Gene LaBell and Donn Draeger

Over at Ellis Amdur's wonderful Kogen Budo blog, there was a guest post by author Mark Jabobs on the relationship between the legendary martial artists Gene LaBell and Donn Draeger. Below is an excerpt. The full post may be read here. Ellis Amdur's many books may be ordered here.

Some time ago, Ellis Amdur asked me if I’d be interested in contributing a guest post for the site. Knowing of my friendship with the renowned grappling expert, “Judo” Gene LeBell, and aware of Gene’s past relationship with the famed budoka, Donn Draeger, Ellis thought I might be able to offer some of Gene’s recollections to provide a different-than-usual take on Draeger, and the martial arts of a bygone era.

While Gene’s memory for details has faded a bit with time, I’ve had a number of extensive conversations with him in the past for various magazine articles, not to mention an aborted collaboration on his first attempt at an autobiography years ago. So I’m probably as qualified as anyone to share his impressions on these matters.

As far as Draeger goes, Gene always spoke very highly of him. “A great judo man” and “the best with weapons” was how he described Draeger to me on one occasion, opinions which probably won’t surprise anyone familiar with Draeger’s career in the martial arts. A generation older than Gene, Draeger came out of that pre-war school of judo which the early Japanese instructors in the West employed. My sense of that type of judo, both from talking to Gene and my own research, is that it was a somewhat more combative style, one laced with a bit more groundwork than would come to be the norm in the postwar years. That’s the style Gene appreciated, and I think he respected that “hardcore” approach in Draeger’s style.

The admiration was apparently a two-way street as Draeger expressed his respect for LeBell’s skills in letters to his longtime collaborator, Robert W. Smith. On one occasion, when Gene was scheduled to come into Tokyo to referee the infamous boxer vs. wrestler match-up between Muhammad Ali and Antonio Inoki, Draeger wrote to Smith that, while he thought the bout itself would be a farce, he was looking forward to getting a chance to visit with LeBell.

Draeger went so far as to offer the opinion that the best man in the ring that night would be Gene, who could take either of the two headliners in a fight. As an interesting aside, one of Inoki’s cornermen for the match was legendary catch wrestler, Karl Gotch, known in Japanese pro wrestling circles as Kamirasu, “the god of wrestling.” Years earlier, Gotch had been one of Gene’s main grappling coaches and, while Draeger thought Gene could take either Ali or Inoki in a fight, Gene once commented to me that what no one watching the match realized was Inoki’s cornerman, Gotch, could have taken both men at the same time!

 

Donn Draeger, the Pioneer

I've posted about Donn Draeger previously. Below is an excerpt from an article about this giant in bringing Asian martial arts to the west that appeared in Budo Japan. The full post may be read here.

It must have been around 1977. I was only ten years old and my fascination with Japan was already going strong, with all the strength a child of 10 can muster and I was always pressuring my father to buy me any books related to it and its culture (I didn’t call it “culture” back then –it was just “anything about Japan”). Knowing that I was enthralled by the stories of an old war buddy of his, a war correspondent in the Korean War and one of Greece’s judo pioneers regarding the martial arts, one day he brought me 3 slim tomes from a series titled “Practical Karate” filled with pictures of a middle-aged rather plump Japanese and a big, tall Westerner showing self-defense applications of karate techniques; the two men were the books’ authors and they were Masatoshi Nakayama and Donn Draeger. 

This was the first time I came across the name “Donn Draeger”; with time, I would see it again and again in English-language publications related to the martial arts of Japan. But it would take another 10 years until I discovered in a martial arts’ bookstore, the only one in Athens, the work that I later found out was considered by most his “magnum opus”: the trilogy Martial Arts And Ways Of Japan comprising of Classical Bujutsu, Classical Budo and Modern Bujutsu & Budo. Like most people outside Japan, this was my first exposure to a systematic chronicle about the martial arts ofJapan and their development from the times of the Hogen Monogatari and the Heike Monogatari to Shorinji Kempo, the most modern style recorded by the time the books were written (i.e. early 1970s). And like many people outside Japan, I was captivated.

As captivating as his subjects were, was Draeger himself: he wrote with an authority displaying a knowledge of his subject far deeper than that of most academic researchers –and if those pictures of the “Practical Karate” books were any proof, it looked as if he had done some training himself so I knew I had to find out more (remember, this was pre-Internet and I was living in Greece so I believe I’m allowed some ignorance). So I started searching in books’ databases and libraries and martial arts magazines and slowly and painfully an amazing story started unfolding: this man was so much involved in pretty much everything related to the martial arts –and not only of Japan, even though he seemed to have specialized in those- that it was impossible to have trained in all of them to the extent and depth his writings suggested.

With time I came to realize that he had. Although he never went for the spotlight, others wrote about him –among them his friend and collaborator Robert W. Smith (1926-2011) an ex-marine, ex-CIA employer posted in Taiwan in the early 1960s, a prolific writer in the subject of Chinese martial arts and one of Tai-Chi’s most strong supporters and evangelists in the eastern US. Despite being very emotional (not to mention loquacious) in his writing –they were close friends, after all- his account of Draeger as narrated in his 1999 martial arts autobiography Martial Musings gives a quite detailed sketch of the man and his numerous accomplishments. And when I say “numerous” it is not a figure of speech: if it wasn’t for many eminent martial arts’ teachers and practitioners, Westerners and Japanese corroborating the facts, it would be hard to believe that one man could have done so much in just 30 years.

Sometime along the way the Internet came and access to information became much easier; in the meantime I had also developed a personal network of people who had lived or were still living in Japan so I had the opportunity to ask more about this remarkable man, Donn F. Draeger (this was how he signed most of his work and this is how he is usually mentioned in writing). And more begat more and with time I came to realize that there was little exaggeration when it came to Draeger’s life in the martial arts: he had indeed been there and done that –whatever “that” was. Moreover, he had done it well enough and earnestly enough to earn the respect of pretty much anyone who met him. In a world as subject to pettiness and small-mindedness as any, I have yet to hear one bad word for Donn F. Draeger.

When I came to Japan I started looking for him; not the man himself of course since he had been dead for over 25 years but for his footprints in bookstores, libraries and dojo. And while in the beginning I was astounded by the fact that there weren’t any, with time I came to realize that it made sense: by all accounts, Draeger was a very private person and really devoted to his work researching the martial arts and his training. His closest collaborators in his martial arts’ research were also foreigners who with time (before or after his death in 1982) had returned to their countries and even though most of them made sure to keep his memory alive in stories told to their students or in publications, online or paper (like Smith’s) he didn’t leave any students in Japan while the organization formed to function as a focal point for his research, the International Hoplology Society, was also based in the US.

