But a sword dipped in ink, now, that's a good compromise
In case you haven’t seen it yet . . .
C’mon, Jackie, did the world really need this? More worryingly, they’ve made this film without hiring anyone from Exploding Pen to act as Fudebakudo consultants.
Ah well. I suppose I should take the opportunity to remind you of sweeptheleg.com.
This is the advert currently running in MAI magazine.
A winter ninja demonstrating good covert snowballing technique.
There’s a new Fudebakudo cartoon in the gallery, which appears in the latest (December) edition of MAI magazine. It shines a cold light on the different snowballing styles to be found in the martial arts.
Somehow, snowball fights never really worked for me when I was little. I used to hurl increasingly hurried, and therefore poorly-made, snowballs at my friend G___, never really hitting with any of them, until he’d come over, rugby tackle me, and rub my face in the snow. Every time.
Last year — which is actually about thirty years after those early battles — we had a snowball fight (with his kids) in which I lobbed snowballs at him that inexplicably and repeatedly struck their target. We were both bemused. In fact, he was so bemused he forgot to rugby tackle me and rub my face in the snow.
“The world’s most secretly guarded fighting techniques” — The Boston Globe
Secret Fighting Arts of the World, by
John F. Gilbey ISBN 0804816085, pub. Tuttle. The book was first published in 1963. This is a 2001 edition.*
Although over the years I did a lot of research for the Fudebakudo book, there is one book that was, indirectly, hugely influential: Secret Fighting Arts of the World by John F. Gilbey. Actually it wasn’t really by a Mr Gilbey, but I didn’t find that out until much, much later. I read it when I was around 13 or 14, and it sowed a seed which undoubtedly resulted in my drawing the first Fudebakudo cartoons well over a decade later.
When we were young teenagers, a friend called Jon lent me the book and I distinctly remember being impressed by the wonders described within it. To my delight, I recently got hold of a second-hand copy, pictured here (although a previous owner has drawn loops around some of the chapter titles — gah! why would anyone do that?). If you like the left-hand pages of Fudebakudo, you will love this book and you should seek it out. It’s a parody so sly it makes Fudebakudo seem as coarse as a clown-car with square wheels.
I don’t think I was particularly credulous as a child, and today anyone who knows me will tell you I have a sceptical outlook so developed it’s probably wearisome, but back then I never realised how deliberately untrue the book was. Some of the things it reported were suspicious, certainly, and the incident described in its last chapter sort of flagged to me that silliness was afoot (which, I now appreciate, is a very neat thing to do with the final words). But if I’m honest, I didn’t understand how mischievous and how good the book was until much later. Two things in particular contributed to its credibility. Firstly, it was written as a convincing series of reports without hyperbole by someone who was quite clearly experienced in the martial arts. Secondly, it was published by Tuttle Publishing, a well-known and immensely credible source of books on martial arts (especially, back then, Japanese arts, since Tuttle had (still has, in fact) strong links with Tokyo).
An indication of how strong the book’s subliminal influence was upon me is shown by a double-spread illustration of anatomical “Zodiacal Times” (showing where the dim mak death-touch spot is at particular times of the day) on pp.17–18 of Secret Fighting Arts. I had no recollection of this at the time I did my drawing, but Fudebakudo readers will recognise nonsense so similar in Fudebakudo, purporting to be from a 15th century English book, Samuel Borogove’s Systematic Anatomie of Man, his Life, and Contrivance for Ending It, that I am shocked to realise how unoriginal and close to Gilbey’s that gag is.
Well, the reason Gilbey’s book was written with such an informed voice was that the author was in fact Robert W. Smith, an astonishingly knowledgable martial arts historian with unprecedented experience, and who repeatedly took the trouble to seek out true experts in the Far East. Unfortunately, because I read the book so long ago and because I didn’t use it directly as a source when researching strangeness in the martial arts, I did not realise Gilbey was a pseudonym for Smith until after Fudebakudo was published. Certainly, had I known, I would have dedicated the Fudebakudo book to him, for both hoodwinking and inspiring me as a youngster, and for basically being the grandmaster of writers of martial arts parody books. It’s a limited field so there aren’t many of us, to be sure, but there is only one master. Thank you, Robert W. Smith.
* There’s a sequel to Secret Fighting Arts, also by John F. Gilbey, called The Way of a Warrior: A Journey into Secret Worlds of Martial Arts. Smith’s book Martial Musings, which, to my embarrassment, I have yet to read, also touches upon the project from Smith’s, rather than Gilbey’s, perspective.
Olivia, who eats ice.
It’s long overdue . . . a shout-out to Mr Rowzee and his hakamablog. Featuring food and ice-chomping doggie action.
The Fudebakublog lurches back into life after a long sleep . . .
I’ve been giving all my attention to the release of the latest Beholder project, The Knot-Shop Man. Unlike the Fudebakudo book, The Knot-Shop Man is a limited edition art project. No martial arts*, no comics, not even a flick-man in the corner of the pages.
