Hip Hop artist Sky Blu of LMFAO claimed in 2010 that Mitt Romney applied “a Vulcan grip” to him during a territorial dispute over the rapper’s seat back on board a plane preparing to embark from Vancouver to Los Angeles. Air marshals removed Mr. Blu from the flight prior to departure.

CS Monitor

MTV

Hat tip to Jim Geraughty.

Polish photographer Tomasz Gudzowaty has a photoessay of Shaolin Temple monks meditating and practicing kung fu.

Hat tip to Visual News via Vanderleun.

Wendi Deng, it turns out, studied at the Yale School of Organization and Management, presumably after leaving the Shaolin Temple.

Eric Sofge explains that Hollywood has eliminated karate from the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid (1984).

[T]he new movie has nothing at all to do with karate: It’s set in Beijing and centers on the character-building (and bully-slapping) benefits of kung fu. The new version of Miyagi, a handyman by the name of Han played by Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan, teaches young Dre (Jaden Smith) the flowing strikes and quasi-spiritual mindset of a martial art first developed in China’s Henan province, at the legendary Shaolin temple. Forget “wax on, wax off,” and karate’s emphasis on no-nonsense kicks and punches; the new kid learns about channeling and projecting your Chi, and the more varied lessons of “jacket on, jacket off … pick up jacket, drop jacket.” In fact, karate is so irrelevant to the story that the movie will reportedly be marketed as The Kung Fu Kid in non-U.S. markets.

Karate’s relevance to American audiences seems to have declined along with the martial art’s popularity in the United States.

Karate’s decline since then was the result of increased competition in the marketplace. ...[A] flood of immigration from South Korea throughout the 1980s brought on a proliferation of Tae Kwon Do schools, which began to squeeze the karate dojos out of business. The Korean style seemed better suited to American consumers, who craved clear rewards and the opportunity for quick advancement. Tae Kwon Do offered more belts than karate, and the top ranking could be attained in as little as half the time. “It’s not that it’s better or cheaper. ... Americans just like the idea of being a black belt.”

3:21 video

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Barack Obama received a lectureship in Law at the University of Chicago without ever publishing any legal articles or monographs. He won election to the Illinois State Senate (in a solid democrat district) without opposition by disqualifying his primary opponents. He won a seat in the United States Senate effectively unopposed (Alan Keyes ran a token candidacy) because the real Republican candidate withdrew after a democrat judge disgraced and humiliated him by releasing his scandal-fodder divorce papers. Then, Obama was elected President of the United States, having done nothing as a Senator except run for president, with a record completely void of meaningful political accomplishment of any kind. He recently followed up all that by being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for absolutely nothing.

On his current trip to Asia, Obama managed to add yet another meritless achievement to his already lengthy list. President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea, who himself is a practioner of Tae Kwon Do (the Korean version of Karate, noted for lots of kicking) presented Obama with a black belt. Needless to say, the new TKD black belt has never practiced, never tested, never so much as thrown a kick.

Obama could easily identify with the Duke of Wellington who, when asked which of his numerous honors and titles he most esteemed, identified the Order of the Garter because it had “none of this damned nonsense about merit in it.”

LA Times

Hat tip to Right Wing News.

9:45 video

The video shows a referee, identified as Isao Nakamura Fushiki, putting a decisive stop to some post-karate-match aggression on the part of the contestant in blue.

It was clearly posted with intent, being labeled “Karate Master attacks 17-year-old,” and comments on YouTube and on martial arts sites have been overwhelmingly harshly critical of the behavior of Fushiki.

Apparently, despite the video’s recent appearance, the actual incident occurred a long time (eleven years!) ago at Autonomous University of Tamaulipas in Mexico. No explanation for the video’s sudden appearance has been found.

Isao Nakamura Fushiki is identified on the Net as a 7th (or 10th) dan Goju Ryu master (one source says Shito Ryu) who was World Kata Champion in 1970, 1971, and 1972 (one source says he was champion five times during the 1970s). One commenter in Spanish says that he served as an Imperial bodyguard for Hirohito and was known to Japanese karate fans as “the madman.”

The event was clearly not a conventional karate match, since the blue-clad contestant is wearing a kung fu outfit rather than a gi. Various commenters claim that the contestant in white was Fushiki’s pupil or even younger brother.

His takedown was certainly effective, but his third strike, the foot stomp to the head, seems generally to be thought to have been excessive.

Short version: 0:33 video

Long version: 3:15 video

1:16 video

Joe Hyams, novelist, screenwriter, biographer, and Hollywood columist (IMDB entry) and author of the much admired Zen in the Martial Arts passed away in Denver last Saturday at the age of 85.

Hyams was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attended Harvard. He served in the US Army during WWII, and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. After the war, he became a nationally syndicated columnist, writing on Hollywood and the film industry.

He studied the martial arts for 50 years.

