WHAT IS MARTIAL ARTS? The Six-Attribute Model as an Empirical Approach to Field Terminology (Second, corrected and enhanced edition)
Abstract
Looking at the multi-faceted spectrum of worldwide martial arts, one key question in Martial Arts Studies has been how to formulate specific characteristics which encompass the phenomenon of martial arts as part of a scientific conception or definition of martial arts. The obvious problem here is to acknowledge historically, culturally and linguistically different terminologies. In academic and non-academic contexts, martial artists actually imply individual beliefs what martial arts is and what it is not. These perceptions are strongly based on subjective experiences and preferences.
The main goal of this book is to elaborate an empirically supported, academically valuable definition model which constitutes a framework of attributes to support researchers who proceed to classify and describe martial arts and similar phenomena.
For the empirical study, participants were shown a total of 53 video clips which represented a wide range of activities that are commonly associated with martial arts. The video clips were each about 15-25 seconds long and had no sound, descriptions or titles. The video queue was digitally randomised for each participant to minimise halo effects between the videos. Answering two Likert items, the study participants had to judge for each video if it depicted a martial art or a combat sport (or neither). An introductory demographic question evaluated the participants’ individual connection to martial arts, categorised as nonprofessional, observer, practitioner and scholar. The questionnaire was provided in English, German and Japanese. In total, 136 valid answer sheets were included in the evaluation.
Based on the empirical results, phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis, consecutively the six-attribute model was developed. The six attributes describe the key characteristics of martial arts according to the study results. Attribute III is a prerequisite for attribute IV, while attribute V is a prerequisite for attribute VI. The attributes I and II represent fundamental characteristics.
... Die für diese Entwicklungen zugrunde liegenden Mechaniken wurden u.a. von Maliszewski (1996), Lowry (2002), Obodyński (2003) und Bowman (2019) beschrieben sowie von Meyer (2020b) restrukturiert. ...
... Durch öffentliche Kampfkunstvorführungen und eine eigene Fachzeitschrift, die die militärischen und erzieherischen Vorzüge der Kampfsportarten herausstellte (Gainty 2013, S. 39), steigerte das butokukai seinen Einfluss immens. Gleichzeitig wurden Kampfsportarten mystifiziert, um sie im Sinne des »inventedtradition«-Konzepts einerseits manifester als zuvor zu spiritualisieren und durch Beimischung künstlicher Patina zu antiquitieren (Meyer 2020b;Wetzler 2013). ...
... Zu den in diesem Artikel aus Stringenzgründen vernachlässigten Teilproblemen gehört u.a., dass -wie dargelegt -das Wort »Kampfsport« im Deutschen semantisch nicht identisch ist mit budō im Japanischen. Selbst das englische »martial arts« unterscheidet sich vom deutschen Kampfsport signifikant (Meyer 2020b), ebenso wie das Begriffspaar »Kampfsport« und »Kampfkunst« uneinheitlich mit Bedeutungen belegt wird, ganz zu schweigen von den in der Einführung angedeuteten kulturellen Spezifika, was die Definition von »Sport« und damit auch sportlicher Bewegung sowie sportlichen Wettkampf betrifft. Im Japanischen werden Kampfkünste u.a. ...
... Much like phenomena such as ritual, ritualisation, and religion, there have been many attempts to define the term martial arts by scholars. Most recently Meyer (2020) has produced an entire monograph on the subject, in which he suggests the so-called Six-Attribute Model of defining what martial arts are, or indeed what they are not, and which martial arts might be classified as related to, or distinct from one another. Since my own research is not narrowly limited to a study of martial arts as an isolated practice but investigates martial arts as an integrated element of culture, that exists in, and is inseparable from other cultural phenomena, such as politics, gender, religion, music, and historical reception, my work builds on a more open-ended approach to defining martial arts which includes military arts, combat sports, duelling, and even firearms practice, inspired by the recent work of Peter Lorge (2012: 3-6). ...
... 'Martial arts' refers here to both combat sports and martial arts. Detailed explanations on the definition of martial arts and combat sports can be found in Meyer (2022). ...