The Knot-Shop Man was published by Exploding Pen to mark the tenth anniversary of Planetarium, which was released on 9/9/99. It’s been a big project, and has resulted in a beautiful set of books (there are four books in each set). Unsurprisingly, some of the usual suspects were involved. Fudebakudo animator René did a guest illustration again, and we went back to Nick and his excellent crew at Nima Print & Design for the printing because they did such a great job with Fudebakudo.
The Knot-Shop Man is only available direct from the Beholder site. Because it’s a such a limited edition, unlike Fudebakudo, we are not selling it through other online sellers such as amazon.
* Well maybe, if you look very hard, there’s a hint of martial arts going on in one paragraph in one of the four books. But basically, no. Unless in some weird way you think drinking green tea counts . . . since there’s a lot of that going on.
Fudebakudo p.45, “Kagegamijo”
Readers of Fudebakudo already know about the forgotten art of making kagegamijo — “shadow paper castles”, by which samurai would rapidly fold decoy paper castles to mislead advancing enemy armies into laying siege to the wrong one.
Well, perhaps it’s not quite so forgotten. Wataru Itou, a Japanese artist, has produced Castle on the Ocean. It’s impressive in terms of execution, and the addition of Ferris wheel and rollercoaster is a great idea — what besieger could resist the lure of all the fun of the fair? Sadly, it’s not 1:1 scale, but it’s a start.
Via BoingBoing.
I am a regular reader of Cecil’s Straight Dope. He’s just responded to the question:
“Has martial arts training ever helped anybody defeat a mugger?”
Answer: yes, with qualification. Read the Straight Dope on street effectiveness.
Of course, I have opinions about this because I have trained in martial arts continuously (injuries notwithstanding) for more than a couple of decades. So it’s not a casual remark to say that I believe that most martial artists are at best deluded and at worst fantasising when it comes to assessing their chances of applying learned techniques when faced with a criminal attack. There are a whole number of reasons for this, including the idealised nature of training, the lack of stress-training in traditional martial arts, the assumptions inherent in rules-based competitive martial arts, all sorts of misconceptions arising from the mass media, and, perhaps most significantly, a real failure to understand the pyschology of violent crime.
The fact is that the benefits that arise from training in most martial arts may well help you if you’re attacked — the fact that I have trained with serving police and military personnel who don’t think they are wasting their time supports that — but probably mostly incidentally. As it happens, I personally know someone who took a loaded gun off a bad guy using the aikido technique kote gaeshi without sustaining a bullet wound — but that was an experienced policeman arresting someone who wasn’t quite attacking (he even had the candour to tell me that he had been somewhat astonished that it had worked). But, professionals aside, I strongly suspect that, in terms of dealing with a mugging, reading a good book on Buddhism and playing a couple of proper games of rugby may well be exactly as beneficial as a year of mimsy martial arts training. But you have to be really careful about this: it’s because fighting is different from being mugged, and none of the competitive martial arts (using techniques whose efficacy, unlike more traditional systems, is not really in doubt) allow opponents to outnumber and use hidden weapons, or attack before the fight has begun or indeed before the attacker has been seen, or when the competitor is on the phone or walking down stairs. There’s a reason for that.
The Straight Dope’s answer is based on a slightly smarter understanding of the issue. It’s not a question about winning a fight with an attacker, which is how most martial artists interpret the question (seeing it as such is a trained response, after all). It’s a question about affecting the outcome of the attack, and that is crucially different. I think that the best resource on this topic is Marc MacYoung’s No Nonsense Self Defence (actually he spells it with an S because he’s American). For years I have considered this as recommended reading for anyone — especially anyone you care about — who wants to think about these issues. Most people don’t, but they should. In particular, I highlight the following topics as especially worth reading:
It’s a common but unavoidably naive question to ask, “have you ever used your martial art training for real?” So of course I can’t write about this without implicitly raising the question. In my case the answer is yes, kind of, but none of the situations were straightforward and — more to the point — in every one of the cases the “attacker” was moderately inept. Yes, it’s a good result, but personally I see these as false positives in the argument that martial arts are inherently good for self defence.
Here’s a proof of the limits of self-defence, if you train in a martial art. Do you think you could successfully attack yourself? If you do, there’s your answer. If you don’t think you could successfully attack yourself, then you don’t understand how to use surprise, hidden weapons, environment, intimidation, and criminal friends properly, which means you will lose if you’re ever unlucky enough to be attacked by someone who does.
Now obviously on a blog dedicated to one of the most sophisticated cultural treasures to come out of the Land of the Rising Sun (I’m talking about Fudebakudo here, keep up at the back of the class) I’m hardly likely to suggest that the Japanese are one raisin short of the full cake mix. But . . . but . . . but . . . well, let’s just say, when Japan does fruitcake, it overdoes fruitcake:
Japanese Fruitcake valued at a cool $1.65 million
I have met a few Japanese fruitcakes in my time, some of whom got that way by having strayed too close to the edge of the martial arts’ sanity vortex. But they weren’t encrusted with diamonds.
From icanhascheezburger.