So apparently little has been left of him in Japan, the country that was his home for half his life and to whose martial traditions he had dedicated his life. There are memories of him still surviving in the minds of some of the (now elderly) Japanese budoka who met him and trained with him in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s but not a record of his actual trip. This article as well as the one that will follow in a future issue is an attempt to collect some of these memories and introduce to a younger generation of Japanese this really important man.

Donn Draeger

Below are excerpts from an article in Black Belt magazine on the late Donn F. Draeger, who was a legendary American martial artist. He was an early pioneer. His three volume "Martial Arts and Ways of Japan" remains a classic. You can read the entire article by clicking on the title of this post.

Donn F. Drager: The Life and Times of an American Martial Arts Pioneer by Paul Nurse

Almost 25 years ago, the martial arts world lost one of its most dynamic and charismatic figures. On October 20, 1982, Donn F. Draeger, USMC (retired), budo kyoshi (full professor of Japanese martial arts and ways) and ranked martial artist in perhaps a dozen combative systems, passed away from cancer at age 60 in his home state of Wisconsin.

Draeger is remembered today chiefly as the author of more than 30 books and numerous articles about the Asian martial arts, as well as for being one of the best-qualified and most experienced Western exponents of the combative arts. The oft-repeated legend that he either had or possessed the equivalent of some 100 black-belt ranks is perhaps apocryphal, but he no doubt was among the most accomplished martial artists of his generation, perhaps of all time. He held a sixth-degree black belt in judo; a seventh degree in jojutsu (Japanese stick fighting), kendo and iaido; and a menkyo license in the tenshin shoden katori shinto-ryu of bujutsu.

During the Great Depression, the 15-year-old Draeger joined the U.S. Marine Corps, continuing his education—and eventually earning a master’s degree in electrical engineering—so he could become a career officer. He saw combat in the Pacific and Korean Wars and served for a time in Manchuria. He was also in the Shanghai area of China, although his mission there is unclear. From a mention in C.W. Nicol’s classic 1975 memoir Moving Zen, it seems a virtual certainty that Draeger was on Iwo Jima during the celebrated February-March 1945 battle that saw almost 26,000 American casualties and more than 22,000 Japanese killed.

After the war, as a young Marine lieutenant and judo black belt, Draeger made his first visit to Japan as part of the occupation forces. Although most Japanese martial arts were proscribed in the immediate postwar period, he sought out highly regarded exponents such as the legendary judoka Kimura Masahiko, with whom he hoped to train. Years later, he studied directly under Mifune Kyuzo, Sato Shizuya and Ito Kazuo (becoming the uke in the illustrations for Ito’s famous English-language book, This Is Judo).

His judo background also led to his being on the official military board of the Supreme Command of Allied Powers in Japan, where he helped decide the status and political responsibility of the various Japanese martial systems. Most of the arts that were demonstrated were banned for having been associated with militarism, although karate-do, curiously, seems to have been exempt.

An anecdote tells that while a member of this board, Draeger watched as karateka under Gichin Funakoshi demonstrated their kata at a deliberately slow pace to make it seem like a form of exercise along the lines of Chinese tai chi chuan. As the only member of the board who understood karate-do’s true nature and intent, Draeger later claimed he allowed it to pass without the other board members’ knowledge.

During his own early years on the Japanese islands, Draeger began training in the classical martial arts and was permitted to join the Kobudo Shinko Kai, the Classical Martial Arts Preservation Society, a research organization in which he was the sole international component. Believing the society’s focus too narrow, however, he eventually broke away to form what became known as the International Hoplology Research Center, now the International Hoplology Society.

A yondan in judo by the time he arrived in Japan, Draeger spent his years in the Pacific Rim living a life that would later read like an entry in a who’s who of martial arts accomplishments. Delving more deeply into the Japanese combative ethos than any Westerner before or since, he became the first non-Japanese judo instructor at the Kodokan Judo Institute (Foreigners Section); the first non-Japanese to demonstrate kata at the All-Japan Judo Championships and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics; the first non-Japanese to compete in the All-Japan High-Dan-Holders Judo Tournament; and one of the first non-Japanese—and definitely the first Caucasian—allowed to enter the koryu. He also became the first foreigner permitted to compete in Japanese jukendo (mock bayonet) tournaments, eventually winning so many events that he was no longer allowed in.

But Draeger was more than a highly trained and skilled martial artist. As an author and researcher with several dozen books to his credit, he crafted works that are considered the most reliable and often the only texts on Asian combative systems in foreign languages. His most famous books are Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts (co-authored with friend and colleague Robert W. Smith) and his celebrated three-volume Martial Arts and Ways of Japan (a series composed of Classical Bujutsu, Classical Budo, and Modern Bujutsu and Budo). At different times, Draeger also served as a contributing editor for Judo Illustrated, published several issues of a journal called Martial Arts International and established Hoplos, the official organ of the International Hoplology Research Center.

While in Japan, Draeger made ends meet by living on his military pension, teaching English conversation, instructing at the Kodokan and occasionally serving as an extra, stuntman or stunt coordinator for Japanese and foreign films. While his most famous “role” was as Sean Connery’s stunt double in the James Bond opus You Only Live Twice (1967), he also took some falls for John Wayne during the comic jujutsu scene in John Huston’s Barbarian and the Geisha (1958).

While trying to establish hoplology as a recognized academic discipline, Draeger taught as a guest lecturer at the University of Maryland and the University of Hawaii. He also spent approximately four months a year on field trips in Asia teaching, visiting schools and studying combative methods, which he subsequently analyzed, recorded and sometimes published.

During the last of those journeys in 1979, misfortune struck Draeger and his team on the island of Sumatra. Visiting the Atjeh tribe, it appears that the entire group was somehow poisoned—perhaps deliberately—and as a result developed severe amebic dysentery requiring hospitalization. Although he recovered from the illness, Draeger began losing weight and grew increasingly weak. His legs swelled, causing great pain, and he found it difficult to walk or stand for very long. Serious training became difficult, then impossible.

After repeated visits to Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, it was discovered that Draeger had cancer of the liver. Returning to his home state to die, he stayed first with his half brother before moving into a veteran’s hospital. It was there, on October 20, 1982, exactly 92 years after his hero, Sir Richard F. Burton, died, that Donn F. Draeger passed away from metastasized carcinoma. He was buried at Wood National Cemetery in Milwaukee, a 50-acre final home to more than 37,000 American veterans. Draeger’s grave lies in Section 4, Site 377.

Opening the Veil on Asian Martial Arts

At KogenBudo, Ellis Amdur has a post about the two men who may have done the most to bring information on Asian Martial Arts to the west, through their writing: Donn Draeger and Robert W. Smith. Below is an excerpt. The full post may be read here.