The political exploitation of people and cultural artefacts is not a novelty. In the context of the controversial FIFA World Cup in Qatar and the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022, the term sportswashing has been increasingly used. Popular cases of sportswashing in combat sports are the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire in 1974 as well as the Thrilla in Manila in 1975.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, a new variant of sportswashing has emerged, which I call martial arts washing. It deviates from generic sportswashing in the way that the values and attributes associated with martial arts are hijacked by political figures and reinterpreted to suit their agendas. In particular male politicians who are close to right-wing authoritarian ideas apply martial arts washing to present themselves as virtuous martial warriors.
Vladimir Putin frequently presents himself as particularly virile and upright through martial arts. He published a judo book, had himself filmed training with the national judo team, visited the Shaolin monastery in China and considers aikido icon Steven Seagal his friend. For Colonel General Ramzan Kadyrov, martial arts washing serves his personality cult as the owner of the MMA arts league “Fight Club Akhmat” which is named after his father.
Regarding the Russo-Ukrainian War, protagonists address martial arts washing in several ways. British artist Banksy left street art in the destroyed Ukrainian city of Borodyanka showing a young judoka throwing a man resembling Putin. Meanwhile, both Elon Musk and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj have semi-ironically challenged Putin to a fistfight as a way of settling the war “like men”.
In the proposed presentation, martial arts washing will be highlighted through the personalities and events associated with the war in Ukraine as well as its connections to sport nationalism, sportswashing, cultural hegemony and toxic masculinity.
... Daraus leiten sich drei goldene Praxisregeln ab: Die Freiwilligkeit der Partizipation an Kämpfen (Hirt 2007, S. 21), die jederzeitige Option zum Kampfausstieg, sowie das generelle Verbot von intentional schmerzinduzierenden Techniken (wie Beißen, Verdrehen von Gelenken, Drücken auf sensible Stellen). Im nicht-schulischen Kampfsport sind vergleichbare Schutzmechanismen in einen normativen, z.T. philosophischen Rahmen eingebettet (Meyer 2020b). In beiden Praxisformen veranschaulichen verbindliche Rituale die Grundwerte kultivierten Kämpfens, v.a. ...
... This community tries to render the martial arts embodiment as authentically and -in the spirit of zen -as naturalistically as possible. Re-inventions of martial arts styles (Meyer 2020), which are constantly emerging, underline this point. In this respect, it remains fruitful to observe the symbiosis of body and mind in analogue, digitally enhanced or augmented and virtual martial arts practice. ...
In martial arts, as in dance, embodiment is of utmost importance (Minarik 2014), especially in experiencing and interpreting the movements of the opponent in ground combat and responding with the own body. Also in striking martial arts, the performative altercation and bodily communication with the opponent is based on corporeal sensitivity. The Covid-19 pandemic, on the other hand, has led to a widespread digitalisation in martial arts courses-a trend that will presumably continue after the pandemic, as the study by Meyer et al. (2021) indicates. The results also showed that martial arts clubs and teachers have succeeded in adapting to digital teaching and practice in very different ways, e.g. through Zoom workshops or online lessons. Especially in times of a pandemic, when physical contact and activities are reduced to a minimum, data suggests that martial artists have become even more aware of the importance of embodiment and physical exercise. As digitalisation almost always leads to disembodiment, these dynamics seem to be opposed to each other. This development is also connected to the didactics and the training motives of martial artists, and how these are changed and/or replaced by effects of digitalisation before, during and after the pandemic. The article analyses the different methods and approaches to a digitalised martial arts teaching and practice and ventures a look into the future of digital movement practices in virtual reality.
The political exploitation of people and cultural artefacts is not a novelty. In the context of the controversial FIFA World Cup in Qatar and the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022, the term sportswashing has been increasingly used. Popular cases of sportswashing in combat sports are the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire in 1974 as well as the Thrilla in Manila in 1975.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, a new variant of sportswashing has emerged, which I call martial arts washing. It deviates from generic sportswashing in the way that the values and attributes associated with martial arts are hijacked by political figures and reinterpreted to suit their agendas. In particular male politicians who are close to right-wing authoritarian ideas apply martial arts washing to present themselves as virtuous martial warriors.
