Category: Martial Arts

Most people familiar with Fudebakudo know it as an oriental martial art. Its history — traced right back to its introduction to China some time around 500AD — is described in a little more detail in the book. But its spread into the West, probably following the spice routes overland through Constantinople, is not so well understood. Part of the problem, of course, is that historical records rarely if ever openly mention Fudebakudo because it was (and still is) a secret martial art. In fact, the absence of explicit reference to Fudebakudo in the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages pretty much proves what a total secret it was. When Fudebakudo does occur, it is always in a covert or coded fashion. Because many historians are not aware of the subtlety of this, clear references can often be overlooked.

A case in point can be found in old instruction books from medieval European sword fighting schools. In this case, I need to remind you that one aspect of Fudebakudo is the traditional use of three colours — namely, black, white, and red. This long-standing triumvirate is explained in this FAQ question ("Why is everything black, white, and red?").

With that in mind, it is telling to read on the website of the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (about half-way down the page, on the right) the following:

 . . .many of the old Fechtbuchs (fighting books) in fact wrote in red and black ink. Theory was described in red while the explanation was black.

Today, the ARMA actually wear Fudebakudo colours as a tacit acknowledgment of the importance of Fudebakudo's role in the development of Western sword fighting. Nonetheless, presumably to respect the secret nature of the art, nowhere on their website do they openly admit to the connection. To a trained eye, of course, that implicit denial proves that the ARMA, behind oak-pannelled, iron-studded doors, is — even as you read this — studying the secret techniques of historical Fudebakudo. Well done them.

Last month I went with my friend Mr Wolf (yes, he is probably the same one who's in all the fairy tales) to visit bowyer Pip Bickerstaffe of Bickerstaffe Bows in Kegworth (to be cheesy, that's not terribly far from Sherwood Forest). It was a fascinating trip and Pip was generous with his time — he's a busy man not least because of the increasing popularity of shooting with traditional bows, and obviously making longbows is a labour-intensive process.

Standing listening to Pip talk in his workshop, accompanied by the overriding and reassuring smell of dusty woodwork, it's clear that here is a man who lives and breathes not only the historical connection of his work but also the materials of his craft. In fact, when he lost one of his fingers on the circular saw a few years ago, you wonder if actually he bled sap instead of blood. He told us the tale with the unnerving, genuine nonchalance of a veteran — presumably bowyers have suffered equivalent injuries through the ages and it's only the electricity and the two packs of frozen peas (for the trip to hospital, bowyer and bowyer's finger) that made this accident any different. As they couldn't guarantee it would have complete feeling if they sewed it back on, he elected for them not to bother, since the idea of such an imperfect finger seemed to him worse than none at all. I want to stress that he told us this not as an affectation, but with the matter-of-factness of a craftsman. Cartoonists rarely lose their fingers in moments of indiscretion, so it was in a way both humbling and bracing to meet someone for whom such things are a reality.

A consequence of his years of experience as a bowyer gives Pip an almost uniquely qualified opinion on the history of the longbow. The perceived wisdom on the subject is that the English longbow was a formidable weapon, with an awesome draw-weight releasing armour-penetrating arrows up to 300 yards, at a staggering rate of fire. But actually the evidence in both archaeological finds and replica shoots doesn't back up what may be English propaganda — a formidable weapon, yes, but not to the extremes that are often claimed for it.

One of the interesting things about this is that although original longbows from the time do exist (most of which are from the Mary Rose, which we went to see the next day) none of them can be drawn — the wood simply wouldn't withstand being strung, let alone being drawn or releasing an arrow. But someone like Pip can (unlike your normal military historian) draw informed conclusions about likely performance based on examining physical details of original examples, such as the fineness of their grain, and their length and weight.

Pip's research on the historic English war bow is available in his small but rich little book Medieval War Bows: a Bowyer's Thoughts. His conclusion puts the realistic draw-weight of the English war bow at considerably less than 100lbs. This isn't because the bows couldn't be made more powerful (they could be) or that medieval archers couldn't draw more (they could). Instead, he asserts that the limiting factor was the string technology at the time. Although no bowstrings have survived from the middle ages, the maximum thickness of the strings can be known for certain because the nocks on the end of the arrows must have fitted them. Given that for a viable weapon the string would have to last at least for a handful of shots without breaking, it's likely that the working draw weight of standard military issue longbows (which were fundamentally a disposable weapon) was much lower than English historians have previously wanted to believe.