Robert W. Smith was one of the most important American writers on Asian martial arts, particularly those of Taiwan (and those mainland teachers who settle in Taiwan after the 2^nd World War). He was a powerful man, with a background in judo, wrestling and boxing. After serving with the Marines, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, serving in Taiwan from 1959 to 1962. While there, he undertook a peripatetic study/entry into a number of Chinese martial arts schools. The result of this three years survey of teachers were outlined in a number of his books. Most notably, Smith became a student of Zheng Manqing, an artist and innovative Yang Taijiquan instructor. Zheng was the official instructor of the family of Chiang Kai Shek, and because of this, coupled with Smith’s known connection with the American government, he was able to gain entry into schools that he might otherwise never have found, much less be welcomed.

Smith, thus, had contact with schools in official favor: although he tended to present himself as having secured tutelage with the finest instructors on Taiwan, there were many whom he never got access to. There were many other great instructors of whom he was not even aware. Nonetheless, he was an important figure due to his writings: he brought some wonderful teachers to the attention of Western practitioners. In addition,  his writing, itself, was old-school, with a sense of humor and wit.

To be sure, there were times that he was both pompous and verbose, but he was one of the first writers on martial arts, after E.J. Harrison, who actually brought these people to life.

Smith’s most important collaborator was Donn F. Draeger. Donn was an incredible physical specimen. He started in some form of Yoshin-ryu jujutsu as a child, and later become a brilliant judo practitioner (the formidable John Bluming idolized Donn, and stated that he could not beat him in newaza (ground fighting). Donn made martial arts study his life, achieving expertise in more arts than I believe anyone knows, including karate, several forms of Indonesian pentjak silat, Shinto Muso-ryu jo, Katori Shinto-ryu and a number of forms of Chinese martial arts. He had a 5^th dan in Tomiki Aikido, something that none of his closest friends were even aware that he studied. In his fifties, he could use 400+ pounds in full squats as a workout weight, and in fact, he was one of the pioneers using weightlifting to augment combat sports (coaching, among others Inokuma Isao, Anton Geesink, and Doug Rogers, all Olympians in judo). He revived the old academic discipline of hoplology, the study of the evolution and development of human combative behavior.

When I was on my way to Japan, Terry Dobson, my mentor in aikido recommended to me that I look up Draeger. The only thing I knew about him were his books. Donn was a witty, even bawdy guy in person – he was an ex-Marine, after all – but he very much desired to have his writing accepted in academic circles. He leaned on John ‘Jack’ Hanson-Lowe, an elderly man from a previous generation, who practiced ‘gentleman’s judo’ (He started in his 50’s. There was a place for cultured men such as he in the Kodokan, and he rose to 6^th dan. John was legit—not a fighter, but knowledgeable, and well respected by the older Japanese teachers of the Kodokan, who still appreciated the idea of judo as a form of ethical culture). Unfortunately, Jack edited in a very stiff English style, and truly leached the humanity out of much of Donn’s writing. Therefore, I had a certain impression; I actually imagined Donn to be a tweedy academic who wrote about things that he didn’t do. I mentioned this to Terry, and said, “I’ll look him up if I have a spare moment from training.” Terry just smiled.

I first met Donn at the Renbukan, the dojo of Shimizu Takaji, of Shindo Muso-ryu. Contrary my previous imagined opinion, the man was built like a Greek god, well muscled and as flexible as a gymnast (despite some serious chronic injuries). I only saw him in action a few times—practicing jo and once doing an embu of Katori Shinto-ryu. He was a terrifying man. His weapon would sound a CRACK when contacting his training partner’s weapon. He was not brutal or untrustworthy, but he was also so intense, that the only way you wouldn’t get hurt would be if you matched his intensity.

Imagine wrestling with your dog—and you are used to a golden retriever—but today it is a mastiff, friendly to be sure, but built to kill.

A Martial Arts Giant: Donn Draeger

The late Donn Draeger was a giant in bringing Japanese martial arts to the west. He was doing mixed martial arts: judo, karate, kenjutsu, jujutsu etc., before MMA was cool.

Black Belt magazine did a very nice job with his biography and accomplishments in a two part article.

Part 1 is here and Part 2 is there.

The Two Faces of Combat

The late Donn Draeger developed the science of Hopology, the study of weapons. Below is an excerpt from an article posted at the International Hopology Society website. The full article may be read here.


THE TWO FACES OF COMBATIVES

Hunter B. Armstrong
Introduction
From the hoplological perspective, we clearly distinguish two primary types of combative systems, (fighting arts). As raised several times over the years in HOPLOS, and most recently in Donn Draeger’s article, “Understanding East Asian Combative Culture,”1 martial and civil fighting are two areas of combative behavior that have evolved for different applications under stimulus from different combative contexts. More importantly, however, I intend to show that their distinctions are based in biological adaptations though certainly influenced by cultural mechanisms.

Since the mid-1970’s with E.O. Wilson’s arousal of a general interest in sociobiology and greater emphasis on the biological perspective into the study of man’s behavior, great insights have been made into the wide scope of man’s performance and behavior. This area has further developed into a field now called “evolutionary psychology.” Much of these gains are results of work done in ethology (the study of animal behavior), a field that subsumes man’s behavior (albeit with a certain amount of emotional backlash). One of the leaders in the field is an Austrian scholar, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, who has specialized in man... the animal.

Here, mention should be made that both E.O. Wilson and Eibl-Eibesfeldt have both warned against the common error of many detractors of sociobiology, that of accusing sociobiology and bio-social anthropology (or evolutionary psychology) of claiming that man is an animal at the whim of his genes. Nothing could be further from the truth. These scholars continuously point out that though man is heavily influenced by his genetic makeup, it is the very fact that man can go against that influence and behave contrary to genetic structures that most distinctly separates him from his fellow animals. Nevertheless, to ignore the genetic influence is to do so at the risk of losing what is arguably the most important perspective into man’s behavior.

From the hoplological standpoint, we are, of course, looking at man’s combative behavior and performance, its evolution and continuing development. And here, as elsewhere in man’s behavior, culture has a heavy hand in the manifestation of a behavior whose roots are in genetic structures. It is appropriate, therefore, to look into both man’s culture and his biology, (i.e., animal behavior) to understand man’s biologically based, culturally manifested, combative behaviors.
Combative behavior, as such, is not a sphere of behavior that is generally looked at separately by students of human behavior. Indeed, at best it is relegated to a position as part of the over broad application of the term, “aggression.” Nevertheless, in studies on aggression a great deal of material pertinent to combative behavior has come to light.

