Kronos: 1940-present (2024)

The National Library of Canada provides an authorized mirror ofthis e-publication. The base document, however, is the one at http://ejmas.com/kronos.Most recent update: December 2004. Copyright © 2000-2004 Joseph R. Svinth Allrights reserved.

Kronos; A Chronology of the Martial Arts and Combative Sports,represents my idiosyncratic interpretation of the history of themartial arts, combative sports, and associated philosophical topics. Ifyou have suggestions for improvement, please let me know. If you thinkyou can do better, please do so.

The periods covered are:

The bibliographies are at:

Online references, a summary of recent changes, and generalhousekeeping information are found at:

If you prefer reading traditional print format, then please see theabbreviated chronology in Thomas A. Green, Martial Arts of theWorld: An Encyclopedia(ABC-CLIO, 2001). Meanwhile, if you prefer reading articles arrangedtopically rather than chronologically, then please see the essays inGreen's encyclopedia and the chapters in Thomas A. Green and Joseph R.Svinth, editors, Martial Arts in the Modern World (Greenwood,2003).

Finally, if you want to see how Kronos has evolved overtime, then please see the first edition, which appears online at http://ejmas.netfirms.com/kronos.

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1940:

During a talent show given at Chengtu, China, missionary MargaretSimkin sees some husky young women from Ginling College displayingtheir skill in dance, fencing, Chinese boxing, and European gymnastics.While describing the show to friends in Canada, Simkin said, "There isabundant hope for China in such as these."

The Hon Hsing Athletic Club is established in Vancouver, BritishColumbia, and its ch’uan faclasses were probably the first organized Chinese martial art classesin Canada. However, non-Chinese students were not allowed until the1960s. "It used to be that the Chinese instructors wouldn’t teachWesterners," Raymond Leung told Ramona Mar in 1986. "But it’s wrong tothink that if we teach them, they’ll use it to beat us. With every newstudent, I think we make one new friend."

In Montreal, 19-year old Joe Weider publishes the first issue of YourPhysique,a 12-page mimeographed newsletter devoted to bodybuilding. (Thedifference between bodybuilding and weightlifting is that the former issemi-erotic muscular theater whereas the latter is nationalisticathletic competition.) It sold well, and by the 1960s, Joe and hisyounger brother Ben were leaders in the health and fitness publishingindustry.

Hundreds of English witches gather in the New Forest to send AdolfHitler the telepathic message, "You cannot cross the sea." According toGerald B. Gardner, an English warlock who also wrote a noted book onkrisses and other Malay weapons, the gratifying results of the Battleof Britain were proof of the continuing power of English sorcery.

The British government hires William Fairbairn to teach Britishcommandos to fight dirty. Fairbairn’s favorite unarmed fightingtechniques included fingers in the eyes, palm-heel strikes to the chin,and kicks to the groin, and a subsequent German manual based on thesemethods was called Englischer Gangster-Methoden. In 1942,Fairbairn left Scotland for North America. The most famous person toview Fairbairn-style training in Canada was novelist Ian Fleming, whosaw an exhibition during a day-trip to Camp X, outside Ottawa, in 1943.Many future CIA leaders also took the course from Fairbairn at asimilar OSS camp near Camp David, Maryland. Rex Applegate describes themeat of this latter course in his book Kill or Get Killed.Meanwhile, the British also send Lt. Col. J.C. Mawhood to Tidal RiverCamp, in Victoria, Australia, to teach these methods to Australiancommandos. Because there were not many people in Australia who knew anyAsian martial arts, most Australian hand-to-hand combat instructors ofthe era were professional boxers or wrestlers. Pioneer instructorsincluded Alf Volker and Ken "Blue" Curran. However, during the 1950s,the Australian military began teaching soldiers rudiments of Asianmartial arts. These instructors included men who had received trainingin Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, and Vietnam. Following the Vietnam War,the Australian military emphasis shifted to nuclear threats, and as aresult, Australian military interest in hand-to-hand combat declined.Then, during the late 1980s, the Australian military began routinelyparticipating in United Nations peacekeeping operations, and so, by theearly 1990s, there was increased interest in providing AustralianSpecial Forces soldiers with realistic training in close-quarterfighting. Thus, in 1994, a Military Unarmed Combat Wing was introducedto 11 Training Group. Pioneers included Majors John Whipp and GregoryMawke. Although Military Unarmed Combat Wing was closed in 1996, theAustralian military continued to conduct military unarmed combatives atunit level into the early 21st century.

The Japanese Army intentionally introduces typhus, cholera, and thebubonic plague into Chekiang Province, where it was then involved infighting the Nationalist Chinese. Although this is the best-knowninstance of modern biological warfare, this is actually the secondverified instance. The first occurred in September 1939, when theJapanese Army Unit 731 dumped typhus bacteria into water that advancingSoviet units were expected to use.

Following Iceland’s declaration of independence from Nazi-occupiedDenmark, glimabecomes mandatory in Icelandic public schools. This association withschool, rules, and supervised competition effectively killed "joywrestling’s" sense of play, and by the 1980s, there were barely 1,000members in Iceland’s fourteen wrestling clubs.

1941:

Choy Hak-Peng introduces Yang-style t’ai chi ch’uan to NewYork City. Choy’s students were all Chinese.

Toward instilling martial discipline and patriotism into schoolchildren, the Japanese Ministry of Education introduces judo and kendointo its fifth grade physical education programs. At the same time,school gymnastics (tasen) were renamed "physical discipline" (tairen).Under this scheme, which was influenced by Nazi Strength through Joypedagogy, budo was said to include radio transmission, grenadethrowing, close-order drill, and races in armor while carryingsandbags.

A 16-year old Latvian sniper named Elsa Smuskevich makes the RedArmy newspapers by killing her first German outside Murmansk. "A womanhas to have a reason to fight, a reason to leave her home and go towar," Smuskevich tells an interviewer 45 years later. "If she has thatreason she is a wonderful soldier."

Bob Hoffman of York Barbell introduces the idea of women’sweightlifting and bodybuilding to the readers of Strength &Health. His motivation? A middle-aged man’s desire to display histwo much younger girlfriends.

1942:

During one of the last cavalry charges on record, the Japanesemachine-gun a Sikh cavalry unit in Burma. News of the failure causesthe United States Army to replace its cavalry horses with tanks andtrucks. (Previously it had been hoped that horses would be usable inthe Burmese forests. Although the Italian Savoia regiment staged asuccessful cavalry attack on a Russian unit outside Stalingrad as lateas August 1942, such attacks were essentially obsolete. (Even theSoviet newsreels showing Cossack cavalrymen charging Nazi tanks werepropaganda pieces, the Red Army having effectively destroyed the Donand Kuban Cossacks in 1920, and the Russians actually used theirequestrians as mounted infantry. The South Africans and Rhodesians alsoused mounted infantry into the 1980s, but mounted infantry and cavalryare not the same things.) That said, the French army continued to teachequestrian skills to prospective tank commanders into the 1990s. Thereason was that French saw horses as useful for teaching physicalfitness, self-confidence, and the spirit of the cavalry. They alsoreasoned that a man who could get a 900-pound horse to do what hewanted would have no trouble achieving the same from a man.

Near Cholm, Russia, the Germans introduce the world’s first assaultrifle, the MKB42, to combat. Using lighter cartridges (in this case,7.92 by 33mm Kurz), assault rifles combined the convenience and cyclicrate of submachine guns with the effective range and stopping power ofrifles. And, while the German weapon was overly complex, the ideaimpressed the Soviets, who were working on their own self-loadingweapons chambered in 7.62 x 39mm. The result was the Simonovself-loading carbine (SKs) introduced in 1943 and the AK-47 assaultrifle introduced in 1947.

The German firm HASAG, which was based in Leipzig and used slavelabor from the women’s camp attached to Buchenwald, begins developing arecoilless anti-tank weapon called the Faustpatrone. Throughout therest of World War II, HASAG developed increasingly powerful versionsknown as Panzerfaust, and development continued in the Soviet Unionafterwards. Thus, in 1961, the Soviets introduced an improvedPanzerfaust known as the Raketniy Protivotankoviy Granatomet,or RPG-7. Improved projectiles followed, and by the mid-1980s, theRPG-7 had become the weapon of choice for irregular troops pittedagainst medium to high technology militaries. Although the launch, withits backblast and rocket trail, invariably gave away the firer’sposition, the projectiles were useful for anti-vehicular,anti-personnel, or anti-helicopter missions. Moreover, because pinpointaccuracy was not required, training time was minimal.

The Japanese replace the Dutch colonial government of Indonesia withan Islamic nationalist government. Leaders of the new governmentincluded Achmed Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta. With Japanese approval,these Indonesian nationalists then used the dance-like Indonesianmartial art of silat as a method for uniting ethnically,culturally, and religiously diverse peoples. This modern usage isbehind the subsequent stories about silat having been developedfor military use against colonial powers. (If silathas practical value in a post-modern military setting, then it isprimarily in teaching students to cooperate and move together in time.Why do I say this? Consider, for example, that eight Malayans trainedin silat successfully resisted a Chinese attack on theirvillage in August 1949. Since the Malayans resisted using rifles ratherthan fists, then what use was their silat? Increased unitcohesion? Greater physical fitness? Improved self-confidence? Allmilitarily useful things, to be sure, but each is more rapidly andefficiently taught using football or close-order drill than silat.So this suggests that the main value is not martial, but insteadteaching people to value their own culture and traditions.)

To reduce factional violence between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, theBritish stop all Indian professional wrestling championships. Regionalchampionships resume after Partition in 1947, and Indian nationalchampionships resume in 1953. The driving force behind their resumptionwas a Bombay millionaire named Gustad Irani.

In the city of Yenan, in Shensi Province, 1,300 Communist Chineseathletes compete in basketball, volleyball, track-and-field, swimming,and military events. The military events included equestrian sports, ch’uanfa demonstrations, mass calisthenics, river fording, and wrestling.

Masayoshi "James" Mitose, a Japanese-educated Japanese American("Kibei"), starts teaching a Japanese martial art at Honolulu’sBeretania Mission. Mitose called his style kenpo jujitsu ("fist law jujutsu"),and wrote in his 1953 book, What is Self Defense,that the art was hundreds of years old. Like many of Mitose’s claims,this has not been externally documented, and photos show something thatlooks suspiciously like karate. Anyway, between 1942 and 1953, Mitosepromoted six students to 1-dan. Among these was William K.S.Chow, who actually trained under Mitose’s student Thomas Young. In1944, Chow started his own class at the Nuuanu YMCA, and in 1949, Chowbegan calling his methods "kenpo karate." Chow continued teaching kenpokarate (though not always by that name) until his death in 1987, andhis better-known students included Adrianao Emperado, Ed Parker, BillChun, Ralph Castro, and much later, Sam Kuoha.