Pip's larger book, The Heritage of the Long Bow, discusses more detail than you can shake a bag of arrows at, including everything you could need to make a bow — except, of course, the years of experience that are required in order to do the job properly. Contact Bickerstaffe Bows directly if you want to get hold of either book . . . or one of his bows.

A few weeks back, someone I had trained with years and years ago turned up at one of the aikido dojo where I practice. It was interesting to work out with him again because now, as then, I can learn a lot from his thorough and powerful style. But he's also the person who stuffed up my shoulder in a pin over ten years ago. It hasn't made any difference that anyone in the real world would notice, but if you have the pleasure of cranking a submission arm lock on me (and if you do aikido, then of course you might) you'll discover (if you're sensitive enough . . . lots of people aren't) that one arm goes a fair bit further than the other.

This happened to me in ikkyo. That's the "first thing" of aikido, the basic immobilisation technique, and the pin usually works by holding the outstretched arm flat to the mat, at an angle in the region of 127 degrees to the side of the body. That's enough detail — either you know what I'm talking about or you don't. (I have to be careful because as soon as you make an assertion about any point of technique in aikido — or presumably fly-fishing, train-spotting, or day-dreaming — there will be plenty of people clamouring to differ). But the point is, the pin is the ending, and generally it's true to say that the victim (called in aikido parlance the uke) is, at this stage, passive — because they have been controlled by the technique. So if at this stage of the technique, you sustain an injury, there's very little you could have done to prevent it. Liken it, if you will, to slapping a child after you've tucked them gently into bed and read them a story.

Now the important thing to bear in mind is that in the context of an aikido class, I am only in that position because I agreed to let it happen to me. I don't mean because the technique works in an irresistible, unthwartable way — that's a "does aikido work?" question, which is a different matter entirely — but because the nature of aikido is that one of you has agreed to be the victim (although it's more common to say "receive the technique"). The bow before the attack is more or less us formally agreeing that I am coming at you to be victimised.  The philosophical angle on this is that aikido practice is co-operative rather than competitive, so that in fact I am volunteering to be your victim for your sake. I sacrifice myself to further your own development. I give you my arm so you can practice twisting it, so that you might become a better arm-twister.

Now you're thinking, wow, that's beautiful . . . or a bit weird, whatever. But it is why aikido people are such dears, bless them. But here's the rub — if, after all that, you hurt me, then you're an arse. Certainly that's what I thought at the time — and I was interested to see that, about 10 years later, on meeting said person my reaction was pretty much the same. He's still an arse, and he's still giving it out almost certainly without realising that he's known on the circuit (or part of the circuit) for such stupidity. I know this because when I said to one of the seniors after he'd gone, "ah yes, it's because of ______ that one of my shoulders doesn't work properly," he sighed and replied, "you and about ten others, I should think."

In some martial arts, someone like that would be smacked down into place and it would either stop, or he'd get a trophy and a tattoo for being such a full-on combat warrior. But remember this isn't about effectiveness, it's about hurting people when they are trying to help you. Put another way, it's like wounding people during the warm-up, since to all intents and purposes a submission done on someone who has given you their arm so you can practice your submission techniques is, at the end, really just a stretching exercise.

Anyway, aikido people, like I said, are such dears, that problems like this all too often go unaddressed. Bless them. Me, I'm not going to confront someone like this about it, because there are both simple and complex reasons why it's not worth it. Against ignorance the gods themselves contend in vain. I will (like everyone else who is mindful of this individual) avoid exposing myself to any more risk than is necessary, and write bitchy little comments about it in my blog, afterwards.

As a footnote: if he trained where I regularly trained, I would address this for the protection of all the other students. But, as I said, I hadn't seen the person concerned for 10 years, and probably won't do for as long again. And yes, if you were wondering, of course he gets it from his instructor (I know because I trained there too for a couple of years or so). I'm sure they think they are terribly tough, but what they haven't worked out  is that it's possible to be tough without being idiotic. But that, of course, only happens if you want it to.

Could it be that Mark Twain had some instruction from a Fudebakudo master? This quotation shows that he understood the basic teachings of the art:

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him."