Alain Burrese describes Hyams’ MA career.

Joe Hyams took up fencing lessons in the 1950’s and through those classes he met film music composer Bronislau Kaper. In 1958, Kaper introduced him to Ed Parker, who was teaching Kenpo in the weight room in Beverly Hills Health Club. Mr. Hyams became one of Ed Parker’s first private students and also one of Mr. Parker’s first black belts.

Joe Hyams was the first person to introduce Bruce Lee into the Hollywood community. He helped Bruce Lee, with whom he trained privately get a foothold in Hollywood during Bruce’s struggling years. Mr. Hyams trained with Bruce Lee for two years, and when Bruce left for Hong Kong to pursue his film career, he suggested that Joe learn from Jim Lau, who trained him in Wing Chun.

LA Times obituary

MartialArtsInfo.com obituary

A demonstration was arranged of Yamashita’s judo for President Roosevelt in March 1904. TR was a devotee of boxing and a strong believer in fitness, and before long Yamashita was giving the President of the United States lessons three times a week.

This fascinating October 2000 article, from Journal of Combative Sport, was recently posted on a martial arts list I read.

When you take a Japanese martial art in Japan the first thing you need to understand is that it is not a business to the teachers. It is a relationship. In many ways it is like a marriage. But unlike a marriage- one side, the teacher, has all the power. The students defer to the teacher and follow his directions. There is no negotiations, no pick and choose of what to follow or not. The student pretty much jumps when the teacher says jump and sits when the teacher says sit. Your only choice should you not like the situation is to sever your ties and leave. Again, unlike a marriage leaving this relationship is much cheaper. Since you place so much control over yourself when you enter into this relationship, finding a teacher worthy of that trust is important.

The particular feat being attempted is Senbongiri, 1000 cuts in as short a time as possible.

Introductory 8:24 video

1001 cuts in 36:06 7:28 video

In the year 2000, however, Russell McCartney of the Ishi Yama Ryu school of Seattle performed 1181 consecutive cuts without a miss in 1hr 25min: 5:45 video

A lot of tennis-players grunt with effort upon striking the ball, but the fetching 6’ 2” (188 cm.) Maria Sharapova produces a veritable kiai, which the Melbourne Herald Sun measured at “71.5dB—louder than a vacuum cleaner (70dB) and approaching the level of a power drill (80dB).”

Little do they know in Melbourne that, at Wimbleton in 2005, Sharapova was measured reaching 101 db, almost as loud as a police siren!

Black Belt Magazine has made its first issue, published in 1961, available on-line.

It was 50¢ an issue, $3 for an annual subscription, way back then.

Daniel Soar, in the London Review of Books, reveals that Vladimir Putin (along with some friends) published a book on Judo several years ago, which has more recently been translated into English as: Judo: History, Theory, Practice.

I suppose it is not surprising that a KGB officer would have trained in one or more the fighting arts. But Putin being a keen enough jūdōka actually to have written a book on the subject is definitely a surprise.

I find that his Wikipedia bio does discuss his involvement in martial arts.

One of Putin’s favorite sports is the martial art of judo. Putin began sambo (a Soviet martial art developed for the Red Army and NKVD) at the age of 14, before switching to judo, which he continues to study today. Putin won competitions in his hometown of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), including the senior championship of Leningrad. He is the President of the Yawara Dojo, the same St. Petersburg dojo he studied at as a youth. Putin co-authored a book on his favorite sport, published in Russian as Judo with Vladimir Putin and in English under the title Judo: History, Theory, Practice.

Though he is not the first world leader to practice judo, Putin is the first leader to move forward in the advanced levels. Currently, Putin is a black belt (6th dan) and is best known for his Harai Goshi, a sweeping hip throw. Vladimir Putin is Master of Sports (Soviet and Russian sport title) in Judo and Sambo. After a state visit to Japan, Putin was invited to the Kodokan Institute and showed the students and Japanese officials different judo techniques.

Putin is also an fan of mixed martial arts. He was in attendance at the BODOG Fight event in St.Petersburg.

Daniel Soar looks to Putin’s Judo to explain his technique for dealing with the United States.

The excellent thing about judo – in theory – is that you don’t have to be stronger than your opponent to beat him. The idea is that you use the momentum of his attack to keep him moving in the same direction, and then, with a little twist, you send him flying onto the mat. The bigger they are the harder they fall. This should be useful to Putin, since Russia is so heavily outgunned and outspent by the US military machine that it can’t win the arms race the old-fashioned way. Putin provides a striking metaphor to demonstrate the judo master’s technique. He calls it ‘give way in order to conquer’. Imagine you are a locked door. Your opponent wants to break you open with his shoulder. If he is ‘big and strong enough and rams through the door (that is, you) from a running start, he will achieve his aim’. But here’s the neat bit. If instead of ‘digging in your heels and resisting your opponent’s onslaught’, you unlock it at the last minute, then, ‘not meeting any resistance and unable to stop, your opponent bursts through the wide-open door, losing balance and falling.’ If you’re even more cunning, you can stop being a door and stick out a leg, causing him to trip as he sails through. ‘Minimum effort, maximum effect’, as Russia’s effortlessly effective president says.