Vladimir Putin frequently presents himself as particularly virile and upright through martial arts. He published a judo book, had himself filmed training with the national judo team, visited the Shaolin monastery in China and considers aikido icon Steven Seagal his friend. For Colonel General Ramzan Kadyrov, martial arts washing serves his personality cult as the owner of the MMA arts league “Fight Club Akhmat” which is named after his father.
Regarding the Russo-Ukrainian War, protagonists address martial arts washing in several ways. British artist Banksy left street art in the destroyed Ukrainian city of Borodyanka showing a young judoka throwing a man resembling Putin. Meanwhile, both Elon Musk and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj have semi-ironically challenged Putin to a fistfight as a way of settling the war “like men”.
In the proposed presentation, martial arts washing will be highlighted through the personalities and events associated with the war in Ukraine as well as its connections to sport nationalism, sportswashing, cultural hegemony and toxic masculinity.
Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht, inwieweit Boxkämpfe in der nordamerikanischen Eishockey-Liga NHL Merkmale von Kampfsport tragen. Der Schwerpunkt liegt hierbei auf phänomenologischen Kriterien wie Kampftechniken, -strategien, -ritualen, aber auch behaviouralen Kriterien wie Etikette, Normative und Regeln. Die Schlüsselfrage lautet demnach, ob NHL-Eishockey aufgrund seiner Wesensverwandtschaft zu klassischen Kampfsportarten ebenfalls als Kampfsport klassifiziert werden müsste. Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage wird das Six-Attribute-Modell zur Definition von Kampfsport nach Meyer (2020) sowie die Sportregelklassifikation nach Digel (2003) herangezogen, überdies auch theoretische Konstrukte von Elias und Dunning (2003) sowie Huizinga (1956).
The following article explains how the metaphors ‘wrestling body’ and ‘warship’ are combined, mutually reinforced and nationalistically instrumentalised in the context of sporting events. Here, one main incident is the discussion in the Japanese public with regard to a possible appointment of US-American wrestlers with the highest rank in professional sumō. The other main incident is the staging of an US-American dressed as a Japanese sumō wrestler for patriotic dramatisation in North-American pro wrestling. Both incidents have not only metaphorical but also temporal parallels, since they reached their respective symbolic climax in 1993.
Meyer’s (2012) qualitative research on motivation of German karateka initiated the coordinated research project Why Martial Arts? (WMA) to analyse motives in various martial arts styles, like jūdō, taiji, krav maga and wing chun. In 2017, the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) supported the transposition of the research question to Japanese karatedō and jūdō practitioners. For the German sub-study, 32 interviews were conducted about entry/participation motives, fascination categories, and reasons for choosing karatedō. The design of the Japanese sub-study was based on the aforementioned German study, but due to the higher number of participants (n = 106), a mixed method questionnaire was used and distributed via paper and online versions. The results demonstrate that many motivation categories of Japanese and German karatedō practitioners share similarities in importance and content, although the characteristics of motives can be very different—partly due to cultural specifics.
Interminable ritual repetition of set movements (taolu) has resulted in Chinese martial arts facing trenchant criticism as being useless in fight sports, mixed martial arts, and actual combat. In Singapore, the neglect of body-callousing or conditioning methods in Chinese martial arts may render them unfit for unarmed combat. This led me to ask whether the entire edifice of set practice in the martial arts is based upon a false connection. Researching Hong Shen Choy Li Fut, a Chinese fighting style notoriously infested with gangsters in the red light district of Singapore, I was informed that all Chinese martial arts and lion dance associations are triads. Nevertheless, even here I was shown curious dancelike interpretations for martial arts moves taught. Does the endless repetition of sets captivate the performer into a delusional belief that they are becoming a better fighter? Are the audiences of such sets, performed in dramatic rendition, similarly held captive in a false connection?
Before introducing the articles comprising this issue of Martial Arts Studies, this editorial first undertakes a sustained reflection on the question of whether the emergent field of martial arts studies might be regarded as trivial. In doing so, it explores possible rationales and raisons d’être of the field in terms of a reflection on the legitimation of academic subjects, especially those closest to martial arts studies, from which martial arts studies can be said to have emerged. The first draft of this reflection was originally written by Bowman in response to certain reactions to his academic interest in martial arts (hence the occasional use of the pronoun ‘I’, rather than ‘we’), but Judkins proposed that the piece form part of this issue’s editorial, because of the importance of thinking about what this ‘martial arts studies’ thing is that we are doing, what the point of it may be, and whether or not it may be trivial.