While training a joint US-Canadian commando group, an Irishclose-combat instructor named Dermot ("Paddy") O’Neill introduces a newall-in, jump-on-the-testicl*s theory of fighting into North America.O’Neill’s methods, which included techniques borrowed from Kodokan judoand W. E. Fairbairn’s defendu system, were mentioned in a bookand a movie called The Devil’s Brigade.After the war, O’Neill taught close combat to the CIA, and in 1966 theUS Marine Corps considered using a modified O’Neill program during itsrecruit training. Judging from the photographs in the manual (FMFM 1-4dated November 1966), the O’Neill system taught good takedowns andstrangleholds, mediocre kicks and punches, and lousy knife techniques.The latter failing was not O’Neill’s fault, as the Corps remainedwedded to its Great War-era theories of knife fighting well into the1980s.

At the urging of Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, the UnitedStates Navy introduces a 12-week physical fitness program for navalaviators. Known as the V-5 program, its trainers used tackle footballto teach teamwork, running and swimming to build endurance, boxing foraggressiveness, and a kind of wrestling called "rough and tumble" forself-defense. Students learned about vital points of the human body,and were urged to forego fair play in order to win. While awell-designed curriculum, the chief fault of the program was that ittaught more than anyone could hope to master in 12 weeks. Of course,individual mastery was never a major goal for V-5 trainers. Instead,their job was only to convert pleasant, well-mannered college studentsinto disciplined killers as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

The Union Cutlery Company of Ithaca, New York begins making utilityknives for the United States Marine Corps. Known as KA-BARs after atrademark stamped onto their blades, these knives were rarely used foranything more dangerous than opening rations. (Even if 44% of Americansoldiers surveyed claimed that they wanted to kill a Japanese, probablya lot fewer wanted to slit him open with a knife, then hold him down ashe kicked and bled and screamed.) Nevertheless, the hyperbole of theaging but enthusiastic Lieutenant Colonel Anthony J. Drexel Biddle,"the old geezer that knows more ways of killing than any man alive,"soon made KA-BARs one of the most famous weapons of World War II. In1952, John Styers published some improved versions of Biddle’s knifeand bayonet methods in a book called Cold Steel.

With so many men off to war, female rassling becomes popular in theUnited States. The audiences were about half men and about half womenand school-age boys. The rasslers were working-class women who viewedrassling as a way of earning good money -- up to $100 a week for achampion -- while staying physically fit. While the most famous femalerassler was Mildred Burke, her peers included Clara Mortensen, MaeYoung, Gladys Gillem, and Elvira Snodgrass. Promoters included JackPfefer and Billy Wolfe.

World heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis is drafted into theUnited States Army. Because his service helped African American menovercome their doubts about serving in what many African Americansperceived as just another white man’s war, he was eventually promotedto the rank of staff sergeant and awarded a Legion of Merit. Meanwhile,white ex-champions such as Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey were appointedofficers in the Navy and the Coast Guard, and paid more and treatedbetter for doing the same job (e.g., selling war bonds and teachingboxing to recruits). In defense of Tunney and Dempsey, both were goodpublic speakers and successful businessmen. Consequently, they were asdeserving of their rank as anyone else. Louis, on the other hand, was apoor public speaker and a worse businessman. Consequently, his rank isalso reasonable. Nonetheless, the American military of World War II wasstrictly segregated, and in 1944, Sergeant Louis found himself pullingstrings to get ballplayer Jackie Robinson, an Army lieutenant,discharged rather than court-martialed. Robinson’s crime? Refusing tosit at the back of an Army bus.

According to tradition, second-generation Mexican youths living inthe barriosof Los Angeles begin wearing zoot suits and forming street gangs. (Theformer showed group pride while the other supposedly protected Hispanicwomen from the depredations of drunken sailors and Marines.) While thestory compresses time (both zoot suits and barrio gangs date tothe 1920s instead of the 1940s) and confuses causality (the gangs wereformed to protect Hispanic schoolboys from other Hispanic schoolboys),the story suggests how social, economic, and political conditions leadto what historians call "invented traditions."

1943:

While looking for methods of easing the pain of childbirth, theSwiss biochemist Albert Hofmann discovers the hallucinogenic effects ofrye ergot fungus. (The key ingredient was lysergic acid, or LSD.) By1948, the CIA and KGB had become interested in Hofmann’s discovery, andover the next twenty years their financing caused the development ofsynthetic hallucinogens such as LSD-25, DMT, BZ, and EA-1475. The usesthat the Cold Warriors imagined that they would get from thesedevelopments included improvements in brainwashing techniques. Whatthey got was an increase in urban street crime.

At the instigation of S.L.A. Marshall, a Detroit journalist turnedmilitary historian, and General Curtis LeMay, a B-17 group commander,the United States Army develops post-combat debriefings. The purpose ofthese after-action reports, as they became better known, was to learnprecisely what happened during a battle, as that way systemic problemscould be identified and resolved. The methodology involved gettingeveryone from private to colonel in one place, then, in LeMay’s words,asking "what went right, what went wrong, and why it went wrong. Andeach of you is in the act. Everybody has his say. If you think yourgroup commander is a stupid son-of-a-bitch, now is the time to say it.And why." When the questions were asked by someone as frank as LeMay oras insightful as Marshall, observations could be surprising. Forexample, Marshall’s most surprising (and controversial) observation wasthat just 20-25% of Army infantry fired their individual weaponsagainst human targets. Ever. Unfortunately, Marshall was not abovestretching a fact to prove a point, and many subsequent writerscontested the exact percentage of shooters and non-shooters. No matter;during the Korean War, the Army treated these numbers as gospel andwent about improving them. In a 1995 book called On Killing,Army psychologist Dave Grossman wrote that the Army did this throughdesensitization, conditioning, and denial. Desensitization involvedteaching soldiers to view non-soldiers and potential enemies assub-humans, to applaud group violence, and to develop a culture whereexcessive drinking was strongly approved. Conditioning involvedbuilding rifle ranges where soldiers took quick shots at humansilhouette targets rather than carefully aimed shots at bull’s eyes.Denial included stressing that individual soldiers fired only uponorder, and never upon their own initiative. ("Ich musste," saidall the Nazis during the Nuremberg trials: "I had to.") These changesevidently increased unit lethality. (Unverified Army data reportsfiring rates of 55% in 1951 and 90% in 1971.) Apparently, the changesalso contributed to increased risk of postwar alcoholism, suicide, anddivorce.

About 1944:

In Pernambuco, Brazil, Paulino Aloisio Andrade teaches astick-fighting game called maculêlêto a group of local children, and then has the children participate invarious regional festivals and folklore shows. Machetes were lateradded to the act for the sparks that flew when the players’ blades hit.Although maculêlê is taught in many modern capoeiraschools, the masters of the art remain Andrade’s sons Valfrido Viera deJesus and Zezinho.

1944:

California bans women from participating in public combat for profit(in other words, from boxing and wrestling). On the other hand, in1955, Illinois upheld the right of women to wrestle. By 1972, mostother states had followed suit. Important trainers of women wrestlersduring the 1950s and 1960s included Lillian Ellison and Mildred Burke.

Paul Kaelemakule of Honolulu awards Wally Jay a black belt in judo.Following World War II, Jay moved to California, where he developed a jujutsu-basedsystem that he called Small Circle Jujitsu. The fundamental principleof Small Circle Jujitsu involved using the action of the wrist asfulcrum, lever, and base. Jay credited this understanding of leverageto the teachings of Danzan Ryu teacher Ken Kawachi.

The world’s first bench-rest shooting association, the Puget SoundSnipers Congress, is established at Seattle, Washington. Roy Meisterwas its first champion, with shot groups that averaged 2.235 inches at200 yards. By 1993, world-record shot groups measured .147 inches, andUS Army contracts required military ball ammunition to shoot 2-inchgroups at 200 yards.

New York sportswriter Al Laney finds the Afro-Canadian fighter SamLangford, arguably the greatest boxer never to win a championship,blind and nearly penniless in a Harlem walk-up. "I got a geetar and abottle of gin and money in my pocket to buy Christmas dinner," saidLangford. "No millionaire in the world got more than that." Meanwhile,in Japan, pre-war judo champion Kimura Masahiko was pasting drawings offood around his room, then staring at them as he slowly chewed the riceballs that formed the bulk of his 900-calorie a day diet. Both casesshow how important visualization is to a champion.

1945:

The publication of The Male Hormone by Paul de Kruif helpspopularize synthetic testosterone use among California bodybuilders.

A firestorm started by the magnesium bombs delivered by US Air ForceB-29 bombers kills a quarter million Japanese, and burns FunakoshiGichin’s original Shotokan Dojo to the ground.

The Japanese Army starts teaching karate to members of its specialattack squadrons. According to a Wado-ryu teacher named NishizonoTakatoshi, this training involved little more than teaching highly fityoung men to punch to the face and kick to the testicl*s. As elementaryas this sounds, this was also easier said than done, as Alliedprisoners-of-war had long ago discovered that the average Japanesesoldier punched, in the vernacular of the day, round arm, like a girl.

Hwang Kee, a Korean who apparently trained in Shotokan or Shutokaikarate while working for the Japanese Railways in Manchuria,establishes the Mu Duk Kwan, or "Martial Virtue Hall," near the YongSan railroad station in Seoul. (His original students were all railroadworkers.) Hwang originally called his own method tang soo do,which was karate written in its pre-1936 characters. However, in 1960,he changed this name to Soo Bahk Do, or "the Way of the Striking Hand."The change was partly nationalistic, as the new name alluded tomedieval Korean boxing while the old name referred to Okinawan karate.Mostly, though, it was cold-hearted politics: Hwang was simultaneouslyresisting making his Mu Duk Kwan part of the government-controlledKorea Taesoodo Association.

After serving as driver (and girlfriend) to the Free French GeneralMarie-Pierre Koenig throughout most of World War II, the EnglishwomanSusan Travers is admitted into the French Foreign Legion as a sergeantmajor.

General Henry Arnold uses $10 million from the Air Force budget toestablish a private company in Santa Monica, California. This was notcorruption, but instead the beginnings of the Research and Development,or RAND, Corporation, whose missions included designingintercontinental missiles, supersonic airplanes, and nuclear wars. Toaccomplish the first two tasks, scores of German scientists were hired.(Most US technological advances of the 1950s in jet aircraft androcketry technology was based on German research of the 1930s.) Towardaccomplishing the latter task, researchers at the RAND Corporationinvented hexagonal movement tables for military war games. This ideacame from a scientifically popular mathematical game created by JohnNash of Princeton University in 1948. In 1958, a Maryland companycalled Avalon Hill borrowed the RAND Corporation’s hexagonal movementtables, and used them in a commercial war game called Gettysburg.The Avalon Hill format quickly generated a closet full of imitators,and in 1991, Coalition planners used a direct descendant called GulfStrike to rehearse their ground war against Iraq.

About 1946:

Savate enjoys a renaissance in France, in part as a way of restoringnational pride. Leaders in this movement included Pierre Baruzy, whowon the French savate championship eleven times before World War II.The first postwar French championship took place in 1947. In 1970, thistitle was elevated to championship of Europe, and in 1991, to thechampionship of the world. The first women’s savate championship tookplace in 1982.