Here, we should stop and define for the purposes of this article in particular and for hoplology in general, the meanings of such terms as aggression, combat, etc.

Reminiscing

At Ellis Amdur's Kogen Budo Blog, there was a recent post where the author reminisces about his early days training in Japan ... in Chinese martial arts. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

 

In 1977, thanks to an introduction from Donn Draeger, I began training with Wang Shujin. Here is a video that spans from the  the early 1960’s (black-and-white) to a year before his death (color), when I met him.  We would meet at a temple near Shibuya, if I recall correctly, and in the bitter cold, try to imitate him as he went through his version of the Nanjing Synthesis taijiquan form. This form was created by Chen Pan Ling (here a portion performed by his son, Chen Yun Ching). Wang’s form was very different – he emphasized the elements of xingyiquan and baguazhang that Chen included in this form.

Wang had first started going to Japan to teach in the late 1950’s, I believe. There were several reasons for this: First of all, he was a practitioner of a syncretic religion called Yiguandao. Wang was a high-ranking member of this movement, and engaged in missionary activities, both in Taiwan and in Japan. Secondly, Wang was sponsored in his visits to Japan by Toyama Ryūsuke, one of the sons of Toyama Mitsuru, the founder of the Gen’yosha (‘Dark Ocean Society’). What people do not realize about the uyoku, the so-called Japanese right-wing is that they were intimately intertwined with religious movements, both within Japan and elsewhere. [Toyama was closely associated with the Oomoto-kyo of Deguchi Onisaburo and hence, Ueshiba Morihei of aikidō as well.] Many of men of the right were profound idealists (among the most dangerous of people) and others saw religion as a perfect avenue to move people in the direction that they wanted them to go. The early tairiku ronin (‘continental adventurers’ – agents provocateurs, spies, terrorists) were in large numbers Nichiren and Jodo Shinshu (the Nishi and Higashi Hongwanji) Buddhists, as were some of the most significant strategists who drove the invasion of Northern China.

Toyama Ryūsuke was also closely associated with Shindō Musō-ryū jo. Toyama Mitsuru sponsored various martial arts organizations, particularly from his home-town of Fukuoka, and his leading successor, Uchida Ryōhei was a practitioner of, among other things, this medium-length stick art. The Toyama family had sponsored the sponsors of Shimizu Takaji, the famous teacher of this art. Wang initially stayed at Toyama’s mansion, and through this connection, met and associated with many prominent Japanese martial artists. [NOTE: I have portrayed a lot of these men and this milieu in historical fictional form in Little Bird & The Tiger}.

There are lots of stories about Wang that, not being there, I will not waste time repeating (these often are merely, “He was the strongest man I never saw . . .”). I think, however, that it is probably hard to appreciate how formidable he was from looking at videos: he was really fat, and although he’s certainly agile in the earlier films, if one is not familiar with the purpose of his training, it all seems to be stilted, flowery or senseless. I will recount the only incident that I witnessed, for which I will give a little background.

One of Wang’s teachers was Wang Xiangzhai, the founder of dachengquan, also known as yiquan. This martial art was an attempt to distill the essence of the already pared-down pugilistic style of xingyiquan, focusing on solo training, particularly ‘post standing.’ Among Wang’s fellow students was Sawai Ken’ichi, who founded a Japanese version of this art, which he called Taikiken. Sawai was a very pugnacious man, and both he and Wang used to have training groups on the grounds of Meiji Shrine. Acquaintances of mine, some of whom studied with one or the other, told me that Sawai used to walk over to Wang’s area and berate him, saying he was wasting his time teaching baguazhang, xingyiquan and taijiquan: all he needed was dachengquan! Wang used to laugh and keep on moving. Sawai was a friend of the founder of Kyokushin Karate, Oyama Masutatsu. They had a close relationship and students of each would cross-train with the other. Thanks to this connection, some of Oyama’s students also trained with Wang Shujin. When I was practicing, one Kyokushin karate free-sparring students was among us; a very hard looking man, with a face scarred with numerous splits from kicks or punches to the face.

Wang was very ill at that time, perhaps a year before his death. He had a melanoma which had metastasized, and as one can see in the later portion of the linked video, his legs were stiff. He used to shuffle rather than walk. So, please understand, what I am about to describe was not a fight, or even a free sparring session. Wang asked the karateka to take a punch at him. He brushed it past his face – his forearm was about as big as my calf – and embraced him around the lower back, simultaneously smashing his belly into the man’s torso. It knocked all the wind out of him, and he collapsed to the ground, wheezing. [Wang thought this funny, and I recall his rumble, like an elephant digesting, that passed as his laugh]. So, what I saw was circumscribed – but lord, was it powerful.Wang was renowned for this. He would allow anyone to punch or kick him anywhere below the neck. Beyond that, he could absorb the punch and pulse it back out with such power that one risked a dislocation of the shoulder.

But I must confess – at the time, I didn’t get it. I saw how strong he still was, even while he was gravely ill. And I’d heard from others, Donn Draeger among them, what an absolute powerhouse he was when younger. But I could not see how standing around in the cold, trying to imitate him as he moved through a ninety-nine movement taijiquan form would do anything for me. [As I have written elsewhere, on a couple of occasions, I came early and saw him by himself, assiduously going over very simple movements as well as various post-standing exercises, something I was later informed was the key to his power. He practiced them four hours or more a day.]  At any rate, I didn’t get it, and after a couple of months, respectfully resigned the class, and moved on to Muay Thai.

One thing that always stuck in my mind, however, was his ability to take blows, particularly full-on kicks to the groin. And unlike some tricksters, he wasn’t cocking his pelvis forward at the moment of impact, or messing with timing so that he didn’t receive the full impact. By all the accounts I heard, he just stood there phlegmatically and took the kick, expressionless. And he did this with some of the most formidable karateka in Japan, in public demonstrations.

The Ranking System of Japanese Martial Arts

Taiki Shisei Kenpo has an pointer to an article by the late Donn Draeger on the origin and meaning of the ranking system used in both traditional and modern Japanese martial arts. An excerpt from the article is below. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the whole thing.

Ranking Systems in Modern Japanese Martial Arts:
Modern vs. Classical

by
Donn F. Draeger
Lecture on April 1, 1976

It began as far as we know with Kano Jigoro of Kodokan, and the first date probably 1883, about a year after he founded the system. He awarded proficiency ranks to his Judo men, his exponents, on the basis of kyu, which translated as "class" or "ungraded" ranks and "dan". These are, you can say "degrees" if you want and ranks. So that is the beginning of the black-belt system.

The dan are the so called "black belts". The people who have black belts are called, by the way, yudansha. The kyu are mudansha: mu means "nothing", literally.