Physical assaults are an inherent problem of modern society. One strategy available to try to prevent violence is to strengthen one’s personal capacities to defend oneself. This is the scope of various self-defence programs and systems within the civil domain. While training in self-defence facilitates the use of self-protective strategies in real life situations, it is important to ascertain whether individuals learn the skills taught in self-defence classes and whether they are able to perform the skills when these are required. In order to test the effectiveness of self-defence skills in an ethically acceptable way, instructors and scholars have to design environments in which valid and practically relevant results about the performance of the learner can be obtained. The imprecise nature and the multidimensional use of terms like ‘realism’ and ‘reality-based’ leads to difficulties
in designing such environments. In this article, we argue for the need to shift the emphasis from ‘realistic’ to ‘representative’ design in testing and learning environments, with the aim of developing transferable self-defence skills within the civil domain. The Trade- Off Model of Simulation Design that we propose is intended to help instructors and scholars to make more informed decisions when designing tasks for testing or training.
This article argues against all forms of scientism and the
widespread perceived need to define martial arts in order to
study martial arts or ‘do’ martial arts studies. It argues instead for
the necessity of theory before definition, including theorisation
of the orientation of the field of martial arts studies itself.
Accordingly, the chapter criticises certain previous (and current)
academic approaches to martial arts, particularly the failed
project of hoplology. It then examines the much more promising
approaches of current scholarship, such as that of Sixt Wetzler,
before critiquing certain aspects of its orientation. Instead of
accepting Wetzler’s ‘polysystem theory’ approach uncritically,
the article argues instead for the value of a poststructuralist
‘discourse’ approach in martial arts studies.
Festivals bring people together in affirmations of community. This article looks at two festivals in coastal locations in Indonesia and Brazil with a close inspection of performances of fight-dancing included within both festivals. The improvisatory or choreographed organization of the fight-dancing performances echoes the manner in which the festivals themselves are assembled. As these festivals grow in popularity, the process of inventing tradition is heterogeneously co-constituted by those parties who actively invest in the symbolic capital of the events. Verbal and non-verbal forms of expression reinforce each other in the construction of a multivalent sense of regional traditions. The corporeal engagement of organisers and participants blurs the boundary between embodied remembering and narrative accounts. Based on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores the interweaving of fight-dancing with the history, growth, and post-colonial expression of regional festivals.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the communication strategies of medieval fightbooks and the purpose of integrated depictions of their authors and addressees. The point of departure is a series of three articles written by Jan-Dirk Müller between 1992 and 1994, in which he analyses the relationship between mnemonic verses, glosses and didactic images in the tradition of the fencing master Johannes Liechtenauer. On the basis of a case study on the five surviving 15th century manuscripts ascribed to Hans Talhofer, who also stands in the tradition of Liechtenauer, the description of his personal martial art by the use of didactic images is examined.
Martial anthropology offers a nomadological approach to Martial Arts Studies featuring Southern Praying Mantis, Hung Sing Choy Li Fut, Yapese stick dance, Chin Woo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and seni silat to address the infinity loop model in the anthropology of performance/performance studies which binds together efficacy and entertainment, ritual and theatre, social and aesthetic drama, concealment and revelation. The infinity loop model assumes a positive feedback loop where efficacy flows into entertainment and vice versa. The problem addressed here is what occurs when efficacy and entertainment collide? Misframing, captivation, occulturation, and false connections are related as they emerged in anthropological fieldwork settings from research into martial arts conducted since 2001, where confounded variables may result in new beliefs in the restoration of behaviour.
