about 1.5Mb).  

 

How to fold a Hakama

There are many ways to fold a hakama (that's the pleated skirt-like thing worn when practicing arts like aikido and kendo). The important thing is that it is done at the end of a class, and that it is done intricately, so that by the time you've finished folding it everyone else has finished putting the mats away.

folded hakama

The exquisite chirashi udon or "scattered noodle" style of hakama folding

Last night I was lucky to witness one of the most intricate examples of hakama folding — this is the rare chirashi udon style, rarely seen outside of Japan. It's amazing that this knowledge is out there, and that those who have mastered it are passing amongst us, even here in the UK.

 

Pizza hurled as weapon

Fudebakudo fans who saw us at Seni05 will remember our gingerbread shuriken (with chocolate flavour tips). Because we are serious about the martial arts, and responsible about the risk of lethal Oriental secrets falling into the unskilled hands of hooligans lacking the sensitivites to use them only against Bad People in order to make the world a better place, we placed big warnings on them: NOT TO BE USED AS A WEAPON.

Sadly, some manufacturers do not take the same trouble on the packaging of their pizza:

Man arrested for throwing hot pizza.

"'It is what it is,' he said, according to the report." Hmm. 

As this story shows, it's almost impossible to tell the difference between an angry man lacking self-control in domestic circumstances and a pizza-hurling Zen master.

 

New “Way of Life” drinks to target martial artists

Lucozade
"Sport" drink

The rise in popularity of the so-called sports drink since the late 1980s is a masterpiece of marketing. When I was young, the only way you saw a bottle of Lucozade — then it was the startlingly sweet and reddish-orange fizzy drink in a big glass bottle (with little  bobbles around the neck) — was by surviving the 'flu, or something like it. It was a drink reserved for recovery, the only good thing about being sick (apart from missing school, of course). These days, people are presumably too healthy for that to be a viable market, so Lucozade has become a "sports" drink. It's a drink built on "science," because it provides energy (glucose), and replenishes lost fluids by being isotonic, which means, roughly, that it is made to be as close to sweat as is possible without, you know, actually having been sweated into the bottle.

Lucozade "Way of Life" drink for martial artists

So, today, it's almost unthinkable to go training without the aid of a "sports" drink. I get through a bottle every session — and there's the rub. These are sports drinks, whereas, as any serious martial artist will tell you, a martial art is not a sport, it's a way of life.*

Presumably it was with this in mind that the brains behind Lucozade are now doing trials of a "Way of Life" drink — identical (as far as we were able to tell) to their popular "Sports" drinks, but simply with different labeling. They were handing out free bottles at the recent British Open T'ai Chi  Long-Form tournament in Manchester, which ran for the entire two months of May and June (the winner, incidentally, performed an unbeatable form which lasted for over three days). Instead of the usual girls in skimpy promotional T-shirts, at least the sponsors had the restraint to use Chinese pensioners to hand out the free samples; but, still, it seems a bit cynical that the trade should be re-labelling drinks just to tap into a thirsty but currently untargeted market. The Fudebakudo informer who was present  at the event kindly sent a bottle (unopened) down to us, which we have photographed with our usual studio-quality care and which is shown to the right.

It remains to be seen if Lucozade Way of Life drinks become available in the shops, and if so whether or not they will be priced higher than the sports version. It may be that green tea or lotus petal will replace the usual citrus flavours, and it's highly likely that "Boost" versions will be available with added gingseng.

If you see Lucozade Way of Life drinks in the shops, please let us know. Meanwhile, the science behind the drinks is described on the official Lucozade website.

This is especially remarkable because Lucozade is a mainstream brand. Such an approach — or something like it — has been tried before by the makers of this less popular, but no less disturbing, martial arts drink.

 

* Actually, judo and taekwondo are sports, because they are in the Olympics. Since the IOC doesn't give out Olympic medals for the way you live your life, that pretty much means that if you do judo or TKD you can stick to regular Lucozade.

There’d be blood everywhere!

Last weekend I was at an aikido seminar where Mr. Kenneth Cottier was teaching. He's remarkable in the world of aikido because he is one of the few Englishmen (and, indeed, non-Japanese) to have trained at the hombu, or headquarters, dojo in Tokyo while the founder of aikido was still alive and teaching — in fact Mr. Cottier was there from the early 1960s. He currently holds the rank of 7th dan shihan from the Aikikai headquarters.

During the class, he addressed a common question. I'm quoting this as closely as I can recall to his actual words, although I didn't take written notes at the time.

I'm sometimes asked what would happen if a good karate-man attacked me with a decent roundhouse kick . . . What would happen? I'd be on the floor and there'd be blood everywhere! I'm 74! Why is he attacking me? Why?!"

Kenneth Cottier

 

European influence on Japanese sword

Miyamoto Musashi was probably the most famous swordsman in all of Japan, and he created the ni-to ryu, or two-swords, school of fighting. As readers of Fudebakudo know, there are several versions of the story of how this came about (the book mischievously contains two contradictory accounts), but one of the most enduring is that the secrets of this new, radical way of fighting were revealed to him by a mountain tengu. 

Tengu is usually translated as "goblin," which of course loses something cultural in the translation (see this Wikipedia entry on the topic for more detail). But generally it is accepted that the tengu were reclusive mountain goblins with big noses who had unsurpassed and alien skills in swordmanship.

Tengu in shrine

Tengu: Huge nose; bulgy round eyes; black, white, and red colouring; cartoony demeanour. Indisputable Western Fudebakudo influence.

The cheaty nature (fighting with two swords when everybody else was doing the decent thing following convention and using just the one, in the right hand), the big noses and — most subtle of all — the red and black colours that are frequently seen in contemporary woodcuts showing tengu, all point to the presence of European Fudebakudo. Rather than sacred goblins in mountain hideaways, might these not have been gaijin, Western devils teaching methods outside the box (or, as Fudebakudo scholars put it, "outside the lacquered box")? Could it be that, in this way, foreigners introduced underhand Fudebakudo tactics into hitherto honourable Japanese sword-fighting? They were reclusive because, as outsiders, they had no position in Japan's rigid social hierarchy. In fact, Japan actively rejected foreigners such as these when it adopted the sakoku policy of closing itself off from the world, which was instigated within Musashi's lifetime. It's possible that this was as a direct result of the samurai classes seeing (or suspecting) the influence such foreigners had had on him — he'd started beating them with these new strategies, after all.

Certainly it is known that Fudebakudo principles were at work in European fencing schools at the time (see this previous blog entry), and that a similar reintroduction of an Eastern military concept from the West had occurred just half a century earlier, when the Portugese began trading firearms with Japan's gunless rulers.

Of course, the truth is that we will probably never really know, because so few tengu survive today, and those that can be approached (such as the isolated captive specimens in the restricted-access area of Tokyo's Ueno Zoo) are invariably vague and elusive when questioned on the topic. So the reintroduction of Fudebakudo to Japan via European hideaways remains a controversial and perhaps taboo explanation of Musashi's brilliance and, in consequence, an overlooked influence on Japanese sword-fighting.