The evident ingenuity of this technique made me wonder why Putin didn’t deploy it in the run-up to the G8 dojo. It was puzzling. On his way to Germany, Bush went on the offensive. He visited Poland and the Czech Republic to publicise his plan to install ‘exoatmospheric kill vehicles’ – little missiles designed to hit bigger missiles – on sites close to the Russian border. Putin’s counter-attack was very bold. He said that if America was going to play silly buggers with its Raytheon EKVs, then he would point his biggest ICBMs at Western European cities. ‘A new Cold War!’ the papers screamed. The leaders of the free world were righteously outraged, whereas Putin had merely closed the door. Any moment now he would flip the latch and stick out a leg.

But the analogy was troubling. When would the door open, and where was his leg? At first I wondered whether Putin was readying himself for the long game, hunkering down, raising the stakes to force the US to spend more and more money on more and more weapons until it bankrupted itself and went pop. Except, of course, that this would be playing into Bush’s hands, since American military spending is what the US economy depends on. The need for more weaponry would mean an even mightier America. So Putin wasn’t so clever after all: he’d forgotten all his old teaching and had taken up gunslinging in a fight he could only lose. Or so I thought.

On 7 June the full genius of Putin’s strategy was revealed. Earlier, Bush had said: ‘Vladimir – I call him Vladimir – you should not fear the missile defence system . . . Why don’t you co-operate with us on the missile defence?’ Ingeniously, Putin now called his bluff, and unbolted the new Iron Curtain. He quietly suggested that the US base its missile interception system on a Russian military installation in Azerbaijan, an unanswerable solution if – as the Americans claim – the EKVs really are intended to counter an Iranian nuclear threat. Bush’s people, wrong-footed, could only say that his proposal was ‘interesting’ and that the presidents would discuss it further in Kennebunkport, Maine at the beginning of July. But this is likely to be the end of the missile defence plan for Poland and the Czech Republic. Ippon!

Hat tip to Richard Fernandez at PJM.

0:51 video

Kyuso Mifune (1883-1965), probably the greatest exponent of judo of all-time, astonishes in this 7:19 video.

Kudokan bio

Kyuzo Mifune’s Rules of the Dojo.
——————————————————————
The above excerpt was taken from the 1:3:16 The Essence of Judo, also happily available on-line.

A tour group of U.S. senior citizens fought off a band of muggers in eastern Costa Rica, sending two of the assailants fleeing and killing a third, police said Thursday.

One of the tourists — a retired U.S. serviceman whom officials estimated was in his 70s — allegedly put Warner Segura in a headlock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of San Jose.

The Americans had arrived in Limon on the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Carnival Liberty.

“It was a group of 12 senior citizens from the United States who were going to spend a few hours in the area, but their tour bus entered a dangerous sector known as Cieneguita”, Hernandez said.

The tourists drove Segura to the local Red Cross branch but he was declared dead, Hernandez said. He declined to give the names or hometowns of the tourists.

The Red Cross also treated one of the tourists for an anxiety attack, Hernandez said.

Costa Rican authorities said they did not plan to file charges against the tourists, who left on their cruise ship after the incident.

“They were in their right to defend themselves after being held up,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez said Segura had previous charges against him for assaults.

It certainly sounds like he broke the mugger’s veterbrae, not his clavicle.

An elderly man would be likely to be pessimistic about his chances in a contest of speed or strength with a significantly younger opponent. Consequently, the American retiree must have resorted to a lethal attack. If he were younger, doubtless, he would have incapacitated and not killed the mugger.

The New York Post identifies the American hero as Allan Clady, a 70 year old retired Marine.

Emlyn has a good deal of information on the film, and identifies the older female martial artist as Ge Chun Yan.

6:56 video

7:16 video

There were numerous restrictions on forms of attack, but in under two rounds, the contestants grew heated, and contacts violating the rules were exchanged. It was thought too dangerous to proceed, and the match was declared “no winner, no loser, no draw.”

2:51 video

video

But even the Japanese Bar Exam’s legendarily low pass rate looks like a piece of cake compared to the under 1% passing rate of the hardest test, the Japanese 8th dan Kendo examination (46:44 minute video).

There are more than two million practioners of the sport of Kendo, the art of Japanese fencing, in Japan. Since WWII, only 400 of these have successfully made it past the 8th dan examination. The Japanese Kendo Association actually distingushes ten levels (dan) of mastery of the sport, but the 8th dan, hachi dan, is the last level requiring a physical test, and the most difficult.