The gradual appearance and relative stabilisation of the names of different kinds of martial activities in different cultures and contexts has led to confusion and to an unhelpful and unjustifiable elision of meanings, which merges different modes of combat and other martial activities. To gain a clearer perspective on this area, we must enquire into the criteria according to which the various kinds of martial activities are (or should be) classified. Our assessment of the literature suggests that there is no satisfactory and well-justified overall cross-cultural account of the classification of martial activities. This paper provides a revisionary classification and offers an explanation and a justification of the five main categories identified: close combat, warrior arts, martial paths, martial arts and martial sports; as well as some minor ones, such as martial training, martial therapy, martial display, martial games and martial dance.
In martial arts, as in dance, embodiment is of the utmost importance (Zarrilli 2009 Zarrilli, P. B. 2009. Psychophysical Acting. An Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski, with DVD-ROM edited by P. Hulton, Abingdon, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Minarik 2014 Minarik, M. 2014. Taekwondo zwischen Spektakel und Ritual: Kampfkunst im sozialpolitischen Kontext. Wien: Promedia. [Google Scholar]), especially in experiencing and interpreting the movements of the opponent in ground combat and responding with the body. Also in striking martial arts, the performative altercation and bodily communication with the opponent is based on corporeal sensitivity. The Covid-19 pandemic, on the other hand, has led to a widespread digitalisation in martial arts courses – a trend that will presumably continue after the pandemic, as the study by Meyer et al. (2021 Meyer, M. J., A. Molle, B. Judkins, and P. Bowman. 2021. “Martial Arts in the Pandemic.” Martial Arts Studies 11: 7–31. doi:10.18573/mas.134.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) indicates. The results also showed that martial arts clubs and teachers have succeeded in adapting to digital teaching and practice in very different ways, e.g. through Zoom workshops or online lessons. Especially during a pandemic, when physical contact and activities are reduced to a minimum, data suggests that martial artists have become even more aware of the importance of embodiment and physical exercise. As digitalisation almost always leads to disembodiment, these dynamics seem to be opposed to each other. This development is also connected to the didactics and the training motives of martial artists, and how these are changed and/or replaced by effects of digitalisation before, during and after the pandemic. The article analyses the different methods and approaches to a digitalised martial arts teaching and practice and ventures a look into the future of digital movement practices in virtual reality.
The Invention of Martial Arts examines the media history of what we now call ‘martial arts’ and argues that martial arts is a cultural construction that was born in film, TV, and other media. It argues that ‘martial arts’ exploded into popular consciousness entirely thanks to the work of media. Of course, the book does not deny the existence of real, material histories and non-media dimensions in martial arts practices. But it thoroughly recasts the status of such histories, combining recent myth-busting findings in historical martial arts research with important insights into the discontinuous character of history, the widespread ‘invention of tradition’, the orientalism and imagined geographies that animate many ideas about history, and the frequent manipulation of history for reasons of status, cultural capital, private or public power, politics, and/or financial gain. In doing so, the book argues for the primacy of media representation as key player in the emergence and spread of martial arts, and overturns the dominant belief that ‘real practices’ are primary while representations are secondary. The book makes its case via historical analysis of the British media history of such Eastern and Western martial arts as Bartitsu, jujutsu, judo, karate, taiji, and mixed martial arts (MMA) across a range of media, from newspapers, comics, and books to cartoons, films, and TV series, as well as television adverts and music videos, focusing on often overlooked texts such as adverts for ‘Hai Karate’, the 1970s hit ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, and other mainstream and marginal media texts.
The popular discourse about Asian martial arts has often been surrounded by an aura of esotericism, so pervasive that it even influenced the academic discussion to some degree. Moreover, nationalistic motives to promote certain martial arts narratives often prevail. This article focuses on the frequently flawed philosophical and historical discourse surrounding the Asian martial arts. In particular, this study concentrates on the academic discussions of the Japanese and Korean martial arts, and the search for a philosophical framework compatible with historical narratives. The Japanese created a romantic but also nationalistic martial arts narrative that aligned with the ideals of the Meiji Restoration. This romanticized image was naively accepted in the West, often imported along with esoteric ideas of the East. And, as most modern Korean martial arts originated in Japan, the Korean martial arts discussion aligns with that of Japanese martial arts, and this alignment has been a point of heated dispute. Discussions of Korean martial arts reflect a search for a definitive identity of the Korean martial arts community as well as the desire to establish a martial arts tradition independent of those of Japan as well as China. However, the discourse has often been influenced by western, albeit biased and perhaps faulty, historical views, and ideas about martial arts traditions.
