“The society which has abolished every kind of adventure makes its own abolition the only possible adventure.” Paris, May 1968


Monday 22 September 2008

The one and only Yukio Tani.

During the second half of the 19th century,as Japan was emerging from it's isolated feudal past and rapidly becoming an industrialised nation, the Japanese started to visit abroad and large numbers of Europeans were for the first time visiting and working in Japan. It must have been frustrating for the Japanese,that just as they were trying to take their place in the modern world, it was the ancient and now somewhat discredited art of jujitsu that fascinated the foreigners, especially the Brits.
Among these Victorian martial arts fans was one W E Barton Wright, an engineer on a tour of duty in Japan. Barton Wright had decided that upon returning home he would open a jujitsu academy in London teaching his own "westernised" system that he had modestly named "Bartitsu". Just to be on the safe side and to ensure that he wasn't put on his arse by the first punter to walk through the door, Barton Wright also decided to bring back a genuine Japanese instructor with him, the nineteen year old Yukio Tani.
Bartitsu got off to a good enough start and for a time was the talk of the town. Having Sherlock Holmes use it to overcome Professor Moriaty in their little set to at the Reichenbach Falls helped of course. It couldn't last, the bubble was bound to burst before long and soon the flood of hopeful trainees dried to a trickle. In a last effort to drum up business Barton Wright put his teenage instructor on the stage. Tani was to appear nightly in the capitals music halls not only giving demonstrations of his art but taking on all comers as well.
Barton Wright and Bartitsu were soon forgotten, not so Yukio Tani. The British public took the little man to their hearts as thousands of miles from home and with no other way of making a living he really did take on and beat all comers. Touring the country night after night he offered an open challenge to boxers, wrestlers and God knows what bar room brawlers to step right up and have a go. Only five feet two inches tall and never weighing more than nine stone, how on earth did he do it?
Of course there was his undoubted skill, even though he always modestly claimed that in Japan he would be considered as no more than a good third rater. What was probably even more impresive was the level of mental strength that he must have had.
Yukio Tani settled in London and when he finally retired from his music hall career was to become the first chief instructor at the now famous Budokwai Judo Club.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice summary but it's a little hard on E.W. Barton-Wright. He studied Shinden-Fudo ryu jiujitsu for three years and had previous training in boxing, wrestling, savate and stiletto fencing; he was an experienced and well-conditioned fighter in his own right.

Tani was competing in music hall challenge bouts from his earliest days in London; this wasn't so much a last-ditch effort to drum up business as a major reason why Barton-Wright had invited him to England in the first place.

Also, Bartitsu was rather more than Westernised jiujitsu. It was a method of cross-training between jiujitsu, boxing, savate and Pierre Vigny's stick fighting method; in hindsight, literally decades ahead of its time.

See the mini-documentary at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tC5O7HV_KY for the tip of the iceberg.

ray said...

Thanks for putting me right on those points Tony. Have just had a quick look at your Bartitsu site. Very interesting.