Bartitsu?

Discussion in 'Other Styles' started by Combat Sports, May 25, 2013.

  1. Dean Winchester

    Dean Winchester Valued Member

    Yeah I know.

    It was a bad example on my part to use Bartitsu to make my point. :cool:
     
  2. Count Duckula

    Count Duckula Valued Member

    Flawed. :)

    I'd say it is more like Dean taking you out to drink wine. And he'd take you to several places. Each may have their own preference, but you'd be drinking wine at each of them.

    then you take him out, and you go to places that only serve beer. And if he complains, your arguments are: 'you can't really get wine in this area, and it doesn't really matter because you get drunk either way'.

    If all you want is alcohol, then indeed, it doesn't really matter. If otoh, you say you are going out for wine, you should not give him beer and pretend it is wine.
     
  3. furinkazan

    furinkazan Valued Member

    At the very least, I've found the jo techniques and the cane techniques apply to each other, maybe that just comes down to simple statement my own sensei once made.

    "It's a stick, don't overthink it."
     
  4. furinkazan

    furinkazan Valued Member

    Isn't that Antony Cummings guy, the one who does all the historical martial arts research, trying to revive the Natori Ryu? I know he's also attempted to bring a revival to Viking combat through reading of Viking texts and documents in Leeds Armory (UK) and reconstruct things from that.

    Not that I say it's impossible or not, just a curious mind here.
     
  5. Devon

    Devon Valued Member

    Maybe, but as a style, Bartitsu cane is markedly distinct from jojutsu and even from tanjojutsu, which is the Japanese art employing the Western-style walking stick.
     
  6. Dean Winchester

    Dean Winchester Valued Member


    It depends on what you experience in Jo is, I can't really remember doing any Jo during my time in the Buj so i couldnt say what Jo is like in that, although i can hazzard a guess, but what I've seen of La Canne is rather different from something like Shinto Muso-ryu.

    So yes while it may be a stick it can be used very differently depending on the system and how it developed.
     
  7. shootodog

    shootodog restless native

    Bartitsu stickwork is definitly la canne vigny. Even from the texts. It looks too much like saber fencing.
     
  8. shootodog

    shootodog restless native

    Savate and La Canne were developed in the era of the Parisian Apache of the mid Beautiful Age. I wholeheartedly agree that any study of Bartitsu must refer to the era in which it was concieved in.
     
  9. shootodog

    shootodog restless native

    Interesting video

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y404A8cW70I#t=108]Defence dans La Rue[/ame]

    Related to Bartitsu? Born of the same age.
     
  10. KaliKuntaw

    KaliKuntaw Valued Member

    Single Stick and La Canne Vigny is some dynamic spinny butt kickery!...hahaha
     
  11. furinkazan

    furinkazan Valued Member

    I have that sherlock holmes guide to self defense book. It was interesting as a read because my bujinkan sensei actually went over it himself and came back to me with what he told me:

    It's got bits of judo, bits of aikido and even bits similar to bujinkan.

    So basically it's not far off most japanese styles that big up their street defense game. At the end of the day it's got some decent tools but you need to apply them yourself.

    As I have found in my own reading, books might help point things out or turn the cogs, but the machine (you) needs to be built properly from routine training and a competant, knowledgable instructor
     
  12. Sandy

    Sandy Valued Member

    Bartitsu - how's it going these days?

    Thread revived out of curiosity to ask how Bartitsu is going in 2017.
     
  13. Devon

    Devon Valued Member

    Glad you asked ...

    Before the success of the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies, the tiny group of serious Bartitsu researchers and practitioners literally used to joke about what might happen if Bartitsu ever became popular, on the assumption that would never happen. As it turned out, the movies quickly and firmly established the idea of "Victorian English martial arts" in the public imagination. We had quite a lot of mainstream media exposure and the art was briefly "trendy" insofar as it was referenced in sitcoms, novels, video games, comic books, etc.

    All that attention, plus the essentially non-bureaucratic, experimental nature of the Bartitsu revival opened the floodgates and the number of Bartitsu clubs and study groups expanded by about 2/3 times (we're still talking low numbers here - maybe 50 or 60 new groups). However, the strongest short-term interest was from dilettantes and people jumping on the bandwagon.

