The Invention of Martial Arts

Abstract

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 Birth of British Self-Defence: 1604-1904

“…Such texts certainly feed some contemporary kinds of nostalgia for times lost, as can also be seen in the interest that has grown in Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) over recent decades. This interest is a comparatively recent phenomenon, one that cannot therefore be divorced from the possibility that it reflects a symptomatic nostalgic yearning for lost cultural roots [Chow 1995;Pitcher 2014;Bowman 2021].…”

“…By the mid-nineteenth century, as evidenced by such published accounts as these, the discourse of self-defence was becoming 'holistic'. That is to say, 'self-defence' becomes a fully-fledged discursive entity [Bowman 2021] -ever expanding, 'ever-unfolding' -akin to Knorr-Cetina's description of the ever-deepening and ever-unfolding behaviour of 'objects of knowledge' in the eyes and hands of those who study them [Knorr-Cetina 1981;2003;Spatz 2015]. A discursive entity grows in more than one dimension, realm or register.…”

“…Bartitsu first fully appears in book form the following year, 1899, which sees the publication of Barton-Wright's text, The New Art Self-Defense -How a Man may Defend Himself against every Form of Attack. The ultimate irony, however, is that Barton-Wright's own Bartitsu would itself quickly go on to 'mediate' and then 'vanish' -washed away from view by the explosion of interest in the Japanese jujutsu that Barton-Wright himself was largely responsible for introducing to the British public [Godfrey 2012;Bowman 2021].…”

“…These books -especially the latter -are significant because, although 'older' styles of self-defence text continued to be produced, from this point on, an increasing number of self-defence books began to focus on approaches to hand-to-hand combat and self-defence drawn not merely from other European countries (such as Switzerland and France) but also from 'the mystical East' -primarily Japan. Thus, although through early twentieth century self-defence books continued to appear that would make absolutely no reference to Japanese 'jitsu' or 'jutsu' dimensions -it was only very much later (in the 1970s) that such practices would come to be widely referred to as 'martial arts' [Bowman 2021] -the seeds were nonetheless sown for, first, the jujutsu and, thereafter, the judo paradigm revolution in self-defence discourse [Godfrey 2012;Yabu 2018;Brough 2020]. Self-defence discourse through the twentieth century would become increasingly 'orientalised' -or, rather, orientalist [Krug 2001;Bowman 2017;.…”

“…Autumn 2023 cordingly it may well endure, for as long as the features that produced it continue to prevail [Seshagiri 2006;Massumi 2010;Godfrey 2012;Little 2018;Bowman 2021].…”