— Mark Twain

From Twain Quotes.

Several times a week I walk past the haberdashery shop where I bought the bits and pieces needed to make the wedding cake and I am reminded of the conversation I had with one of the women working there at the time. Rather than introduce the unfamiliar word "aikido" into the conversation, I'd previously said I was making little "judo" figures.

But when I needed the material for the hakama (the black pleated skirts) it clearly wasn't that straightforward, and I was asked again what martial art it was for. Reluctantly, because I generally avoid conversations about the martial arts with martially uninformed (that is, normal) people, I said "aikido."

"Is that the one with the sticks?" the lady asked.

"Well . . . no, you're probably thinking of kendo," I replied, because on the balance of probabilities (and previous experience) that would be the case.

"No, I'm sure it's aikido," she said. "They always bring their sticks, but they never use them. They just stroke each other."

Yep, that sounds like aikido. 😉

It is well known that Fudebakudo masters, drawing on the tradition of Zen, often torment and bemuse their students with koans. Sometimes a single koan is thrown before a student to disrupt reliance on  the intellect as a tool for understanding reality. At other times, a whole line of koans is used as a test of equinamity. Koans, once understood, are usually not discarded but instead left behind on the Way as both obstacle and encouragement to those who follow. Fudebakudo students recognise them as tokens indicating that an enlightened master has passed ahead.

Examples of classical Fudebakudo koans:

• white koan
• red koan
• red and white koan

This post was formerly in the Forum. I was reminded of it during a contemplative moment (as a passenger) on the A34 (I think) on the way to Bicester at the weekend.

I just finished reading Mishima's Sword by Christopher Ross.

It's an engrossing piece of research concerning Yukio Mishima, the Japanese writer who famously (or, more accurately, infamously) killed himself in the "traditional" manner of seppuku in 1970. The book loosely takes the form of a journal of Ross's progress as he attempts to track down the sword that was used to decapitate Mishima, but it's also an account of Mishima's last day, and a scattered collection of analyses of both Mishima's motivation and others' reaction to what he did. Ross points out that in many ways Mishima was a combination of several taboos that, individually, Japanese society prefers not to confront; so altogether this makes him a fascinating and awkward figure. Despite the uneasiness or even dismissal with which many modern Japanese react to what he represented, Mishima's work is still widely read in Japan.

Ross's book, like Fudebakudo, quotes a line from the Hagakure (one of a few classic texts on the so-called code of the samurai) regarding the dangers of studying an art and merely becoming an "artist." Although Mishima was undeniably a literary artist, was he ever a warrior, a martial artist — or was he just playing the part? Despite adopting the forms of war in life (he had his own militia, and was graded in several martial arts) and especially in death, was he ever doing more than just bizarrely aping them? It's a provocative question, because it raises the issue of what anyone practicing a martial art in times of peace — let alone in a foreign culture — can do to be anything other than an actor, or, as Hagakure puts it, just an "artist." 

By the way, I had previously enjoyed Ross's entertaining Tunnel Visions (which, whilst explicitly consisting of insightful anecdotes and philosophical musing, delightfully carries the implicit message that a great many employees of London Underground are simply having a doss). Incidentally, aikido readers who are familiar with Robert Twigger's well-known book Angry White Pyjamas may also be entertained to discover that Ross is one of Twigger's flat-mates at the start of that book.

Last night I was sitting in the pub, like you do, talking to a friend who explained how the shape of his face had been influenced by Thai boxing — a nose injury from falling flat on the mat, as it happens (he said: "People ask me 'Why didn't you put your hands out?', and I tell them, 'Because I was unconscious.'") I have to state my position now: I admire Thai boxing for effectiveness. Although I am not a Thai boxer myself nor ever could be, I did live in Thailand for some time so I have seen muay thai at its most authentic (Lumphini stadium, ringside, and in dusty contests in the villages of Esarn), as well as in its culturally-numbed but nonetheless devastating form in gyms and fight-nights in the UK. I set this out now to make it clear that what follows is not an attack on muay thai per se, but a rejection of the noble myth of oppression.

Anyway… we're back in the pub. My friend then said that Thai boxing had developed from a time when "they" were forbidden to carry weapons, so "they" had learnt to improvise with agricultural weapons and their own bodies.