    Simultaneously, the rise of Facebook at the expense of old-school Internet forums pulled focus away from the venerable Bartitsu Forum, which had been the gathering place for serious Bartitsu enthusiasts since 2002. So, the upshot was a relatively large number of new groups that lacked access to in-depth research and a coherent community.

    In 2017 that tide is changing again, as the dilettantes and bandwagon-jumpers have moved on to new enthusiasms. There's more of a focus on pressure-testing the old-school Bartitsu cross-training methods via sparring, as opposed to just gently going through the motions at steampunk conventions; see the recent sparring competition videos at http://www.bartitsu.org/index.php/2017/02/congratulations-to-the-winners-of-the-bartitsu-sparring-video-competition/. At the same time, the expansion and and improvement of online newspaper archives has been a boon for historical researchers and has offered answers to some of the old "Bartitsu mysteries".

    In sum, Bartitsu in 2017 is still a niche-interest, recreational martial art, but now with an unexpected pop-culture fan base.
     
  14. Botta Dritta

    Botta Dritta Valued Member

    I'm not suprised considering where he got some of his material

    Barton-Wright did this, although not by Japanese, but by an Englishman’s discretion; the Shinden Fudo school (style), at which I, as well as he learned in Kobe with Terajima, he called “Bartitsu” in the United Kingdom.
    The school, whose basics I learned under Terajima Kunichiro, is called Shinden Fudo Ryu, which freely translates as, “Divine School of the Unshakable Heart”.

    My teacher was first taught in the art of Ju Jutsu by Yata Onseisai, in Shimagawara in Miyako (Kyoto), now almost 50 years ago. I already pointed out that Bartitsu is nothing else than Shinden Fudo Ryu.


    Herman ten Kate
    “Jujutsu, de Zachte Kunst” issue # 69
    Dutch journal, “De Gids”, 1905.

    Apparently Herman ten Kate (1858-1931) had trained with E.W. Barton-Wright in the same Shinden Fudo Ryu dojo in Kobe around 1896. I have no idea if it's the same line as the fabled Toda Shinryuken or even if it shares any similar techniques.

    As for reviving the whole system it's not beyond the bounds of possibility, as many of its parent systems are well documented with literature and manuals, certainly more so than some older HEMA systems. The problem is pedagogy and how to train it. We don't know how far Batistsu was a codified system with extant lessons and principles or a collection of haphazard tricks from various systems thrown toghether at the whim of its creator. For example JKD has very definite principles and there even exist old training syllabuses, thanks to Bruce Lee being an avid note taker. I don't know how far this its true of Batistsu. For example Defence dans la Rue in France have a rich oral tradition that has been passed down in Savate circles, and even then it's kind of iffy how much of it has changed from the 19th century. The Batistsu system however is truncated. It's a shame no-one did a interview with the chap before he died.
     
  15. Devon

    Devon Valued Member

    Ten Kate jumped to the wrong conclusion about Bartitsu being "nothing else than Shinden Fudo Ryu". He had seen two of Barton-Wright's articles about the jujitsu aspect of Bartitsu and assumed that there was nothing more to it, but he seems to have missed the fact that it actually also included Vigny stick fighting, boxing etc.

    We now have a pretty solid idea of how Bartitsu lessons were taught (on a kind of circuit training model). Barton-Wright described his concept for the art as a whole, in general terms and in some specifics, via interviews and lectures.
     
  16. Botta Dritta

    Botta Dritta Valued Member

    Mmmm .....The question is though, were the systems taught seperatly in a typical Victorian academy/gymnasia fashion or were they significantly modified enough for Bartistu to be recognised as something different? (From today's standpoint, not Wrights POV - he after all had his own agenda. ) A MMA gym could teach boxing, kick boxing and BJJ in a circuit training , but toghether they do not make modern recognisable MMA. Each of the systems has to be modified somewhat to take into account the enviroment of the modern compeititive format (I.e no Gi grappling). I imagine the Japanese jujutsu would have been modified to take into account of Victorian clothing. Do we have any other details?
     
  17. Devon

    Devon Valued Member

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