1946:

The Zuni Indians of New Mexico hold purification rituals for theiryoung men returning home from military service during World War II. TheZuni called their rite hanasema isu waha, or "bad luck, get ridof it." Its purpose was to rid former soldiers of their bad memories.(These included serving in a white man’s army as well as stepping intorotting German bodies.) The Rama Navajo, Teton Lakota, and many otherAmerican Indian communities held analogous services for returning warveterans following both World War II and Korea. The absence of suchoutpourings of community support for non-Indian soldiers returning fromVietnam is often cited as a reason for the Vietnam War’s highpercentage of post-traumatic stress sufferers. Yet, the exorcisms andcommunity support did not help the Indian veterans much, either. Forinstance, Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who helped raise the United Statesflag over Iwo Jima in 1945, died face-down in a ditch a few yearslater. Therefore, medical awareness rather than the absence of paradesis probably responsible for the Vietnam War’s high reported rate ofstress disorders.

Before his rematch with the fleet-footed Billy Conn, heavyweightboxer Joe Louis tells reporters, "He can run. But he can’t hide."

Robert Trias, who said he learned Shuri-te karate while stationed inthe Pacific with the US Navy, establishes the first karate school onthe United States’ mainland. Trias’ school was in Phoenix, and many ofhis early students worked for the Arizona Highway Patrol. Trias’daughter Roberta Jane was among the earliest female karate black beltsin the United States.

Alfredo San Bartolome, a Peruvian 2-dan, establishes thefirst permanent judo school in Spain. Other pioneering Spanish judoinstructors included Frank Fernando and Yves Klein.

The Allied occupation government of Japan prohibits the teaching ofjudo and kendo in Japanese public schools and bans the words (andconcepts) budo and bushido. Meanwhile, martial artlicensing bodies such as the sumo association and the Dai NipponButokukai voluntarily disband. The reason was that before and during"the Emergency," as the Japanese liked to call World War II, budoand bushidohad become synonyms for Japanese fascism. And there was reason for thebelief: during the war, martial arts patronized by the Butokukaiincluded grenade throwing and glider repair, and afterwards, many ofits leaders went to jail, some for war crimes and others forracketeering. Still, the Americans had nothing against legitimatesports practiced in a democratic fashion. Therefore, sumo tournamentsresumed during the winter of 1945-1946, and in November 1946 anAll-Japan Judo Yudanshakai ("Grade Holders’ Association") was organized.

The United States Army announces the development of ENIAC, anacronym for an "electronic numerical integrator and computer." ENIACcalculated range and firing data for artillery, and it replaced a roomfull of women with slide rules. However, it was a huge device weighingthirty tons, and it had thousands of transistor tubes. Moreover, onlythe US Army used it. Therefore, it took the development of germaniumsemiconductors ("transistors") in 1947 and stored-program computers in1948 to initiate the post-modern era, with its emphasis on digitalrather printed communications. (A British machine called COLOSSUSpredated ENIAC, but its invention was a military secret for severaldecades after the war. Therefore, it had little impact on futurecomputer developments.)

1947:

Soviet leader Josef Stalin decides that the Soviets shouldparticipate in the Olympics, thus making the games a battleground inthe Cold War. Stalin wanted his athletes to enter the 1948 Olympics.However, at the time, he could not be guaranteed a large number of goldmedals. (Participation was not enough for Stalin; he wanted medals.)Therefore, he decided to postpone Soviet entry until 1952. To ensurethat Soviet athletes met Olympic eligibility requirements, top athleteswere no longer given cash payments by their clubs. Instead, theyreceived sinecures in government or the military. Schoolteachers alsowere asked to identify potential athletes, and to encourage everyone toparticipate in minor sports such as small-bore rifle shooting, fencing,and wrestling. After all, there was less competition in the minorsports, and in the hunt for Olympic gold, a medal was a medal. Finally,as the Soviets had virtually no athletic facilities, coaches startedhaving players swim during the summer, run in the spring and fall, anddo cross-country skiing in the winter. In other words, they inventedcross training.

A Japanese named Nakano Michiomi -- he later changed his name to SoDoshin -- incorporates his martial art school as a Kongo Zen Buddhistreligious order. (So said that he taught martial arts mostly as a wayof attracting young people to Buddhism, and that it was the latter, notthe martial arts, that would make them better people.) However, the taxbreaks given religious orders were probably a consideration, too. Until1972, So said that he was the twenty-first grandmaster of an esotericnorthern Shaolin system called Iher Man Thuen. What caused him tochange his mind was a Japanese court ruling that his style was notChinese, but instead a mixture of karate (perhaps Wado-ryu) and jujutsu(perhaps Hakko-ryu). Consequently, the style’s name was changed from"Shorinji Kempo," meaning "Shaolin Temple kung fu," to "Nippon ShorinjiKempo," meaning "Japanese Shaolin Fist-Way."

On Okinawa, Nagamine Shoshin establishes Matsubayashi Shorin-ryukarate. The style used advanced kata created by Matsumora Kosaku andMatsumura Sokon during the nineteenth century and introductory katacreated by Itosu Anko and Miyagi Chojun during the twentieth. The namemeans "Pine Forest Style" and alludes to both Shaolin ch’uan faand the long life supposedly acquired and maintained through strictself-discipline.

A signals officer named Nam Tae Hi establishes a Shotokan karateclub, the Oh Do Kwan, at a Korean Army base at Yong Dae Ri. In 1955,during a demonstration for the South Korean President Rhee Seung Man,Nam broke thirteen roofing tiles with a single blow. This so impressedRhee that he told Colonel Choi Hong Hi, who was Nam’s commander and anhonorary 4-dan, to start a training program for the entireKorean military. As Nam always insisted that trainees shout "Tae Kwon!"("Fists and Feet!"), his karate style soon became known popularly astaekwondo, or the Way of Fists and Feet.

The Ikatan Penchak Silat Indonesia ("Indonesian Penjak SilatAssociation") is established in Jakarta. While its leaders said thatthis encouraged the development of the Indonesian martial arts, it wasactually used to further the spread of militant Islamic (andanti-Dutch) nationalism.

Several young men, mostly of Chinese and Filipino descent, createkajukenbo, which is arguably the United States’ first eclectic Asianmartial art. The name is an anagram of karate, judo, kenpo, and Chineseboxing, which were some of the styles that it incorporated, and it wasintroduced to the North American mainland in 1958. Adriano Emperado isprobably the most famous practitioner.

1948:

Vanderbilt University football coach Henry "Red" Sanders definesgood sportsmanship, American-style, by saying, "Winning isn’teverything, it’s the only thing."

Fear of Communist trade unionists causes the United Statesgovernment to relax its hard-line opposition to the Japanese politicalright. (Since it was financed by big business, the Japanese politicalright didn’t like trade unionists or socialists, either.) This in turnallows yakuza gangs whose members enjoyed strikebreakingactivities to flourish. One of the more notorious of thesestrikebreaking gangs, the National Martyrs Youth Corps, established in1952. Members started their mornings with an hour of martial arttraining. Then they spent their days extorting money from shopkeepers,blackmailing schoolteachers, and intimidating labor organizers.Finally, they went to their clubhouses for several hours of singing anddrinking before going home at night.

Red scares cause the occupation government of Japan to reorganizethe Japanese police. Part of the reorganization involved increasedtraining, and on December 31, 1947, keibojutsu ("police stick")was adopted as the official martial art of the Japanese police. Since keibojutsuincluded elements borrowed from kendo, this is sometimes interpreted asa partial reinstatement of kendo. However, that is not correct, asbamboo stick competitions and training still received no official fundsor government support.

Ueshiba Morihei establishes the Aikikai Foundation in Tokyo, and inthe process rehabilitates pre-Pacific War mottoes such as "Budois not for fighting but for peace" so that they refer to anti-warsentiment rather than submission to Imperial authority.

The Kodokan holds its first post-war All-Japan Judo Championships.

George Grundy and his son Keith introduce judo to Auckland, NewZealand.

Toward making judo more like wrestling, Henry Stone of California’sSan Jose State University introduces weight divisions into US judocompetition.

In London, Koizumi Gunji organizes what becomes the European JudoUnion (EJU). In 1951, Argentina asked to join the EJU. To allow this,the EJU was reorganized as the International Judo Federation (IJF).However, in 1952 control of the IJF shifted to Japan, leaving theEuropeans to resurrect the EJU as a way of regulating and organizingtheir European Championships. Throughout this period, Britain, France,Belgium, and Holland opposed weight divisions in the EuropeanChampionships, saying that they were not traditional. The Germans, onthe other hand, supported the idea.

A Czech immigrant named Imi Lichtenfeld develops krav maga,or "contact fighting" for use by Israeli soldiers. Primary techniquesincluded rear strangleholds, strikes to the neck and throat, and frontsnap kicks to the groin. Stylistic influences included boxing,wrestling, gymnastics, and Australian-rules judo. Israeli civilianswere introduced to krav maga during the early 1970s. Thepioneer of this civil movement was Alberto Ayalon, the Argentine-borndirector of biomechanics at Tel Aviv’s Orde Wingate Institute.

After seeing the FBI Practical Pistol Course, two US Marineofficers, Jeff Cooper and Howland Taft, develop an "Advanced MilitaryCombat Pistol Course" for the US military.

1949:

The Story of Huang Fei-hong starts Hong Kong’s first martialarts film craze. Based on operatic themes, swords and spears werewhirled with abandon, but bare-knuckle boxing was rare. Theseknight-errant films were also popular in the Chinese communities ofIndonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

Feng Wen-pin, President of the All-China Athletic Federation,describes the purpose of Communist Chinese physical education asdeveloping sports for health, nationalism, and national defense. Toaccomplish this with a minimum of time, space, or equipment, workerswere encouraged to practice martial art practice forms. On the otherhand, Feng’s nationalism was not extreme, and workers were encouragedto play North American or European games such as basketball,volleyball, soccer, and table tennis.

The All-Japan Judo Yudanshakai is reorganized into the Japan JudoFederation, and then made part of the Japan Physical EducationAssociation.

The Japan Karate Association is established in Tokyo. AlthoughFunakoshi Gichin was its titular head, its actual leaders included aformer Vice-Prime Minister, an Air Force general, a former Minister ofthe Interior, and the president of Japan’s largest security guardcompany. The chief technical adviser, whose book Dynamic Karateremains a classic, was a professor of physical education named NakayamaMasatoshi. Initiation fees cost ¥3000 ($8.36), while the monthlymembership fee was ¥2000 ($5.58). During their first few classes,beginners learned history, traditions, and etiquette. Then, after onemonth, they began learning heian kata. Students were expectedto test every 3-6 months, and learned a new kata at each belt rank. Theheadquarters dojo in Tokyo was open six days a week. Branch schoolswere open three to six days a week. Instructors were college graduateswith a Physical Education major, held nidan (second-degree)rank or higher, and had a year’s post-graduate education inkinesiology, physiology, and business administration. Upon graduationfrom this program, students were promoted to sandan(third-degree), and then allowed to instruct under supervision.

A 34-year old pencak silat practitioner named Enny Rukminijoins the anti-colonial forces on Indonesia. Since firearms werescarce, she carried a sword. Following independence, she became thechief instructor at her father's silat school in West Java, andwas subsequently a leader of the movement to introduce silatinto the Indonesian schools.