Now, the black belt system is the product of the peasant class, not the warrior class. The commoners. Dr. Kano was a commoner, a wealthy commoner. His family owned a sake mill. He was a merchant, the lowest social class. Had he taken part in Tokugawa Japan, he would have been at the bottom of the social level. So, any attempt to rationalize dan (black belts) with martial training in Japan is erroneous on the basis of history. You can recognize a modern art by the very fact that it does give black belts and other kyu grades. That is one of the unfailing recognitions. Not all of them. Some of them have deliberately avoided it because of all the nonsense and politics that goes with it.

The classical arts do not use the black-belt system. Now, classical arts you must recall, run between the 8th century and 1877. But what did they use, because the Japanese, like any society, are rank and prestige conscious. As they learned from China, court ranks and so on were important in social structure. So, they used this system which they called the menkyo system. The exponents of classical arts receive menkyo and their evidence is shown on a densho or makimono. That would be a certificate of your proficiency at a certain level.

Now, there are different levels of menkyo but far fewer than black-belt. Black belt is very finely divided as are the kyu below it. The basis of it, the basis of the kyu and dan system is commercial. Don’t think it isn’t. Even in Japan. It was created for prestige and recognition, true, but for commercial purpose to keep Kodokan in business, originally. It has grown out of proportion today, not only in Japan but in the West. Many misuses and abuses, but that is not our thing to talk about today.

The menkyo system has a great integrity. There are far fewer levels. Generally there will be between three to five levels of menkyo over the whole life span. Compare that to modern systems. Depending on the system, there could be as many as ten kyu in some systems and ten different grades of dan. So there is already twenty subdivisions under the present system. The warrior system, from three to five; I have heard of one with nine and I have heard of one with two. So, my experience is, they will range from two to nine levels; far less than the kyu or the dan system. So, what the kyu and dan system means is, no big thing.

Kata and Aikido

Below is an excerpt from a post by Diane Skoss, who is a long time practitioner of classical Japanese martial arts. The whole article may be read here.

Non-aikidoka are often confused when I talk about kata in aikido — “You mean like what they do in karate?” Even most aikidoka are aware of kata only as a term referring to form as opposed to application, or in reference to Saito Sensei’s solo or paired weapons training sequences. Morihei Ueshiba apparently did not approve of the kata training method, believing that “static” prearrangement of techniques interfered with the direct, spontaneous transmission of techniques from the gods. Thus, in most styles of aikido, kata as a set of prearranged techniques is not used as the primary training method. Kenji Tomiki, like his master Jigoro Kano before him, felt that kata was a valuable teaching tool and incorporated it into his system. Today, most Tomiki practitioners could tell you that a kata is a set of techniques practiced with a partner for teaching the basic principles of various aspects of Tomiki aikido.

In fact, the Japanese term kata encompasses all of the above… and more. Donn Draeger defines kata as “prearranged form” and goes on to explain in his Classical Bujutsu (p. 56) that “kata became… the central training method for all bujutsu… [because] it is the only way by which the action that characterizes the bujutsu can be practiced without the practitioners being wounded or killed.” Obviously, during the Sengoku Jidai (Age of Warring States), the warrior had ample opportunity to experience direct spontaneous technique on the battlefield, and preferred to concentrate his training time on perfecting the skills that would provide the base from which such techniques could arise when needed. This was done through innumerable repetitions of kata, practiced with one partner as “doer” (shidachi) and the other as “receiver” (uchidachi).

Warriors were evidently willing to risk their lives based on this type of training, perhaps because many of the kata techniques and sequences were believed to be the divinely inspired creation of the founder of the ryu. In any event, kata contained the knowledge and experience acquired by successes on the battlefield, either of an individual martial genius or as an accumulation of the experiences of many. Each technique (also, confusingly to the Westerner, sometimes referred to as kata) in a kata sequence represents a specific situational study—a particular maai, kamae, attack pattern, or weapon—and the sets were organized in various ways to emphasize particular lessons, usually of increasing complexity. Using these reasonably safe, predetermined sequences, warriors were able to train at the edge to develop the reflexes, intuition and courage to survive in battle.

Kata was considered an essential component of the spiritual “forge” of training, which became increasingly important as the classical traditions evolved into peacetime ways. “Kata are filled, as it were, with physical koan, or conundrums, situations that evoke technical crises” (Draeger, Classical Budo, p. 52). In order to solve these puzzles a process of intuitive learning-through-action must occur, and this investigative process gradually reveals the technical and spiritual truths essential to mastery.

In Memory of Quintin Chambers

At Ellis Amdur's Kogen Budo blog, there was a remembrance of Quintin Chambers, one of the first westerners to study classical Japanese martial arts in depth. Below is an excerpt. The full post may be read here. 

When a big bell tolls, the sound seems to sink into your soul, affecting you deeply.  In the Japanese koryū community the news that Quintin Chambers Sensei had passed most surely had that very same effect.

He trained in judō and aikidō, but when he found the koryū, he became enthralled by it. Quintin was one of the foreign koryū pioneers in Japan that trained under both Shimizu Takaji Sensei in Shintō Musō-ryū (SMR) and Otake Risuke Sensei in Katori Shintō-ryū (KSR).  Shimizu Sensei authorized him to instruct in SMR which he did in Hawai’i.  He taught the art to a group that always remained small; the required fee was sincere effort and thought about the art.

Describing Quintin’s demeanor is actually quite easy.  He was the quintessential British gentleman until he wielded a weapon.  You then faced a serious warrior with impenetrable zanshin. Quintin’s body was sinewy; the intent he exuded could be imposingly dangerous. However, he was absolutely not a typical budō jock.  This became immediately obvious as he spoke with the British Received Pronunciation acquired in England’s Public School System and at Cambridge University.  He could, for example, wax eloquent on languages, classical music, and politics.  Both his technique and language were precise.  Quintin taught the omote techniques but consistently sought the ura, insisting that the omote can get you killed.  Since KSR is a strong sword-based tradition, he also had great insight for the uchidachi side of SMR.  He thought the path of training is not a matter of how many years you must strive; rather, it was how many decades.

We remember him fondly and respectfully.  Anyone who trained with him knew it was an honor to have done so.  The good knight’s name and reputation will resonate long into the future.

 

From Joe Cieslik

I was fortunate in my travel plans and was able to visit and talk with Chambers Sensei several times before he passed. Right up to the end, he was concerned about his students and their training. He treated everyone with courtesy and respect. Because of his consideration, his students always tried to reach the high bar that he set. He accomplished a great deal in his life with talent, integrity, intelligence, dedication, athleticism and an innate generosity. I feel the world has lost someone completely irreplaceable and is a lesser place.

