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the Khazar Kid
26th June 2000, 03:34
What style(s) of Koryu Jujitsu did E. W. Barton-Wright train in, and what rank did he attain?

Jesse Peters

Joseph Svinth
26th June 2000, 07:17
Nobody seems to know for sure, but it may have been Kodokan judo because the two instructors he hired were Taro Miyake and Yukio Tani. Rank in those days is a problematical thing, as it wasn't standardized yet. Did B-W have menkyo kaiden? Probably not. Was he competent? Definitely.

The best single source of biographical information about Barton-Wright is Graham Noble, "An Introduction to W. Barton-Wright (1860-1951) and the Eclectic Art of Bartitsu," _Journal of Asian Martial Arts_, 8:2, 1999; it contains a bibliography. Also see "Journal of Non-lethal Combat" at http://ejmas.com

Joe

the Khazar Kid
26th June 2000, 19:39
I seem to recall hearing somewhere that Taro Miyake and Yukio Tani were not yet blackbelts when Barton-Wright first brought them to England. They were students of and later assistant instructors under Barton-Wright, Barton-Wright was ranked senior to them. I don't remember where I heard this. Is this true?

Jesse Peters

[Edited by the Khazar Kid on 06-26-2000 at 01:41 PM]

Joseph Svinth
27th June 2000, 08:24
Miyake had taught judo in the Osaka area before coming to Britain, so was probably ranked. Tani I'm not so sure about, as in 1920 he was graded 2-dan by Jigoro Kano. But, as Graham Noble says, he was probably one real strong 2-dan, and certainly he was good enough to beat Katsukuma Higashi and most British and European wrestlers. As for Miyake, he was technically about as good as Maeda, who was a 4-dan when in New York in 1905.

Check the Budokwai site at http://www.budokwai.org for some additional biographical details.

28th June 2000, 04:10
Isn't this the guy who started "baritsu" in England. We all know that Sherlock Holmes was an exponent of baritsu.

Joseph Svinth
28th June 2000, 15:33
Don -- You've got the right fellow. The best article on the subject is richard Bowen, "Further Lessons in Baritsu," _The Ritual_ (Bi-annual Review of the Northern Musgraves Sherlock Holmes Society), 20 (Autumn 1997).

For those who don't keep up on such things, in 1899 an English engineer named Edward W. Barton-Wright publishedan article called "The New Art of Self Defence" in Pearson’s Magazine. Barton-Wright had studied jujutsu while living in Japan, and his "New Art," which he immodestly called "Bartitsu," combined jujutsu with boxing and savate. Yet, while Barton-Wright was a good enough rough-and-tumble wrestler, he was no master of Japanese wrestling. This is hardly unusual in itself, but what was unusual was that Barton-Wright was honest enough to admit it, and to hire better-qualified teachers including Yukio Tani and S.K. Uyenishi as his instructors. That said, Sherlock Holmes was Bartitsu’s most famous practitioner. In "The Adventure of the Empty House," published in Strand Magazine in October 1903, the Great Detective told Dr. Watson that, on the brink of a Swiss waterfall in 1894, the evil Moriarty "rushed at me and threw his arms around me. He knew that his own game was up, and was only anxious to revenge himself upon me. We tottered together on the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu [sic], or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds and clawed the air with both his hands. But for all his efforts he could not get his balance, and over he went."