Aslam Bholu Pahelwan defeats Yunus Pahelwan to win the title Rustam-e-Pakistan,champion of Pakistan. This made Bholu probably the best professionalwrestler in the world. (Not necessarily the best wrestler: even Bholuadmitted the possibility of chuppa rustam, hidden champions.But certainly the best active professional.)

Promoter Bill Johnston introduces Gorgeous George to Madison SquareGarden. George’s act (born George Wagner, but he had his name changed)featured bleached blond locks, custom dressing gowns, and a fly-sprayerfilled with perfume-scented disinfectant. While he was a mediocrewrestler, this act attracted paying customers by the thousands. Why?Mainly it was that television audiences liked watching soap opera morethan they liked watching serious wrestling. And, as 1924 Olympicwrestling champion and former professional wrestler Russell Vis said,"To put on a show you’ve got to make faces, jump and up and down,pretend you’re hurt, then come from underneath." Added Sam Boal in the NewYork Times Magazineon November 20, 1949, "The emotions of the wrestling ring are simple.They are those of the fairy tale. There is always a Hero and a Villain.It is the enactment of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ a story anybody canunderstand and respond to."

The Chicago businessmen James Norris and Arthur Wirtz incorporatethe International Boxing Club (IBC) in Illinois and New York. Norrisand Wirtz then used the IBC to obtain exclusive television rights tothe professional boxing matches staged in New York, Chicago, Detroit,and St. Louis. (The IBC failed to control California boxing mainlybecause George Parnassus, who owned the Olympic Auditorium in LosAngeles, and his manager, a very tough woman named Aileen Eaton,refused to be bought or muscled by the IBC.) However, from 1957 to1959, the IBC did control the Hollywood Legion Stadium. There weresimilar problems in professional wrestling, too, and in 1956 Wladek andStanislaus Zbyszko of Savannah, Missouri helped convince the UnitedStates government to formally charge the National Wrestling Alliancewith violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. The promoters, though, gotout of the predicament by claiming that what they sold was not sport,but sports entertainment.) Then Norris and Wirtz started doing businesswith the Mafia leader Frankie Carbo, who controlled many North Americanfighters and fight managers through a combination of bribery andintimidation. The result was such heavy-handed fixing that the USCongress started investigating IBC practices in 1951. Federal judgesordered the dissolution of the IBC in 1959 and the imprisonment ofCarbo in 1961.

Norma Graziano, the wife of middleweight boxing champion RockyGraziano, tells her mother, "I should go to the dentist when he fights.That way I can’t worry about him." Her fear wasn’t so much that herhusband would win or lose, she said, but that he would get hurt. Thirtyyears later, Florence Frazier, wife of former heavyweight champion JoeFrazier and the mother of Olympic hopeful Marvis Frazier, agreed,saying, "Seeing your husband get hurt is one thing. Seeing your babyget hurt is another."

A Seattle middleweight named Harry "Kid" Matthews starts aprofitable light-heavyweight boxing career under the tutelage of theveteran trainer Jack Hurley. Said Hurley of his methods, whichemphasized slipping punches and counter-punching, "Speed isdetrimental. Slow it down to one punch. If you’re moving fast, you’realso moving your opponent fast."

1950:

The Communist Chinese occupy eastern Tibet, and during 1954-1955,they move into central and northern Tibet. The Communist introductionof collective farming schemes caused rural Tibetans to revolt in 1957.The Dalai Lama’s calls for divine assistance proved as ineffectual atstopping the Chinese tanks and artillery as the CIA airdrops, and so hefled to India in 1959.

The Zen Nihon Shinai Kyogi Renmei ("All Japan Federation for BambooStick Competition") is organized in Japan. Its first president wasSasamori Junzo, an American-educated Christian educator and liberalpolitician who believed that kendo could be taught in a democraticfashion. Sasamori’s 1964 book, This is Kendo: The Art of JapaneseFencing, was one of the first English-language kendo texts, andmany of his Japanese-language texts remain in print.

Judo returns to Japanese high schools. Due to American pressure, itwas now an elective rather than a mandatory subject, and the emphasiswas on competition rather than self-sacrifice for the Emperor. To showthe difference between prewar and postwar judo, until 1989 Ministry ofEducation required that it be described as kakugi ("combativetechnique") rather than budo ("martial art").

Feuding Northern Nigerians hire professional musicians to createscurrilous songs about their rivals, and then spread these songsthroughout the neighborhood at night, when the sound of a drum and agood voice could carry for several miles. The rules of engagement werethat the singer could not say anything that was not true unless thestatement was clearly impossible. In other words, while he could saythat a man was really a pig in disguise, he could not say that a womanstole yams unless he could prove in court that she did. Such drummingcontests continued for weeks, generally until one side or the other ranout of money for drummers, or decided to go to court or engage instreet fighting.

Arthur Berger, a New York dentist who moonlighted as a referee atMadison Square Garden, tells a reporter from The New Yorker:"In boxing, you have to worry about the scoring of points in eachround, see that neither fighter is getting banged up too much, holler‘Break!’ all the time, and insinuate yourself between the men inclinches. Fortunately, my shoulders are just the right height forbreaking up a clinch. You break clinches at elbow height. In wrestling,your main worry is not getting rolled on, although you also have tokeep a sharp eye out for fouls."

Retired featherweight boxing champion Abe Attell tells sportswriterJoe Williams that the hardest part of professional boxing was makingbad fighters last long enough to satisfy the crowd, or mediocrefighters look good enough to justify a rematch. Reigning middleweightchampion Ray Robinson agreed, saying that his hardest match was onewhere he had to carry another boxer named Charlie Fusari: "I had tofight fifteen rounds for me and fifteen for him."

Scholarly articles showing that weight training improves all-roundathletic performance appear in the United States. Their findings willnot penetrate professional boxing until the late 1980s, when alight-heavyweight named Evander Holyfield uses a weight program to turnhimself into a legitimate heavyweight. Holyfield’s program required himto spar six rounds in the morning, do a cardiovascular workout in theafternoon, and lift weights and strain against resistance machines inthe evening. Holyfield also ate six times a day. For breakfast, he hadgrits, four eggs, toast, and a protein drink. For first lunch, he hadtwo turkey sandwiches and another protein drink. For second lunch, hehad two baked potatoes and a protein shake. As an afternoon snack, hehad two more turkey sandwiches and a carbohydrate drink. For his twodinners, he had chicken breasts, beans, corn bread, collard greens, andprotein drinks. When not training, Holyfield said, he also liked peachcobblers and banana pudding.

General Curtis LeMay, commander of the United States Air Force’snuclear-capable Strategic Air Command, becomes worried about basesecurity. "The Russians didn’t threaten us," said LeMay. "But I wasworried about fifth column activity. Sabotage… And the stupidest peoplewe had in the Air Force were put in the Military Police." To reducethis risk, LeMay looked for, found, and publicly fired some incompetentprovost marshals and unconcerned wing commanders. Next, he ordered thathis security forces be called Air Police, and treated as key members ofhis personal security team rather than unwanted stepchildren. The easythings done, LeMay then established an Air Police school at FortCarson, Colorado, that taught Air Police how to be a combination ofcivilian police and nuclear weapon security rather than simply gateguards. Finally, to make Air Police feel special, he gave themdistinctive uniforms and arranged for professional instruction inaikido, judo, and karate. During the 1950s, about twenty Japanesemartial art instructors toured Air Force bases, and hundreds of USairmen took month-long courses at the Kodokan. The Japanese were amongthe best available: karate teachers included Nakayama Masatoshi andNishiyama Hidetaka; judo teachers included Daigo Toshiro and KotaniSumiyuki, and aikido teachers included Tomiki Kenji. Air Police werealso encouraged to practice their judo and karate in the gyms thatLeMay had ordered built on their bases. Following discharge, former AirPolice often continued teaching and practicing judo or karate in theirhome towns; examples include Laverne Raab in Omaha and Bill Reuter inSeattle. Therefore, LeMay’s program helped spread Japanese martial artsthroughout Middle America. LeMay’s program also had a profound affecton the modern Japanese martial arts. As Nakayama Masatoshi, a futurehead of the Japan Karate Association put it, "The Americans simply werenot satisfied with following blindly like the Japanese. So, underMaster Funakoshi’s guidance, I began an intense study of kinetics,physiology, anatomy, and hygienics." Changes to karate included lessemphasis on building callused knuckles and more emphasis on teachinglight, natural blocks and strikes powered by fluid, centered movement.(Details appear in Egami Shigeru’s 1976 book called The Way ofKarate.)Changes to aikido included the addition of the hard, competitive edgeexemplified by Tomiki aikido. Changes to judo included the appearanceof large numbers of technically proficient judo instructors who werenot of Japanese descent. That in turn gradually changed the prewarJapanese belief that only people of Japanese descent could master judo.

1951:

Critics vote Rashom*on, a 1950 samurai film by KurosawaAkira, the best film of the Venice Film Festival. Rashom*on alsointroduces Western audiences to Mifune Toshiro, the Japanese actorwhose subsequent films included Seven Samurai, MiyamotoMusashi, Yojimbo, and Shogun.

Ed Parker starts studying kenpo karate with William K. S. Chow. As aboy growing up in Honolulu, Parker had boxed and done judo, and later,while serving in the Coast Guard, he trained in kenpo karate withChow’s younger brother Frank. Following discharge from the Coast Guard,Parker attended Utah’s Brigham Young University. In 1953, Parker gave akenpo karate demonstration during the halftime of a basketball game,and in 1954, he started teaching it to some friends at a Provo, Utahgym. Upon graduating from college, Parker moved to Pasadena,California, where in 1956 he opened the first of a series of commercialmartial arts schools. At first, he taught kenpo karate as he hadlearned it from Chow. However, in 1961 he became friends with somelocal ch’uan fa practitioners, and so over the next few yearsthere began to be significant differences between what Parker was doingand what Chow was doing. Consequently, Parker’s methods became known asAmerican kenpo.

Japanese sumotori visit Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco, andChicago. To avoid breaking city ordinances concerning indecentexposure, the wrestlers had to wear boxer shorts under their mawashi(loincloths).

The first Pan-American Games are held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.The United States won half the first place medals in the wrestlingevents, and John Osako of Chicago was a winner in judo.

Rikidozan makes his American-style professional wrestling debut inTokyo. His birth name was Kim Sin-Rak, and he was born in SouthHamgyong Province, in northeastern Korea, in 1923. At the age of 15,went to Japan to train as a sumotori. Because of Japanese prejudiceagainst Koreans, his handlers started the story that he was a Japanesenamed Momota Mitsuhiro. However, because his ring name alluded to amountain in Korea, Koreans always knew he was one of them. In 1950,Rikidozan quit sumo and began working for a gambler named NiitaShinsasku. In 1951, he met (and according to the story, fought) theJapanese American professional wrestler Harold Sakata in a Ginzanightclub, and afterwards, he decided to enter an American-stylewrestling tournament that American Shriners had organized in Tokyo. Heenjoyed the work, so in 1952 he traveled to the United States, wherehis trainers included Rubberman Higami and Oki Shikina. After about ayear in North America and Hawaii, he returned to Japan, and by early1955 he was the star of the newly organized Japan Pro WrestlingAssociation. The promotional angles in Japan allowed Rikidozan to beatmost Americans and to draw with "champions" such as Lou Thesz andWalter "Killer" Kowalski. These acts proved enormously popular, andJapanese fans without televisions often stood on streets outsidedepartment stores just to see Rikidozan wrestle. In December 1963Rikidozan was stabbed during a bar fight and subsequently died ofinfection, but forty years later many Japanese still considered him oneof the most influential Japanese of the twentieth century. Koreans alsoliked the man, and in 1983, the North Korean press reported thatRikidozan was Supreme Leader Kim Il-Sung’s favorite wrestler of alltime.