From John Howland

To anyone who knew him, any description of Quintin Chambers, the public man, would present an easily recognizable constellation of features. He was gentlemanly, charming, and considerate of others. His deep, resonant voice carried easily–he might have made a fine opera singer, but he always kept his volume down a few notches below oratorical. He was erudite and witty. His humor never coarse, but sometimes (oh, so gently) biting.

Quintin is well-remembered for his compassion. He loved animals and had an optimistic view of humankind. He once said, “Wherever you go, anywhere in the world, you find good people. That is the norm.” His handsome, angular features (sometimes pensive, sometimes creased into a boyish grin) were unforgettable. My wife always referred to him as “Dear Quintin.”

In contrast to his privileged background, Quintin chose to be a man of the common people. He denounced the vestiges of the class system in England and complained that his accent would make him unwelcome in a cockney bar. He was content to spend more than half-a-century living in the gentle climate and multi-ethnic diversity of the Hawai’ian Islands.

Chambers the critic was a somewhat different animal. His intense desire was to seek the combative utility beneath the pedagogical norms and performative aesthetics of the ryūha. It is well known that he and his training partner, Donn Draeger, conspired to establish what was then the International Hoplological Research Center in Hawai’i. What is less known is that one of his main reasons for volunteering to leave Japan before Draeger was the concern that his young son not be brought up in the Japanese public school system. He explained, “Their critical thinking is zero.”

Quintin the warrior was a man of highest integrity who expressed a willingness to fight for a cause at a moment’s notice. This was the man who ordered his students to hold back while he went, alone, to deal with a motorcycle gang who had threatened violence against one of them. Teacher, critic, warrior, friend; for all of these we are ever indebted.

Out of Time

There was a very good post about our perception of how much time that we think we have when it comes to martial arts training in particular and in life in general at Kogen Budo. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Throughout my career in martial art training, I would say that the majority of people I’ve met–my fellow students, my peers or acquaintances,  are people who are happy to train with what they think is an exemplary teacher. For a number of reasons, however, (lack of drive, humility, reticence to push themselves forward .. .  . .), they act as if they have an endless amount of time to learn the system.

That’s not so. Your teachers age, and as they do so, invariably, they cannot move as they once did. Some not only lose skill, but they lose knowledge. Others lose wisdom itself. Still others change: what seemed so important once is irrelevant to them as they approach, ever closer, to death, and their students’ mastery of their particular combative art no longer seems that important. In other words, their fire has burned out.

Some teachers continue to burn, training themselves rigorously even into old age, still discovering new aspects of their art. However, even if aspects of their art become more sophisticated and deep, there are often certain physical actions that they can no longer perform. Yet the student, quite naturally and sincerely, imitates the teacher, as they are now–particularly if they’ve no memory of him or her in earlier days. For example, when I first went to Japan and met Donn Draeger, he invited me to train in Shindo Muso-ryu. (it was, in a sense, the ‘entry level’ koryu for young people he was mentoring). There were a number of reasons I chose not to enter Shindo Muso-ryu or establish such a close relationship with Donn (I hadn’t travelled half-way around the world, giving up the life I knew, to land easily within the protective tutelage of someone who had been ‘there’ first…I wanted to find my own ‘there,’ different from his). In any event, the most important reason was watching Shimizu sensei, already old, shuffling his feet in 15 cm steps, and watching huge guys copying him, shuffling their feet and swinging their jo and sword much like their rotund elderly teacher.

I recently got a bad hip injury – it’s improved somewhat, but it’s unclear at this point if I’m going to make a full recovery on this latest injury. After a month-long break, I’ve been training for a week and I’m crippled in regards to certain movements. For example, I cannot do a ke-ashi, the emblematic kick of Toda-ha Buko-ryu. So when people ask me how to do this technique – or any one of a number of others that I can’t (at least right now) accomplish, I can merely explain it (but verbal explanations may well be inadequate) or refer them to archival films on our website of myself or my teachers in earlier days. But my understanding may well have changed since that film, and anyway, that is not even close to the experience of observing your teacher in the flesh, or even more important, experiencing them use a technique to ‘kill’ you over and over. Learning with the flesh is not the same as learning with the eyes or ears.

My point is: do not be complacent. Do not approach learning at a leisurely pace. Train as if your life depends on it (it may), and as if  this may be the only opportunity to learn this particular bit of information (that may be true). If you don’t hear it, perceive it, embody it now, the opportunity to learn it may never come again. Or without seeing  your teacher perform the technique, without an opportunity to feel yourself impacted/defeated by it, you will never conceive of what it really means. As those in my Valencia Dojo can quickly recall this week, I taught a nuance in the use of the sword vs naginata that an outside observer will never perceive, but a practitioner, weapon-to-weapon, will definitely experience. It radically changes your effect on shitachi, allowing you to have time and space to accomplish taisabaki (body-displacement) to get in an advantageous position. It’s something I just discovered myself, after struggling with this technique for almost forty years. However, what if, a few years from now, I can no longer do it? If not learned now, lost forever.

Koryu

Koryu are the ancient Japanese martial arts that were actually practiced by the samuai. Modern Japanese martial arts just as karate-do, aikido, judo, and kendo are Gendai Budo. Gendai Budo is descended from Koryu. They have much in common, but they are really very, very different things. Koryu was meant to be handed down from generation to generation in a most exact way. If a given master instituted a variation from the canon, he would then create a new branch of the main system (-ha, Ono-ha Itto Ryu is a branch of the main Itto Ryu). Whereas in Gendai Budo, each master student seems to recreate the art. You can look to the profusion of aikido styles as an example.

A must-read if you're interested in the subject of ancient Koryu and modern Budo is the three volume classic by Donn Draeger: The Martial Arts and Ways of Japan.

Below is an excerpt from an article about Koryu. You can read the full article here.

Authenticity in Koryu

copyright © 2008 Jeff Broderick, all rights reserved

The whole issue of authenticity is one of those things I struggle with a lot, when I'm thinking about koryu.

Here's how a lot of people seem to think about koryu:

The best koryu have been passed down from generation to generation from the time of the samurai. The best warriors distilled their knowledge of practical fighting techniques and the skills necessary to survive a life-and-death struggle, and taught them faithfully to their students, who, through long and hard study, and deep insight into the techniques, mastered the techniques themselves and, in turn, passed them on unchanged to their students. And so on through the ages.

If that view is correct, then koryu represent not only a priceless cultural/anthropological heritage, but also an invaluable insight into effective combat techniques. Unlike modern "budo", these koryu "bujutsu", having been handed down from the time when life-and-death battles were a reality, must reflect true, killing techniques.