Dieses Buch beschäftigt sich in erster Linie mit der Geschichte und Lehre des 'Weges der Leeren Hand' (karatedō). Darüber hinaus gewährt es Einblick in verschiedene Facetten der japanischen Geschichte und Kultur.
Auf der Grundlage eigener Recherche und neuerer Forschungsergebnisse wurde dafür die auf einer Dissertation basierende Monographie “Die Lehre des Karatedō” aus dem Jahre 2000 überarbeitet und mit einer ausführlichen Darstellung der Geschichte des Karatedō erweitert.
Nach der Einleitung beschreibt ein Kapitel die historische Entwicklung der japanischen 'Wege der Kampfkünste' (budō). Anschließend wird die Geschichte des Karatedō ausführlich dargestellt und erörtert. Dabei werden auch bislang verbreitete Thesen kritisch hinterfragt.
Die folgenden Kapitel wenden sich der Lehre in den traditionellen japanischen Kampfkünsten sowie des Karatedō im Besonderen zu. Werden diese Kampfkünste vornehmlich unmittelbar vom Lehrer zum Schüler vermittelt, findet sich zur Ergänzung der Überlieferung, bzw. als ergänzendes Mittel der Schulung, auch die Tradition der in Prosa oder Lyrik verfassten sogenannten Lehrschriften. Diese enthalten verschiedenartige Lehrauffassungen in Bezug auf die von ihren Meistern immer wieder besonders betonte Einheit der Komponenten 'Herz' (shin), 'Technik' (gi) und 'Körper' (tai) zum Studium der Wege der Kampfkünste oder im engeren Sinne einer jeweiligen 'Schule' (ryū). Vor allem diese Lehrschriften bieten Einblick in eine tiefergehende Zielsetzung: So kann ein Interessierter zum Beispiel aus der Sicht eines Begründers einer Schule, über ein bloßes Kräftemessen bzw. über Sieg oder Niederlage im Wettkampf, d. h. über ein messbares Ergebnis, hinaus, von einem Weg der ganzheitlichen Vervollkommnung des Menschen erfahren.
Als Beispiele für Lehrschriften des Karatedō wurden Abhandlungen von den Begründern bzw. wichtigen Meistern der 'vier großen Schulrichtungen' – Shōtōkan, Gōjūryū, Shitōryū und Wadōryū – Funakoshi Gichin, Miyagi Chōjun, Mabuni Kenwa und Ōtsuka Hironori ausgewählt. Die Darlegungen in diesen Schriften sind aber nicht nur auf das Karatedō begrenzt zu sehen: Sie bieten im übertragenen Sinne auch Einblick in grundsätzliche Gedanken zu den japanischen Kampfkünsten. Zum besseren Verständnis wurde diesen Lehrschriften eine Einführung in die geistesgeschichtlichen Hintergründe bzw. wichtigen Grundbegriffe der japanischen Kampfkünste sowie ihrer schriftlichen Überlieferung vorangestellt.
Ebenfalls vor den Lehrschriften zum Karatedō finden sich Biographien ihrer Verfasser, die nicht nur die Lebensgeschichte der Meister bzw. Kommentatoren vorstellen, sondern auch eine entscheidende Phase der Verbreitung der Kampfkunst auf die japanischen Hauptinseln und ihrer Weiterentwicklung widerspiegeln.
Es folgen die zum ersten Mal direkt aus dem Japanischen ins Deutsche übersetzten Lehrschriften des Karatedō mit anschließenden Erläuterungen. Die Gründe hierfür liegen zum einen im teilweisen Fehlen westlicher Übersetzungen, zum anderen in der semantischen Präzision gegenüber Sekundärübersetzungen. Dies betrifft auch andere Quellen und ihre jeweiligen Titel.
Die Inhalte bzw. Erkenntnisse aus den vorangegangenen Kapiteln sind in der Schlussbetrachtung noch einmal kurz zusammengefasst und erörtert. Außerdem sind zahlreiche weiterführende Anmerkungen, ein Literaturverzeichnis sowie ein Index mit Schriftzeichen enthalten.