A rassler who called herself Female Joe Louis tells sportswriterJimmy Cannon, "I like to fight men. The harder I pop them, the better Ilike it." About the same time, however, another female wrestler,19-year-old Jeannette Wolfe, died of abdominal injuries received duringa match in East Liverpool, Ohio. While deaths in women’s wrestling werehardly common, Wolfe’s death was especially noteworthy because it didnot involve a blow to the head or an auto accident. During the 1950sand 1960s, ring-related deaths associated with professional wrestlingaveraged around one per year. Besides Wolfe, wrestling fatalitiesincluded Dennis Clary in 1955, Buck Weaver in 1956, Chris Davros ("BabeZaharias"; he was a cousin-in-law of the famous golfer) in 1957, ChickGaribaldi and Ali Pasha in 1961, Tex Riley in 1964, and Alberto Torresand Iron Mike DeBiase in 1969. Canadian rassling deaths included PaulLentre in 1953, Gus Johnson in 1954, and Stanley Mayeshiro ("OyamaKato") in 1961. Other risks associated with professional wrestlingincluded broken wrists, cauliflower ears, and eye infections that couldcause blindness or staph infection. "Did it ever occur to you," saidformer rassling champion Gus Sonnenberg shortly before his death, "thatafter two or three years of regular use a wrestling mat is not apleasant mattress to roll around on?"

Transcontinental television appears in North America. With itsclose-in action and short, easily packaged rounds, boxing and wrestlingseemed made for the new medium. Unfortunately, the television producersfailed to put any money into developing new talent. Over the next tenyears, a combination of scandals (Senator Warren G. Magnuson suggestedthat the Mafia was fixing fights), predictable outcomes (the fighter inthe white trunks won about 75% of the time), and overexposure (why sitthrough boring matches between bums when you could watch I Love Lucyinstead) drove boxing into technical decline. On the other hand,rassling flourished. Why? Because, said Willie Gilzenberg of the WorldWide Wrestling Federation, "In wrestling today, even though it’s on TV,the fan is never shown the match he really wants to see." The declineof the male-only working-class saloon culture that had supported boxingfor the previous century probably played a role, too. After all, from1850 to 1940, boxing had been popular mostly with working-class men,whereas rassling had been popular with women and children since the1940s.

The United States military begins issuing armored vests to itssoldiers in Korea. The vests were made from fiberglass and nylon, andwere found to reduce casualties from artillery and mortar fragments.So, within a few months, they became standard for UN infantry in Korea.While combat aircrew and naval personnel on landing craft had wornsimilar armor during World War II, this was the first widespread use ofbody armor by infantry since the seventeenth century.

The United States Army publishes a study showing that soldiers’decision to mutiny was a sequential process. That is, it was a longslow process rather than some sudden decision, and invariably involvedsoldiers losing faith in both the national government and the militarychain of command. But of course firing inept politicians and generalswasn’t possible, and so the Army had to content itself with addressingsuch comparatively insignificant issues as fears about death, frozenfeet, and the loss of sweethearts.

1952:

A Briton named P.Z. Mackenzie describes a battle between rival Dinkafactions in the Southern Sudan. According to Mackenzie, several hundredDinka men arranged themselves in ragged lines to face a comparableenemy standing or kneeling about 40 yards away. Behind each of theseheroes were four or five supporters, whose purpose was to make noise,collect spent spears and throwing sticks, and carry away the wounded.During the battle itself, there was little maneuver except dodging.Tactically, one group threw their clubs high to cause their opponentsto raise their shields while another group threw spears low to catchdistracted warriors in the legs; hence the jumping, darting motionsseen in many warrior dances.

Although Mao Tse-tung’s motto was "keep fit, study well, work well,"the Chairman also believed that secret societies, like capitalism andancient religions, undermined the race and retarded progress.Consequently, the China Wu Shu Association was created. Thisorganization was underneath the aegis of the All-China AthleticFederation, and was tasked with removing all "feudal comprador fascistthought" from the Chinese martial arts. Toward accomplishing this,cadres registered regular boxers and reeducated "arch-leaders" usingthreats, beatings, harsh interrogations, banishment to work farms, andeven pistol shots to the brain.

Yip Man, a refugee from Communist China, begins teaching wing chunin Hong Kong. Since many of Yip’s students were restaurant workers, hismethods soon spread throughout the world. While Yip’s most famousstudent was the Chinese-American actor Bruce Lee, he was not Yip’sbest. (When Lee visited Hong Kong in 1961 to show Yip Man how much hismartial arts had improved while in the United States, he found, in thewords of student James DeMile, that "his progress was zip... He couldhit the good Wing Chun men maybe once out of every three times theycould hit him.") Yip’s better students included his son Chun.

A Korean known as Oyama Mas (birth name: Choi Yong I) joins theChicago-based Pro-Wrestling Association and tours North America. Fromthe late 1930s to the early 1940s, Oyama had trained in Goju Kai karateunder So Nei Cho in Tokyo. He also trained in Shotokan. During histravels through 32 US states, Oyama reportedly challenged anyone inAmerica to fight him for a winner-take-all purse of $1,000 per match.One suspects that Oyama did not go out of his way to find worthwhilecompetition. After all, the Pakistani national wrestling championsJoginder and Arjan Singh were also traveling through North Americaduring 1951-1952, and likewise offering $1,000 to anyone who could beatthem, and somehow these various parties never met. There are manystories told about Oyama during this period. "The story about Oyamafighting bulls is not true," says Oyama’s student Jon Bluming. "Henever met a real bull, for he never visited Spain. [He did apparentlyvisit Mexico.] I also doubt that he was gored, for he never told meabout it, and he used to tell me everything. Kenji Kurosaki was there,and he told me what happened. They went early in the morning to astockyard in [the town of] Tateyama. Workmen prepared a fat old ox forOyama by hitting one of its horns with a hammer so that it was quiteloose. Oyama did not kill the ox, he only knocked off the loose horn.Bill Backhus and I saw the 16mm movie in 1959. Oyama himself showed itto us. I told Oyama to never show this film in Europe becauseit looked too phony, and everyone would laugh at him. As far as I know,nobody saw that movie again." In fairness, note that a bullfightfeaturing Oyama was filmed in Chiba Prefecture in 1954, and the footagesubsequently shown in Japanese theaters as Ush*to Tatakau Otoko("A Man Who Fought a Bull".) Furthermore, Oyama himself admitted theoxen were old. So, while the story has grown over the years, there isno doubt that he did some bulldogging in his time. Other aspects of Oyama's wrestling career also are not entirelyclear. For example, an article in the October 1953 edition of Argosymagazine said that Oyama "left more than of a hundred of America’sburlier, rougher citizens flat on their back." On the other hand, Oyamasaid in the 1958 edition of his book What Is Karate that he hadjust three matches with professional wrestlers plus thirty exhibitionsand nine television appearances. As all matches between Americanprofessional wrestlers of the 1950s must be considered fixed, thatleaves Oyama with 33 exhibitions, nine television appearances, and somesteer wrestling to his credit.

To reduce the injuries (mostly bloody noses, split lips, and jammedfingers and toes) during free-sparring, the Japan Karate Associationintroduces corner judges and center referees. A complete set ofcollegiate karate rules appears in August 1956.

The Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei (All Japan Kendo Federation) isestablished. As far as is known, this was the first post-World War IIpublic use of the word "kendo." For kendo to be taught in the publicschools, however, it had to be described as "flexible stickcompetition" (shinai kyogi). Moreover, said the Ministry ofEducation, it was not to be "taught as budo [martial art] butas a physical education sport [kyoiku supotsu]."

The United States fields its first Greco-Roman wrestling team. Butthere was little interest in the sport outside Minnesota for decades,and American Greco-Roman wrestlers would not place in internationalcompetition until 1968, or win Olympic gold until 1984, a year that theSoviets decided to boycott the Olympics. One of the 1984 gold medalistswas a cancer survivor named Jeffrey Blatnick. Like many successfulathletes, Blatnick attempted to convert his athletic accomplishmentsinto cash. But he soon found that he made more money making publicappearances as a former cancer patient than as a wrestler. "I earnedmore money in the last year than I had in the previous eight," saidBlatnick in 1986. "But I lived on $5,000 or less for each of those fiveyears, so making $40,000 in one year is like hitting a gold mine."

A study published by the United States sociologists Kirson Weinbergand Henry Arond reports that 84% of professional boxers never progressbeyond the preliminary stage. Just 9% became main-event fighters, only7% received national attention, and less than 1% became recognizedchampions. Meanwhile, around twelve per year died of injuries receivedin the ring. These academic findings were supported by inside opinion.For example, when asked how to rank boxers, the veteran trainer AngeloDundee provided the following typology: Tomato Can. Someonewho’s garbage but can still fight. Bum. Someone who is one cutbetter than a tomato can. Opponent. Someone you should beat butwho still looks good on your record. Journeyman. Someone withmodest skills, but hardworking and always in shape. Fighter.Someone with skill and heart; someone you have to fight eventually. Hellof a fighter. A fighter who looks good while he is active. Great.One hell of a fighter who still looks good after he has retired.

The York Barbell Company introduces Hi-Proteen. This was soybeanflour mixed with salt and chocolate, and the first commerciallysuccessful food supplement. In an era when good nutrition was thoughtto include Wonder Bread, perhaps promoter Bob Hoffman had a point.

1953:

Working separately, Charles Hard Townes of the United States andNikolai Basov and Aleksander Prochorov of the Soviet Union create theworld’s first masers. These devices amplified microwave radiation, andwere the direct ancestors of lasers, which amplified visible andnear-visible light into intense streams of electromagnetic wavespossessing the same frequency, phase, and direction of motion.

While describing Rocky Marciano’s unpolished (but effective) boxingstyle, Marciano’s trainer Charley Goldman tells an interviewer from Ringmagazine, "There’s one serious mistake some trainers make. They try tochange a boy’s style. It doesn’t pay to meddle around with a naturalstyle. If a kid is inclined to be a boxer, don’t try to make a sluggerout of him. And vice versa. You can improve on what he has, but don’tchange it. I’ve seen many a great prospect ruined because somebodytried to make him something he wasn’t cut out to be."