The model for transmission, according to koryu purists, would seem to be some kind of "photocopy" model. To use a visual analogy, the founding master creates a "map" of the techniques. Through diligent study, his chosen successor copies the master, creating an identical map, much like a photocopy of the original.

People who think this way believe, not only in the possibility of "true and correct transmission" but also in its likelihood. Consider this: Many currently-practiced koryu are on somewhere between their tenth and twentieth generation, and the current state of the art must reflect "the weakest link", so to speak, in that chain of ten or twenty masters. In other words, if there was even one "bad teacher" in that chain of teachers - someone whose understanding was less than complete, or whose physical mastery was less than perfect - then the subsequent generation would continue to propagate that error, or that weak point.

Koryu purists would argue that only the best students would be chosen to continue the school - those pupils who, through long and hard apprenticeship, would have the very best mix of understanding and physical mastery.

But isn't the reality far more complicated, and less ideal than all that?

BJJ as Therapy

Below is an excerpt from an article that appeared at Kung Fu Tea, regarding Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as therapy, but from a slightly different perspective. The full post may be read here.

Donn F. Draeger’s made no secret of his love for the real “battlefield” martial arts, both in his various publications and many correspondences with friends. Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising given his background and experiences as a member of the US Marine Corps.  In practice his conceptualization of what constituted reality led to a fascination with medieval Japanese martial arts (those predating the Meiji and later Tokugawa periods) and an almost contemptuous dismissal of everything coming from China. Afterall, the Japanese had proved themselves on the battlefields of WWII, whereas Draeger found China’s performance lacking in many realms.

The great danger faced by students of martial arts studies is that our personal practice will present us with a mirror showing only what we most desperately want to see.  In it we may find reflected our own desires and life experience. The truth of the matter is that Japan’s ancient warriors didn’t need martial arts schools to become fearsome killers on the battlefield.  As Bennet, Hurst and others have shown, formal fencing schools only arose when warriors began to seize control of the polity from the hereditary nobility and needed to demonstrate their cultural refinement through the creation of social institutions mirroring the tea and poetry schools of their social betters. At the most basic level, Japanese martial arts have always been about something other than training battlefield techniques.  There are easier ways to do that.


It’s also important to note that their early fencing schools focused not on “sparring,” “MMA with swords” or any type of modern combat sport, the sorts of training modalities that we currently view as most “realistic.”  This was simply too dangerous in an era with solid wooden training weapons. Instead students worked to perfect two-person katas for hours on end.  This is almost the exact opposite of what we would think of as battlefield martial arts training today.


The way in which these kata were practiced was strongly shaped by cultural convention.  In most of these imaginary exchanges one player would enact the killing or maiming of their training partner.  By tradition the younger or more junior member of the training pair would practice the “winning” technique, whereas the senior student or instructor would play the role of the loser.  Such an arrangement is pregnant with symbolism.  While the up and coming warriors sharpened their skills, seeking to supplant those senior to them within society’s social and military structures, more experienced warriors spent hours every week psychologically preparing for their own violent deaths.


We risk missing the point by noting that no bladed exchange carried out in the chaos of a real battlefield will look exactly as it did in the training hall.  I suspect that many of the battles being fought there were more personal and psychological in nature.  Thinking psychoanalytically, battlefield veterans such as Draeger and his Japanese interlocutors, all survivors of a violent historical period, seemed to seek out martial art training not because anything in it realistically portrays the challenge of crossing a beach under heavy artillery fire.  Rather they found training these systems, and then passing them on to future generations, to be therapeutic. In that respect they were probably very much like their Bushi and Samurai predecessors.

Shifting Subjectivities on Guam


D. S. Farrer begins his recently published ethnographic treatment of a martial arts school in Guam by noting that “Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is therapy.” Printed on stickers and signs, this thought seems to have become something of a catch phrase in the community which gathered at the Spike 22 gym.  What was meant by the statement was less clear and constantly shifting.  Farrer noted that the phrase could be tossed out as a hypermasculine jab at supposedly weak individuals seeking psychological intervention for dealing with the very real stresses of life on an island dominated by police, military and para-military institutions.  At other times the phrase seems to have been taken up in earnest as instructors sought to help students rethink their relationships with exercise, diet, lifestyle as well as their internal attitudes.


BJJ students do not have a monopoly on the notion that the fighting arts can be therapeutic.  The phrase “Boxing is my Therapy” is so widespread that you can find it on dozens of T-shirts and bumper stickers. The same notion is also seen throughout the Asian martial arts in the West.  I cannot count the number of kung fu students I have known who have discussed their practice in therapeutic terms.  The medicalization of the Chinese martial arts has probably done much to encourage this since at least the 1920s.


As Paul Bowman, in his own treatment of martial arts and madness has observed, the relationship between martial arts training and therapy is now so widespread that even non-practitioners seem to assume that students are driven to take up these practices as a way of battling some unseen inner demon. Celebrity narratives, including those promoted by individuals like Robert Downey Jr. (who practices Wing Chun) and Anthony Bourdain (who studied BJJ) further reinforce this perception. Yet “common sense” has a strange way of eluding deeper study.


Farrer begins his article by laying out a number of basic questions.  How is it that therapy arises from the practice of techniques designed to injure or kill?  On the island of Guam, what is the specific malady that BJJ treats, and (on a related note) who most requires treatment? Third, how does Spike 22 function as a “catch-up institution” where individuals seek treatment.  Lastly, if we understand therapy as a change in lifestyles and dispositions, what exactly is being treated? Is it a body, mind, social group, or some other combination of these factors that remains undertheorized in the current anthropology literature?


This last question is perhaps the most important from the perspective of Martial Arts Studies as a field.  While most authors seek to apply existing theories to new cases, or perhaps develop new approaches to understanding the role of martial arts in society, Farrer’s interests have often been more fundamental in nature.  He is one of a handful of authors writing in the literature who has consistently pushed for new methodological, and conceptual, approaches.


The paradigm shift that this article proposes (though perhaps it also undersells) is a serious move away from “embodiment.” No concept has done more to shape the martial arts studies literature in the last five years.  Yet Farrer finds it unconvincing and ultimately a hindrance in understanding how BJJ might function as therapy in Guam.  In its place he turns to a Deleuzian model of mind and body. His extensive reading of Spinoza also seems to have influenced this article.


Nor can readers ignore the substantive impact of the French Ethnographer Jeanne Favret-Saada on this piece.  Her theoretical insights on how anti-witchcraft treatments might function as therapy in the French countryside are explicitly invoked throughout this article.  They provide the basic foundations of Farrer’s understanding of how the enactment of potentially violent, even deadly, acts in BJJ might function as therapy on a psychoanalytic level.