My eyes roll. This must the the second most over-used canard in the martial arts (the first is, of course, the tedious one about the black belt; and the third is the nonsense about knocking people off horses with flying kicks). The Fudebakudo book lampoons it on p.85 by including shotguns and combine harvesters in the Agricultural Weaponry of the Okinawan Peasantry. Surely everyone couldn't have developed their fighting systems because they were forbidden from using better ones? Because if they did, as Marc MacYoung points out, it implies that the weapons art is the better one; after all, the first thing the uprising does when it rises up is grab the weapons. Otherwise, of course, the oppressors would disarm themselves, impoverish the peasants by handing them edged or projectile weapons, and then go about the business of controlling the armed peasantry with the superiority of an unarmed martial art.

Perhaps it's true; perhaps there may have been one or two occasions in history where an improvised or unarmed martial system really did emerge to rise up and overthrow the weapon-hoarding oppressors. But in reality this is exactly the kind of thing people would say if they were asked why they were fighting with second-rate weapons. "We haven't got any, because, uh, we're not allowed." Try it if someone ever tells you their style of pummel-wrestling is the best martial art. What, really, against a gun from over there? They think you're being silly; you're not. Did the current MMA system develop because its protagonists were forbidden by the ruling classes from using guns? Actually, in a way it did — but it wasn't an uprising.

The trouble with the "this martial art developed from oppression" position is that it rarely follows through to its logical conclusion. Instead, it turns in on itself. How often do such stylists practice against a trained enemy with a superior weapon? In their forms, in their kata, perhaps there's a moment when they "take a sword" (thereafter to use it, natch). But generally, in the application, the competitions, the kumite, one guy never gets the sharp sword or the gun. No, they both fight unarmed, or at least, within the system. So, isn't that oppressed peasants fighting amongst themselves? If so, how noble is that?

Of course, these are concessions to sparring and training in the modern world, up to a point. But it does make the noble argument of oppression somewhat irrelevant.

On page 48, Fudebakudo describes the use of cats in hand-to-hand combat. When I was researching this unusual activity, I missed Jeff de Boer's astonishing armour for cats.

The original impetus for Fudebakudo's Battle Cats of Burma story was triggered on a trip out of Bangkok. Idly flicking through the Thai Airways in-flight magazine, a photograph caught my eye because — to my surprise — it was a face I knew. It was a cat, one that lived upstairs above one of the aikido dojo in Bangkok, with a quizzical expression and a striking pair of eyes: one green and one blue. Such creatures (called khao manee in Thai) are considered propitious and can fetch appropriately high prices. This one lived an indulged, air-conditioned life with a few pedigree cat friends (although those all had the regulation two blue eyes). It sometimes sat on the stairs looking down on the aikido classes through the smoked glass door to the dojo. So I read the article, which was about the history of Siamese cats. Within it was a throwaway line about the warriors of Ayudhya carrying cats into battle on their shoulders.

Of course, this kicked off a line of research that led me to arrange a meeting with the journalist when I returned to Bangkok. It didn't seem suspicious at the time, but he was a hard man to catch, and after a couple of failed meetings, he suggested instead that I could find out more from Martin Clutterbuck, one of the world's foremost experts on Siamese cats. I contacted Mr Clutterbuck and described the use of cats in battle to him, asking if he could give me more precision on, for example, the provinces where such warriors may have come from, and the kind of training they used to prepare their cats for combat. He replied with a polite but slightly exasperated email saying that if the story had even one shred of truth to it, he would have certainly known of it; but that this was the first he had ever heard of such a thing.

So two things resulted. One is a grudging respect for the bald-faced inventiveness of the journalist concerned. I decline to mention his full name here (Michael Something) because there is honour amongst thieves… I changed "Siamese" to "Burmese," and put the tall tale into the book. It's harder to check the facts of a story based in Myanmar rather than Thailand, you see. Perhaps one day someone will.

Incidentally, I did find one other intriguing precedent of cats being present on a battlefield. Soldiers of one ancient army, marching to do battle against the Egyptians, are recorded as having carried cats with them — not as weapons, but in the belief that the feline-worshipping Egyptians would not strike them, for fear of harming the cats. A human shield, but,well, made of cats. Strange but true.