Twenty-two boxers die of injuries received in the ring. Whilefatalities averaged 12 per year between 1946 and 1965, this was theworst year on record. The exact number of ring deaths is not certain.The British neurosurgeon Macdonald Critchley reported 207 ring deathsbefore 1950, while amateur historian Manuel Velasquez documented 321ring deaths between 1946 and 1983. The official count, the onepublished by Ring Magazine, lists 164 fatalities between 1918and 1950, and 269 fatalities between 1951 and 1980. Televisioncontributed to the increase in post-war boxing fatalities. For onething, advertisers and audiences wanted spectacular knockouts ratherthan boring decisions. (Nationally televised boxing deaths included EdSanders in 1954, Benny Paret in 1962, and Kim Duk Koo in 1982.) To keepthe shrinking arena crowds, referees everywhere became increasinglyreluctant to stop fights early. (Deaths in Madison Square Gardenincluded Georgie Flores in 1951.) In addition, unsophisticated viewersthought that every bout should be a championship fight. This led to thecreation of a wild array of weights and divisions, and televised fightsbetween men who had no business leaving their inner-city gyms. (Asformer champion Jake LaMotta told journalist Arlene Schulman, "I hadmore fights in one year than many of these guys have in their entirecareers.") The bigger purses paid by television sponsors were also afactor. Although managers and trainers had always exploited boxers,televised fights paid more than club fights. Therefore, many managerspushed their charges to fight main events whether they were ready ornot.

In return for Japanese support to the United States during theKorean War, the United States returns the Northern Ryukyus to Japanesecontrol. One immediate result is fights between Japanese laborers usingjudo and Ryukyuan laborers using karate. While the reported fights wereover who would unload boats at Naze, on Amami-Shoto, there wereprobably fights in Naha, too, over who would control the prostitutionoutside the giant United States military bases that sprawled throughoutSouthern Okinawa. The point was hardly moot, either, as what theJapanese call the entertainment industry brought in more money thansugar cane, and employed perhaps 10% of Okinawa’s women.

Arvo Ojala of Gleed, Washington introduces metal-lined,forward-raked pistol holsters to Hollywood. Specifically designed forquick-draw, Ojala’s rigs appear in most subsequent cinematic gunfights,and contribute to the establishment of quick-draw pistol competitionsin 1956. Ojala, who trained everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Michael J.Fox, spent his sizable income on fast cars, fast women, and fast guns.("Not necessarily in that order," he says.) In 1996, a reporter askedthe old trick shooter what he would do differently if he could. Theanswer: "I would have bought some land and stuff like that.Investments, more to lean back on today."

Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee,tells the US judoka Yosh Uchida that he will support Uchida’s dream ofgetting judo introduced into the 1964 Olympics in return for twothings. First, Uchida had to organize judo competition by weight, andsecond, he had to show that the US could produce competitive nationalteams. Uchida agreed, and with Henry Stone organized a national AAUjudo championship at San Jose State University later that year.Japanese and Japanese Americans generally opposed the weight divisions,but due to the rising numbers of European American judoka, thisopposition was soon made irrelevant. Part of the process also involvedorganizing a national organization akin to the European Judo Union.Toward this end, the Judo Black Belt Federation of the United States(JBBF) was also formed in 1953. The JBBF’s stated purpose was to unify,promote, and stimulate the growth of judo while maintaining high levelsof skill and proficiency in discipline and judo. Leaders of thenational judo movement in the Washington, DC, area included a US Marineofficer named Donn Draeger. To keep the growing sport pure, Draegerencouraged teachers and students to use Japanese terminology andritual. Unfortunately, many people mistook form for substance, and asearly as 1965, Robert W. Smith, a former public relations committeemanfor the JBBF, acknowledged that the early emphasis on Japanese ritualhad been a mistake. Why? Because the "Japanese ritual injected into aforeign milieu too often becomes mumbo-jumbo mystique for the masses"and "contrives to rob the art of courtesy which it is meant tonurture." Toward eliminating this problem, Smith recommended thefollowing changes. 1. Emphasize maximum efficiency with minimum effortrather than winning. ("Few of us seem to have ever learned that ...[the philosophy of judo includes mutual welfare], which means simply love.")2. Eliminate color belts. ("Because most frictions pivot on problems ofrank, why not attack the problem?") 3. Eliminate meaningless rituals.("I would replace the bow with a handshake, eschew most of theelaborate procedures (who was it who thought Joseki was a town inMissouri not too far from Peoria?), and – except for internationalmatches – use the prevailing language rather than Japanese.") 4. Designrules to protect players rather than thrill crowds. ("If this soundssissy, let us remove all restrictions, introduce striking and kicking,rename the thing ‘all-in fighting’, and forget the educative aspects ofthe art.") "I would urge retention, however, of the kata," concludedSmith, "for I believe they have a legitimate role in the art."

Tohei Koichi introduces aikido to Hawaii. On Maui, a policeman namedShunichi Suzuki helped him arrange demonstrations. Due to Tohei's goodwork (and returning to Hawaii during 1955-1956 and 1957-1958), aikidosoon became popular throughout Hawaii.

1954:

In a book called Motivation and Personality, Abraham Maslow,a humanistic psychologist from Brandeis University, proposes a tieredhierarchy of human values. In ascending order these were: 1)physiological needs such as food, oxygen, and water; 2) personalsafety; 3) sense of community, to include love; 4) competence andprestige; 5) self-fulfillment; and 6) curiosity and the need tounderstand. Although religious leaders were offended by Maslow’s thesisthat people did not seek self-fulfillment until after other needs weremet, his theory became popular with such diverse entities as New Agephilosopher Barbara Marx Hubbard and the United States Army. Why?Because each chose to emphasize different stages. Hubbard, forinstance, stressed the high-level functions that she called"self-actualization." The Army, on the other hand, stressed mid-levelfunctions such as belonging and competence. As Richard Strozzi Hecklerwrote in a book about training Special Forces soldiers, "Theinstitution of the Army wants [soldiers] to achieve deeper levels ofpower and control, but [does not] want them necessarily to beginthinking and feeling too much on their own."

Swedish neurosurgeons discover that the reason skilled boxerssuffered fewer knockouts was not that they were any tougher than othermen but that they got hit less. (With greater skill, they learned toduck and dodge rather than absorb.)

Herman Hickman writes in the Saturday Evening Post, "nonecancompare with the wrestlers for generosity, friendliness, and realstraight shooting. This term may sound a little incongruous whenapplied to participants in a ‘sport’ that was fixed every night. Butthey never thought of it that way. They considered themselvesperformers attempting to please a crowd every night, just as a tumblingact might do in the vaudeville circuit." Beginners learned to take afall without getting hurt, to roll with a wristlock to avoid getting adislocated shoulder, and to slam opponents without injuring them. (Thisinvolved making the feet hit the mat before the head.) Rookies alsolearned to work loose, which meant to strain their muscles foraudiences while not allowing their opponents to even feel the pressure.

John Grimek, Jim Park, and Yas Kuzuhara become the firstweightlifters known to have used artificial testosterone in an attemptto increase their strength. Their source of supply was John Ziegler, aphysician working for a Swiss pharmaceutical company associated withthe CIA. As the athletes did not report much difference, USweightlifters generally ignored steroids until 1959, at which time somebegan using them haphazardly. Meanwhile, the Soviets, using the sameNazi-derived research as Ziegler, began systematically using steroids.Shortly afterwards, their athletes began dominating internationalweightlifting competition.

A much smaller version of the Dai Nippon Butokukai reopens in Kyoto.This was much applauded by the Japanese political right, which believedthat martial art training provided a good way of instilling character(a.k.a. right-wing nationalism) into young people.

Shimabuku Tatsuo combines techniques from Shorin-ryu and Goju-ryukarate to create Isshinryu karate. While an uncommon style in Okinawa,Isshinryu becomes popular in the United States because Shimabukuspecialized in teaching karate to airmen and Marines. The name means"The One-Heart Method," or "Concentration."

Henri Plee establishes Le Karaté Club de France. Thisis the first karate club in France. Plee simultaneously organizes the FédérationFrancaise de Boxe Libre et de Karaté in Paris. Whiletechniques originally came from savate and le boxe française,they became more Japanese after Ohshima Tsutomu of the Shotokan systemvisited Paris in 1962. Said Ohshima, "My biggest shock was at thenumber of [French] karate men who were wearing black belts. There musthave been forty of them... I decided I had better do something, and doit quick... I then proceeded to go down the line and had every one ofthose wearing a black belt come out and engage in kumite["free-sparring"], either knocking them down or driving them aroundbefore me. After setting that example, we got down to some seriouslessons." Of course, as Ohshima’s victims were all recreational playersrather than practicing professionals, his "victories" really say moreabout Ohshima’s arrogance than European fighting ability.

Mochizuki Minoru introduces aikido to Paris. According to Mochizuki,aikido developed from a style of jujutsupracticed mostly by influential nobles. Its key principles were, inorder, contact, pain, and unbalance. The name meant, "grouped togetherspirit," and described a policy of continuity in both time and space.Mochizuki thought aikido was better suited for self-defense than judo,as judo placed entirely too much emphasis on sporting victories. Anadvocate of non-violent solutions to problems, Mochizuki was eventuallyexpelled from France for protesting French nuclear testing.

The San Diego Judo Club introduces aikido to the mainland UnitedStates. A course description dated October 12, 1954, said that aikidowas more effective than judo for self-defense, and easier to master.Students were eligible for their first promotion after just 25 hours ofinstruction. In 1996, with 42 more years experience with aikido, AlHoltmann (6-dan judo, 4-dan jujutsu, 1-danaikido) of the Southern California School of Judo and Ju Jitsuexplained himself a little better. Said Holtmann, aikido’s spiralingmovement and standing wrestling were outstanding. Its philosophy,submission holds, and techniques for controlling internal energy wereadmirable. However, its ground wrestling was weak and teachers oftenspent too much time training students to defend themselves fromold-style Japanese techniques that no one would ever face outsideclass. Therefore, "anyone studying Aikido assuming that he is learningrealistic self defense is being misinformed."

With the release of a movie called The Seven Samurai, theJapanese director Kurosawa Akira introduces the stylized bloodlettingof the bunrakupuppet theater to international cinema. While the Italians and Spanishquickly copied Kurosawa’s techniques, similar slow-motion mayhem didnot appear in heavily censored Hollywood until after the release of SamPeckinpah’s The Wild Bunch in 1969.

Actress Gail Davis plays Annie Oakley on television, therebyproviding a generation of North American children with their firstfemale role model having significant martial art skills. (While earlierheroines had simply stood screaming in the corner until some man savedthem, Oakley routinely shot the gun from the bad guy’s hand.)

Japanese television begins broadcasting professional wrestling. Notmany Japanese owned televisions, so they stood looking in departmentstore windows to watch Rikidozan and Masahiko Kimura defeat giant"American" opponents. (In this particular case, the foreigners wereactually Canadian, but to most people, one foreigner looks pretty muchthe same as another.) Meanwhile, in the United States, the majortelevision networks were refusing to syndicate wrestling shows. Thereason was that political action groups such as the Japanese AmericanCitizens League threatened the networks with boycotts and lawsuitsunless they eliminated shows that perpetuated blatant racialstereotypes. This in turn led to rassling acts showing mostly on localstations until the advent of national cable networks during the 1980s.