Still, readers may wonder whether Farrer had a deeper purpose in invoking her work.  Favret-Saada is perhaps best remembered in Anthropological circles today not so much for her ethnography (which was wonderful), but for her blistering attacks on the “Anglo-Saxon” model of participant-observation and symbolic anthropology that dominated much of the 1960s-1970s. Like Farrer her great interests, and frustrations, seem to have been methodological.


She found that it was only possible to gain access to world of magic and witchcraft* that existed in the rural villages of Western France during this time by abandoning the role of dispassionate observer and allowing oneself to be caught up in the swirl and strong emotion of local events, even at the risk of one’s academic project.  In her case this meant becoming an actual victim of witchcraft, coming to understand the importance of both emotions and words within this process, then apprenticing with an anti-witch specialist as part of her own treatment.  She freely admitted that much of what was most important in these experiences defied description and could not be written down in conventional fieldnotes. Her larger research methods largely collapsed the distinction between the observer and the subject at a time when this was rare.


While the field of Anthropology has moved on, Favret-Saada has been a critical figure in methodological discussions.  Readers may want to explore her work as it has obvious implications for how performance ethnography is currently conducted within martial arts studies.  We face many of the same issues when it comes to recording and theorizing types of understanding (or ‘subjectivities’) that defy easy verbalization. One area where I would have liked to see Farrer go farther, and be much more explicit, would be in an assessment for Favret-Saada’s methodological legacy and the lessons that current Martial Arts Studies researchers might learn.  Farrer’s perspectives on this would be especially useful given his seemingly positive relationship with Performance Ethnography as a method.  In contrast, Favret-Saada was explicitly critical of Victor Turner and his ethnographic methods.  This area of tension is one that others in the field might fruitfully explore.


Readers will need to bring a fair amount of their own background to get the most out of these methodological discussions as Farrer lays out his approach but does not belabor the point.  This a rather brief article that dedicates more time to ethnographic observation than theoretical debates.  As such, a wide range of readers will find something of interest here. While it makes important methodological points, at no time does it become bogged down in extended theoretical discussions.


While the phenomenon of “fighting as therapy” is widespread (across both geography and time), Farrer’s treatment of its appearance at the Spike 22 gym is deeply rooted in the particular challenges of its students, and how they are conditioned by the geo-political placement of Guam within the current global order.  Farrer begins by noting that the economy and island’s landmass are dominated by American military bases which have been expanding throughout the post-WWII period.  These structures have provided employment, but also physically displaced many of the Guam’s native inhabitants.  They have been further marginalized by the policies of American military officials attempting to recreate California or Hawaii in this distant location.


The problems faced by this community are not vastly different from those imposed on First Peoples or other colonized subjects around the globe.  They include poverty, substance abuse, chronic crime, obesity and other health problems.  Residents of Guam are US citizens and they enlist in the US military (or other security focused organizations) in high numbers.  Yet they cannot vote in national elections and are denied any form of meaningful political representation in Washington DC.  They lack the most basic and effective means of collectively addressing their problems.  Farrer’s paper might well be thought of as a study on the social functions of a shared martial culture within in a colonized space.


This background is necessary as it explains both the unique nature of Spike 22 and the Janus-faced therapy that BJJ provides its members.  Students at the school (where up to 36 individuals may roll in a busy class) seem to break down into two basic categories.  First there are individuals from various military services (and other aligned support staff) who make up much of the membership.  Given the popularity of BJJ in the armed services, and the number of service men and women on Guam, this is not surprising.  These individuals are overwhelmingly visitors from the mainland.


The population of local students seems to be more varied.  It is comprised of law enforcement officers, local employees of various prison and security services, returned veterans, and a large number of local thugs and petty criminals.  Ignoring the large military component, one of Farrer’s sources characterized Spike 22 as “basically…a place where the police come to roll with criminals.”  Indeed, both elements of local society appear to frequent the same club seeking to hone their craft.


The attraction to local law enforcement officers is more obvious.  Some have to train at least twice a week in a martial art as a condition of their employment.  Others are struggling to maintain a body mass index mandated by their employer.  One of the therapeutic aspects of BJJ that multiple sources noted was its ability to aid in weight loss and inspire individuals to develop a healthy attitude towards food and exercise.


Yet that is only one aspect of this training.  Farrer notes that the global spread of BJJ throughout law enforcement mirrors the increased militarization of these organizations in recent decades.  Guam is no exception to this trend. Rolling with criminals on the mats, subduing them in mock encounters, shifts the subjectivities of law enforcement officers, convincing them of their skill and the probability of their survival of similar encounters on the street.


One imagines that the lessons learned by the less militarized local residents are slightly 
different.  In the best-case analysis, they too may gain healthy habits and develop improved social networks.  And there is always the promise that BJJ can help a skilled but smaller opponent overcome a larger, less trained, adversary.  Yet when examined through the lens of colonization, one suspects that what many of these marginal local students will bodily experience is an almost unending stream of highly skilled and enthusiastic BJJ students who represent the very forces of militarized imperialism that are disrupting the local economy and society.  While rolling in a BJJ class they likely experience symbolic manifestations of the very real violence inherent in life on the edge of an American military outpost.


Or perhaps not.  Turning to the pioneering work of Jeanne Favret-Saada, we might note that an amorphous feeling of powerlessness (often the result of an inexplicable run of bad luck on the farm) is one of the major defining characteristics of a victim of witchcraft in Western France in the late 1960s.  Anti-witch specialists did not confine their work to ritual and magic.  Instead they sought to both diagnose a specific cause of misfortune and to lay out a path for the farmer in question whereby they could recover their position in society.  Very often this blame shifting involved putting this individual in touch with “dark side” forces and encouraging them to ruthlessly dispossess other family members or neighbors so that they could regain their economic footing and stature as a successful “producer.”  Farrer notes that an encounter with the dark forces of witchcraft was often instrumental in “rehabilitant” individuals such that they could succeed in a ruthless competitive capitalist environment.


Farrer has previously explored the capitalist and ideological underpinnings of the global spread of MMA, so it is not surprising to see him apply this same basic framework to BJJ training in Guam.  Rather than seeing the virtual murder/suicides of BJJ training as a paradox that the analyst must explain, they are now viewed as generating the emotional force that serves to put the student in touch with the “dark side” (Farrer’s term) and allows them to fundamentally reconfigure their personality for success in a badly disrupted and hyper-competitive environment.  More specifically, it allows indigenous islanders to adopt a new definition of the warrior ethos that is globally valid, while at the same time finding the tools to resist a local culture that is deeply cooperative in nature and not well suited to succeeding within a late capitalist global order.