Enlightenment that refreshes. 1:03 video

Japanese culture, behavior, customs, etiquette, and social expectations are very, very different from our own. Don Roley provides some useful advice for Occidentals considering studying martial arts in Japan.

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.

Crab Fu 1:08 video

Circulating in martial arts circles this morning are a pair of videos from Japanese television of an attempt by someone whose name I couldn’t catch trying to make his mark in the Guinness Book of Records in Tameshigiri, the cutting with a sword of makiwara (targets) made from tatami (rush floor mats) rolled around a bamboo shaft.

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.

It’s very short and has no sound track, so I was not going to blog it, but everyone who has seen it seems to love this video of a Japanese sword slicing through a plastic bottle. Sharp, isn’t it?

0:51 video

Kyuso Mifune

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.

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The above excerpt was taken from the 1:3:16 The Essence of Judo, also happily available on-line.

AP reports that a mugger in Costa Rica picked the wrong group of seniors, one which obviously included a retired American with expertise in hand-to-hand combat.

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.

A short excerpt featuring Bagua training from the 1983 film Wu lin zhi, known in English as Pride’s Deadly Fury, and The Honor of Dongfang Xu, an unusual case of Martial Arts cinema using real martial artists.

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

6:56 video

Documentary on the One Inch Punch popularized by Bruce Lee , featuring martial arts film clips, demonstrations, and discussion by Jeet Kune Do and Wing Chun instructors.

7:16 video