About 1955:

Toward instilling national pride and self-discipline in youngpeople, the South Korean government starts organizing martial artorganizations and subsidizing martial art tournaments. While ssirem,or traditional belt wrestling, remained popular in rural areas,Japanese-influenced martial arts such as karate proved more popular inthe cities, in part because they were closer to the types of fightingseen in American movies. The styles taught were mostly Japanese. "Afterthe liberation of Korea at the end of World War II," says taekwondopioneer Kim Soo, "the martial arts instructors who began teaching inKorea were primarily Korean nationals; some who had learned Shotokan,and some who had learned Shudokan karate during their stay in Japan. Itis these styles which are the genesis of modern Tae Kwon Do." Althoughfor decades Korean nationalists loudly denied the Japanese parentage oftheir national combative sport, it is obvious that the practice forms kijo1-3 and pyongan, for example, are variants of the taikyokuand heian series kata.

Despite resistance from male instructors, increasing numbers ofNorth American women start studying judo. This prejudice against femalejudoka reflected mid-twentieth century American society more than thelimitations of judo itself. For example, when Professor Yamash*taintroduced judo to Washington, DC, in 1904, his students included thewife of the Democratic candidate for Vice-President of the UnitedStates. In 1937, Arthur Grix published a photo showing three Japanesewomen practicing judo at the Kodokan. Said Grix, "Swiping knives isespecially practiced by women practicing judo." In 1954, Robert W.Smith wrote in the Budokwai Quarterly Bulletin that two femalejudoka, f*ckuda Umeko (a 5-dan from Japan) and Helen Carollo (aDanzan Ryu 2-dan from California), demonstrated ju-no-kataand randori.Smith added that their technique appeared both elegant and effective.Unfortunately, many middle-class Americans viewed encouraging femaleathleticism as tantamount to encouraging lesbianism, and thereforediscouraged it in their daughters. Their sons were no better: asrecently as 1988, 36% of North American girls aged 7-18 believed thatboys made fun of girls who played sports.

1955:

On the subject of martial arts in Hollywood, fencer Aldo Nadi wrote,"Whereas it cannot be firmly stipulated that in order to have anysuccess in Hollywood, i.e., to be employed by the studios, onemust be a mediocrity, it can however be firmly stated that quite oftensuch is indeed the case." Why? "Producers are literally shy of real anduniversally recognized talent."

George Wilson establishes an after-school judo program at Kent,Washington’s Kentridge High School. This was the first secondary judoprogram in the United States. The most athletically successful graduateof Wilson’s program was Doug Graham, a Kent-Meridian High Schoolgraduate who went on to become a Pan-American champion. However,success in competition was never Wilson’s goal. "Judo is a means to anend, not an end to itself," Wilson told a Seattle reporter in 1989."That end is making a complete person."

A group of Korean military officers and businessmen decide that taesoodoand Tang Soo Do are insufficiently patriotic names for the karatestyles practiced in Korea, and therefore decree that in future allKorean styles should be called taekwondo. Toward this end, ahistoricallinks were made between the popular name of the military style and anineteenth century Korean kicking game called taekkyon, and by1966 taekwondo had become the Korean standard. Why? "Because I was aROK Army general," said General Choi Hong Hi, an honorary 6-danin the style.

About 1956:

Heavyweight boxer Floyd Patterson starts using what his trainer CusD’Amato called The System, and his detractors called the peek-a-boodefense. The System, which was probably invented by an amateurbantamweight named George Colon and his trainer, Joe Fariello, involvedkeeping the hands near the cheeks instead of extended, moving sidewaysinstead of straight ahead, and attacking using flurries of punchesthrown from every conceivable angle. Of course, every system has itsflaws. For Patterson, the flaw of D’Amato’s system was learning to boxwith his feet parallel (+---+) rather than oblique (⁺\₊).Consequently, he was knocked down more frequently than necessary.

During a show at the South China Athletic Association in Hong Kong,a Chinese boxing instructor takes a stance, finds his center, and thensignals a student to drive into him with an automobile. Fortunately,the car was a Morris Minor rather than Detroit iron. Said an observer(Timothy Mo), "The car leapt rather than rolled smoothly forwards overthe master and snagged on the fender, he was dragged a few yardsforward before his startled disciples could disentangle him."

1956:

Ohshima Tsutomo establishes a karate club at California Institute ofTechnology in Pasadena. The style taught was Shotokai karate, anoffshoot of Shotokan karate that the 26-year old Ohshima had learnedwhile attending Waseda University in Tokyo. Ohshima’s early studentswere mostly Japanese Americans, and he supported himself and his dojoby announcing at a Japanese-language radio station in Los Angeles. In1959, Ohshima’s organization became the Southern California KarateAssociation, which in turn became Shotokan Karate of America. The firsttwo Japan Karate Association instructors in the United States wereNishiyama Hidetaka, who opened a school in Los Angeles in 1961, andOkazaki Teruyuki, who opened a school in Philadelphia that same year.

Carlton Shimomi opens Honolulu’s first commercial karate dojo. Tenyears later, he closed the Shorin-ryu school for financial reasons.This shocked student Mike McAndrews, who had started training withShimomi in 1964: "I hadn’t realized that even a karate sensei needed tomake a living. To me, it was simply high art... an art than enabled oneto transcend mediocrity." Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in NewYork City, judo teacher Jerome Mackey introduces franchise martial artsto the United States. The Mackey clubs remained influential in New Yorkand New Jersey into the 1970s, when a stock swindle forced theirclosure.

In a special supplement to the June issue of Atlantic Monthly,an Indonesian Muslim named Asrul Sani describes training in Sumatran silatcirca 1905. According to Sani, pentjak was a dance performedduring fairs, whereas silatwas a divinely inspired method for solving problems. Training was donebetween eight in the evening and one in the morning. During thetraining, lamps were usually dimmed, supposedly to teach the youths tofight by sound and feel rather than by sight. One suspects, however,that fuel conservation was also an issue: while teachers said theyworked purely for the joy of passing on traditions, students also wereexpected to provide masters with "gifts" including chickens, cloth,knives, tobacco, and money.

The Soviets start showing soccer, hockey, and other national sportson national television. The theory was that this would inspire urbanaudiences to take up physical culture and healthy exercise. Ironically,a 1986 Soviet study found that the more a person watched sports ontelevision, the less likely he was to do sports or exercise.

Toward simplifying public education and political indoctrination,the People’s Republic of China introduces sweeping language reforms,including a simplified script. While the changes made publishing andteaching easier, they also made it harder for young people to read oldbooks. Whether that result was an unintentional side effect or adeliberate government policy is unknown.

1957:

The All-Japan Karate Association (a Wado-ryu group) hosts Japan’sfirst-ever sport karate championships. Fourteen different universityteams participated. Despite breaking bones in his hand during thesemi-finals, Kanazawa Hirokazu of the Japan Karate Association (aleading Shotokan group) became the first grand champion. Thissanguinary example set the stage for the American karate tournaments ofthe 1960s, where competitors were expected to be kicked into thespectators’ chairs, and come back swinging. In Japan, Kanazawa’sexample was touted as representative of the samurai spirit, butelsewhere it was simply part of a boxer’s everyday existence. (Examplesof hands broken during amateur boxing include Joe Frazier, who wonOlympic gold after breaking his right thumb during the 1964 Olympics,and Sugar Ray Seales, who won Olympic gold after breaking a leftknuckle during the 1972 Olympics.)

Louis Kowlowski of St. Louis, Missouri opens the first karate schoolin the American Midwest. Kowlowski’s style was Matsubayashi Shorin-ryu.

Following service in Okinawa, a US Marine named Don Nagle introducesIsshinryu karate to North Carolina. Following his discharge in 1959, heopened a commercial school in New Jersey.

Lee Tinn Chan becomes the first person known to teach t’ai chich’uan classes to non-Chinese people. An electrical equipmentrepairman, Lee started studying Wu style t’ai chi ch’uanin China in 1937. He introduced the art to the Mun Lum Chinese LanguageSchool in Honolulu partly because he had nothing against haoles,and mainly because he thought of t’ai chi as a life-extendingexercise rather than a lethal fighting art.

Maegashira Tamanoumi XIV becomes the first important sumotori topublicly wear a gold mawashi, or groin wrap, instead of a navyblue or purple silk mawashi. As the new wrap looked spectacularon television, it established a new tradition for sumo.

Although judo teachers had historically taught that a thoroughunderstanding of the principles was more important than strength, theKodokan installs a well-equipped weight room on the fifth floor of itsnew headquarters in Tokyo. Donn Draeger of the United States was a keyproponent of this innovation. Draeger’s Japanese support for thisinnovation came from Daigo Toshiro and other Japanese judo championswho had spent time wrestling against much larger foreign students suchas Anton Geesink of the Netherlands. Bulk and power were sought ratherthan definition, and favorite techniques included squats, incline andbench presses, and curling exercises.

Placido Yambao and Buenaventura Mirafuente publish MgaKarunungan sa Larung Arnís ("Knowledge in the Art ofArnis"), the first book about the traditional Filipino martial arts.

The accidental venting of extraction wastes by a Soviet plutoniumfactory near Kyshtym, Russia forces a twenty-year evacuation of nearly500 square miles of Western Siberia. US government efforts to monitorthe activities of this site were responsible for the U-2 overflightthat resulted in the capture of Francis Gary Powers.

1958:

The Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment at Porton Down,Britain, develops the binary nerve agent VX. VX was more stable instorage than Sarin and Soman, and soon became the mainstay of NorthAmerican and Western European chemical warfare stockpiles. The patentsfor the agent were published in 1974. The Soviets, meanwhile, continuedto prefer using thickened forms of the older German agents until theearly 1990s, when they began replacing their aging Sarin stocks withthe more stable (and lethal) Novichok ("Newcomer") series of binarybiotoxins. To date, none of these military agents has proven as lethalor persistent as the four million gallons of Agent Orange dumped onSoutheast Asia during the Vietnam War.

A Korean immigrant named Jhoon Rhee introduces Ji Do Kwan karate, aShotokan-based system that is one of the root arts of taekwondo, intoSan Marcos, Texas. An indefatigable promoter, Rhee was also responsiblefor getting foam-dipped foot and hand pads introduced to the NorthAmerican tournament karate scene in 1973. Unfortunately, all this didwas reduce the visible bleeding, as a Canadian study completed in 1986showed that foam-dipped hand and foot protectors did not appreciablyreduce karate stylists’ peak accelerations. A similar study done at theUniversity of Oregon in 1988 showed that members of international-classtaekwondo teams were 3.2 times more likely to receive cerebralconcussions than were members of North American collegiate footballteams.

George Mattson introduces Uechi-ryu karate to Brookline,Massachusetts.

Karate schools open in the Philippines. Pioneers included LatinoGonzales and Meliton Geronimo. Gonzales was a Manila physicalculturalist who taught himself karate by reading books but subsequentlytrained with Okinawa’s Iha Seikichi. Geronimo was a captain in thePhilippine Air Force, and he learned his techniques from Japaneseinstructors working for the United States Air Force. It is possiblethat modern karate’s reverse roundhouse, or heel kick, shows Filipinoinfluence, as the kick was not part of pre-war Japanese or Okinawankarate, but was allowed in a Filipino boxing game called sikaran.