This book, based on a German doctoral thesis (University of Tübingen, 1998), is addressed to all those who are interested in Japanese culture in general, and especially in the traditional Japanese Ways of the Martial Arts (budô). The purpose is to provide an insight into the discipline of these Ways, beyond physical training, using the example of Karatedô. It presents English translations of texts on the teachings of the Way of the Empty Hand together with explanations. There have been few and in some cases no English translations of these texts until now. They include the writings of the founders or influential masters of the 'four major schools', Shôtôkan, Gôjûryû, Shitôryû and Wadôryû, Funakoshi Gichin, Miyagi Chôjun, Mabuni Kenwa and Ôtsuka Hironori respectively. To give a background to the texts and to allow a deeper understanding of them, an account of the historical development of the Japanese martial arts, an introduction to some important basic principles and a discussion of their written transmission, including new translations of parts of important teaching texts, are also presented. Biographies of the aforementioned masters and commentators on their texts which serve to illustrate one of the most important developmental phases in the history of Karatedô are included as well. The Appendix considers the 'respectful salutation' (rei) and its performance. In addition, those interested in further study will find comprehensive notes as well as both an extensive bibliography and a glossary of terms and names with their Japanese and Chinese characters.
This paper deploys conceptual and analytical tools from cultural sociology to analyze Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). While often characterized as violent and uncivilized, MMA has a core following of fans who watch MMA and consume MMA media out of an interest in the aesthetics of the sport. As salient actors within the ‘internally legitimate’ sphere of the sport, this paper explores the way the MMA media construct symbolic boundaries around different kinds of fights through aesthetic and moral evaluations. Through qualitative content analysis of MMA media discourse, I attempt to reconstruct their general aesthetic principles, demonstrating a fourfold typology of MMA in practice: repulsive ‘excessive violence’, boring ‘insufficient action’, soft ‘palatable practices’, and sublime ‘aesthetic violence’. This framework allows the MMA media as ‘connoisseurs’ to create hierarchical ‘distinctions’ between their aesthetic attitudes and those of more casual ‘mass’ audiences. This research may prove useful for scholars interested in MMA, culture, and sports media studies.
One of the more colorful realizations of the age-old striking versus grappling rivalry came in 1976, in a fight billed as boxing versus professional wrestling. Unlike similar matches throughout history, however, this event featured the heavyweight world champion, Muhammad Ali, and the most popular Japanese professional wrestler of the day, Antonio Inoki. Investigating this event through the lens of applied linguistic anthropology reveals much about the contextual social dynamics at play. Sources including newspaper reports, interviews with witnesses and those involved, and private correspondence are considered as they unveil the complicated truth behind Ali vs. Inoki, the fight that marked a turning point in the career of history’s most celebrated boxing champion. Analysis reveals that the event was a public failure because of communication breakdown on myriad fronts. Consequently, I argue that the fight itself should be viewed as a robust form of communication in which the nuances of dialect are at play.
Martial arts studies has entered a period of rapid conceptual development. Yet relatively few works have attempted to define the ‘martial arts’, our signature concept. This article evaluates a number of approaches to the problem by asking whether ‘lightsaber combat’ is a martial art. Inspired by a successful film franchise, these increasingly popular practices combine elements of historical swordsmanship, modern combat sports, stage choreography and a fictional worldview to ‘recreate’ the fighting methods of Jedi and Sith warriors. The rise of such hyper-real fighting systems may force us to reconsider a number of questions. What is the link between ‘authentic’ martial arts and history? Can an activity be a martial art even if its students and teachers do not claim it as such? Is our current body of theory capable of exploring the rise of hyper-real practices? Most importantly, what sort of theoretical work do we expect from our definition of the ‘martial arts’?
Problem. The following study is concerned with the issue of the terminology used in martial arts, both widely in their practice, as well as in the scientific sphere. It deals with errors and misunderstandings, and changes and establishes definitions of terms. Method. The research is particularly concerned with the basic terms for martial arts used in the English, Japanese and Polish languages. Hermeneutic content analysis of the subject literature, dictionaries and scientific studies is here carried out from the perspective of the Humanistic Theory of Martial Arts (HTMA). Results. The authors present general comments about language changes and their causes. They make comparisons between definitions in specialist literature. They explain the problems of translation and refer to the statements of other researchers. The appendix features a glossary with analysis and explanation of selected basic concepts. Conclusions. Stipulative definitions, whose purpose is to clarify the basic concepts used in the science of martial arts, were used. This new scientific specialization should extend from the jargon of trainers to the language of scientific description. The causes of errors in martial arts terminology were also pointed out.
Aim: Our goal is to open a discussion on the place of martial arts in physical culture, and with reference to specific subjects (relationship to sport, physical education, physical rehabilitation, physical recreation and tourism). Methods: This is a preliminary discussion of the issues: inspection and image recognition, realised from the perspective of The Humanistic Theory of Martial Arts, theory of physical culture and sociology of culture. SFE literature (content analysis) and a long-term experience of authors with the practice of various martial arts and combat sports are the methods. Results: The study discusses a general relationship of martial arts to high culture (cultural heritage), physical culture, physical education, physical rehabilitation, sports culture, and leisure area (tourism and recreation). Conclusions: Martial arts are part of physical culture, although they are not included in it entirely. Let us just look at their relationship to the individual components of physical culture. Martial arts are an expression of an active and dynamic lifestyle of today's society, which is a certain regularity on a global scale.
This book shows how the notion and practice of Japanese martial arts in the late Meiji period brought Japanese bodies, Japanese nationalisms, and the Japanese state into sustained contact and dynamic engagement with one another. Using a range of disciplinary approaches, Denis Gainty shows how the metaphor of a national body and the cultural and historical meanings of martial arts were celebrated and appropriated by modern Japanese at all levels of society, allowing them to participate powerfully in shaping the modern Japanese nation and state. While recent works have cast modern Japanese and their bodies as subject to state domination and elite control, this book argues that having a body – being a body, and through that body experiencing and shaping social, political, and even cosmic realities – is an important and underexamined aspect of the late Meiji period.
In the global world of the twenty-first century, martial arts are practiced for self-defense and sporting purposes only. However, for thousands of years, they were a central feature of military practice in China and essential for the smooth functioning of society. Individuals who were adept in using weapons were highly regarded, not simply as warriors but also as tacticians and performers. This book, which opens with an intriguing account of the very first female martial artist, charts the history of combat and fighting techniques in China from the Bronze Age to the present. This broad panorama affords fascinating glimpses into the transformation of martial skills, techniques, and weaponry against the background of Chinese history, the rise and fall of empires, their governments, and their armies. Quotations from literature and poetry, and the stories of individual warriors, infuse the narrative, offering personal reflections on prowess in the battlefield and techniques of engagement. This is an engaging and readable introduction to the authentic history of Chinese martial arts.
Yoga Body charts the rise of postural yoga (asana) in popular imagination and practice from the middle of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Second World War. This period saw the forging of a postural canon that gave shape to what is today popularly accepted as the practical substance of "yoga." Prior to these modern innovations, yoga was rarely (if ever) conceived primarily in these terms. How did this situation come about? How did yoga become the health- and fitness-oriented phenomenon we see today? This book offers explanations of the genesis, status and function of yoga in the modern world. This history has remained largely hidden in popular and scholastic accounts, but the phenomenally successful yoga forms we see in the world today simply cannot be understood without it. Drawing on rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the United States, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly actors in the 1920s and thirties postural yoga renaissance, the book investigates the predecessors of today's asana systems. It also presents fresh evidence for the origins of the twenty-first century's most popular forms, including material from two hitherto untranslated texts on asana by the "godfather" of modern postural yoga, T. Krishnamacharya.
In What a Body Can Do, Ben Spatz develops, for the first time, a rigorous theory of embodied technique as knowledge. He argues that viewing technique as both training and research has much to offer current debates over the role of practice in the university, including the debates around "practice as research." Drawing on critical perspectives from the sociology of knowledge, phenomenology, dance studies, enactive cognition, and other areas, Spatz argues that technique is a major area of historical and ongoing research in physical culture, performing arts, and everyday life.