Mas Tsuruoka introduces Chito-ryu karate to Toronto, and in 1966Tsuruoka’s wife Kay becomes the first Canadian woman to receive blackbelt rank from the All-Japan Karate-do Association. Chito Ryu karatecombined kata from Goju-ryu and Shorin-ryu, and was created by aJapanese medical doctor named Chitose Tsuyoshi during the 1930s.

During Nisei Week in Los Angeles, Ohshima Tsutomu sponsors NorthAmerica’s first Shotokan karate tournament.

Mitsugi Kobayashi, George Miyasaki, and Kenneth Murakami introduceIzumikawa Kanki’s Senbukan Goju-ryu karate to Honolulu. Kobayashi hadlearned karate while stationed in Okinawa as part of the United Statesoccupation government, while Miyasaki and Murakami had learned it whilestationed in Japan as members of the United States Air Force.

A medical study identifies the leading cause of death amongprofessional boxers as subdural hemorrhages caused by repeated blows tothe head. As such deaths were often delayed for several days followingthe fight, they are a likely source for the "delayed death touches"reported by masters of the Asian martial arts. The fighters knew theserisks. So why did they fight? Mostly for reputation, and the hope ofmaybe making some money. (Boxers tend to come from working-classbackgrounds.) Unfortunately for their dreams, there isn’t much money insemi-professional boxing. For four televised rounds at Madison SquareGarden in 1952, unknown fighters received $150 each, while by the1980s, that rate had increased to just $2,500.

The Kodokan sells its old building to the Japan Karate Association,and moves to a new seven-story building that had a weight room and a500-mat main floor. To celebrate, the Kodokan introduces 21 newtechniques known as Kodokan goshin jutsu, or "Kodokanself-defense techniques." Twelve of these techniques were designed foruse against unarmed attackers while nine were designed for use againstarmed attackers. This new interest in practical self-defense wasencouraged partly by urban dwellers’ fear of attack by teenagedhoodlums, and mainly by the interests of Kodokan leaders who belongedto the Japanese military, police forces, and security guard companies.

1959:

The United States Army adopts a new riot control agent,o-chlorobenzylidene malonotrile. Commonly known as CS, it was botheasier to disperse and more effective than CN. Unfortunately, CS-basedirritants were ineffective on about 10% of the population. Furthermore,they could be fatal if used in enclosed spaces. While neither of theseposed unreasonable risks during military situations (the Americans useda million pounds of CS in Vietnam in 1969, and always backed theirritant with snipers), it was a problem during police operations.Accordingly, in 1974 British researchers introduced a new agent calleddibenz-(b,f)-1,4-oxazepine. Known as CR, this was about five times moreeffective than CS, and less toxic. Unfortunately, it was also verypersistent, and therefore it is rarely used. Working separately,researchers in Maryland developed an equally powerful irritant calledoleoresin capsicum, or OC, in 1978. OC was soon fielded to policedepartments and militaries, and was widely heralded as a breakthroughin non-lethal weapons technology when United Nations forces used itduring 1993 peacekeeping operations in Somalia. Actually, it wasnothing of the kind. Instead, it was simply a hot pepper powder putinto an aerosol spray or mixed with soapsuds.

A crippled Argentine youth named Carlos explains why he likedwatching rassler Antonio Rocca: "When I see him in the ring, I becomeRocca. He gives me the feeling that I am living in the ring with him. Iam big and strong. I am a conqueror. My legs are jumping with him."Added Rocca, who was a much better showman than wrestler, "You put aguy in a position to smile, and that is greatness. In the ring, I tryto transmit the desire to smile." If this was a true statement ofRocca’s philosophy, then he probably did not kill a Brazilian rasslernamed Okitaro in 1949 as his New York press agents sometimes claimed.

Mike Yuhasz, a varsity wrestling coach at the University of WesternOntario, organizes Ontario’s first high school wrestling tournament.Until 1972, the Canadians wrestled according to NCAA rather thaninternational rules, and all wrestlers were male. Then, during theearly 1970s a few girls (generally daughters of coaches) startedwrestling. However, girls’ wrestling did not become an officialCanadian sport until 1993. The reason was not that the girls couldn’tbeat most boys their own weight, but that the losing boys (and theircoaches and teammates) often could not cope with the defeat.

Advocates of aikido tell the publisher of Today’s Japan thataikido was an outstanding defensive art. (In aikido, the expertpractitioner moves in a 360-degree arc, while "in Judo movement isusually limited to 90 degrees and in Karate to little more than astraight line.") The same sources added that true masters could dodgepistol bullets. (How? "If you watch the eyes of your opponentscarefully, Ueshiba said, it is possible to judge an instant before theyfire where they will shoot.") The article then qualified the precedingstatements by concluding, "Rikidozan, a leading professional wrestler,possesses a thorough knowledge of Aikido. He is famed for his use ofthe ‘karate chop’, which he learned from the Aikido master Oba."

With the publication of Goldfinger, British novelist IanFleming introduces European and North American readers to karate.Although Fleming watched a demonstration of women’s judo at the Kodokanin Tokyo in 1959, most of his knowledge of the Japanese martial artscame from talking to Japanese journalists and watching professionalwrestling on television. Japanese villains were popular in Britain andNorth America during the 1950s, and in 1964, the Hawaiian professionalwrestler Harold Sakata was recruited for the role of Oddjob after thefilm’s producers saw him performing in London.

Peter Urban introduces Yamaguchi-style Goju Kai karate to Uniontown,New Jersey. "Many beginners in Karate would rather spend all their timefighting than endure the discipline and hard work necessary to perfectthe katas of their style," said Urban in his 1967 book, The KarateDojo."But not until they become fine kata performers do students have aninkling of what Karate really means and what is meant by the phrase‘coming out of the dance.’"

Jürgen Seydel introduces Shotokan karate into the FederalRepublicof Germany. Seydel was a judoka, and his karate was based on sometraining with Henri Plée in Paris. One of Seydel’s firststudents wasan American serviceman named Elvis Presley. Following Presley’s returnto the United States, the entertainer continued his training, this timein Ed Parker’s kenpo karate, and via Presley’s patronage, Parker’skenpo karate begins to appear regularly on US television shows. Otherearly TV fight coordinators included Bruce Tegner, whose on-screenkarate students included Robert Taylor (The Detective; the showaired in January 1960) and Rick Nelson (The Adventures of Ozzie andHarriet; the show aired in March 1961).

Bruce Lee starts teaching wing chun in the covered parkinglot of a Blue Cross clinic in Seattle, Washington. According to hisearly students, Lee had good speed and better sticky hands, and trainedlike a demon. But, as for the stories he told, well, Lee liked hearinghimself talk. When pressed, he would admit that Gung Fu did not meanfighting, but "speed," as in the speed of slicing vegetables in RubyChow’s restaurant. Moreover, he was frequently pressed. His longtimegirlfriend Amy Sanbo, for example, once told him, "Maybe you canimpress those thugs you run around with this yin and yang bullsh*t, butwe both know you don’t believe a damn word you’re saying." "One thingthe guy’s done, though," said Seattle attorney Mark Chow, whose motheronce sponsored Lee in the United States, "is that nobody takes lunchmoney away from Chinese kids anymore because they assume they won’tfight back."

About 1960:

The two-handed pistol stance known as the Weaver (after its pioneer,Jack Weaver) develops in California. The idea was to develop a stancethat would allow shooters to control a .357 Magnum revolver duringrapid fire. Vocal advocates of the Weaver stance included John Plahnand Jeff Cooper, and by the early 1980s, academies routinely taughtpolice officers to shoot from a Weaver stance. Nonetheless, the Weaverstance had its critics. For instance, Rex Applegate advocated the"instinctive" (e.g., one-hand point-and-shoot) method espoused by W. E.Fairbairn in the 1930s, while Elden Carl and Massad Ayoob advocatedwhat became known as the Modern Isosceles, or Triangle, method. Part ofthe disagreement, Cooper admitted many years later, was the "basicdivergence in purpose between the amateur and the professional. Theamateur seeks excellence. The professional seeks adequacy. The hobbyistshooter wants to be better. The cop wants to be good enough."

1960:

Theodore Maiman of Malibu, California’s Hughes Research Laboratoriesmakes the first working ruby laser. A few months later, DonaldHerriott, Ali Javan, and William Bennett of New Jersey’s BellLaboratories unveil the first helium-neon lasers. The former are thetype of lasers subsequently made into artillery rangefinders, while thelatter are the kind subsequently used in supermarket checkout lines.

North American walk-and-draw pistol shooters hold their firstnational championship. This leads to rapid improvements in pistolholster design and combat firing techniques. The sport had itsbeginning when some stuntmen working for a California amusem*nt parkknown as Knott’s Berry Farm decided to see how fast they could get.

In an article published in True magazine, a Spokane,Washington boxing promoter named Jack Powers describes the clubfighting of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the kind you never saw ontelevision. "We had no license to put on fights, but kept alive bycalling ourselves a private club, for members only; you could become amember by paying two dollars at the doors. We could cram 600 peopleinto the place, and there was never a vacant seat. Drinks were servedup and down the aisles, and the announcer usually had a glass in onehand and the microphone in the other… If the boys fought like hell wewould cut the rounds down to two minutes. If they were dragging, we letthem go four or five. On the good fights, we gave them an extra minuteor two between rounds to rest up. Most of the matches were made in thedressing room immediately before the show." As for the fightersthemselves, Seattle’s Bob Wark once wrote, "These are not greatfighters, and they may lose as many bouts as they win, but I guaranteethat they will fight and bleed all the way."

Lee Joo-bang and his brother Lee Joo-sang open the first Hwa Rang Doacademy in Korea. Although the name commemorated the ancient Silla hwarang("Flowering Knights") groups, this should not be construed as implyingactual historical connection to the ancient methods. Instead, the Leeslearned their yu sool, a Korean art perhaps related to jujutsuand certainly related to hapkido, from a Buddhist monk named SuahmDosa, who lived at the Yang Mi Ahm temple near Seoul.

Anthony Mirakian introduces the Okinawan Goju-ryu karate of YagiMeitoku to Watertown, Massachusetts.

A former Marine named Steve Armstrong introduces Isshinryu karate toTacoma, Washington. Armstrong had not originally planned to teach womenand children. One day a woman walked into the garage where he held hisclasses, and asked him why her sweat and money should be different froma man’s. Said Armstrong, "She began lessons that day."

US physician John Ziegler puts weightlifter Louis Riecke on aprogram of isometrics and anabolic steroids, and within a few months,Riecke approached world-class performance, narrowly losing to TommyKono in the US Nationals. "We can't have this," Bob Hoffman of YorkBarbell said upon discovering how Riecke made his gains. "We have tosell weights." Nonetheless, because Ziegler's research methods wereshoddy, the credit for developing steroids in the US actually should goto more systematic researchers such as Louisiana State University’sFrancis Drury.

1961:

New Jersey’s Bell Laboratories introduces the first high-energy gaslaser. High-energy gas lasers drilled holes through steel at nearlylight speed, and caused industrialized nations to spend billions ofdollars researching direct-fire laser weapons. Unfortunately, suchweapons required batteries storing several megawatts of energy, andthose were not especially portable during the twentieth century. (Bycontrast, the most powerful turbine at Washington State’s Grand CouleeDam generated .815 megawatts, while the most powerful nuclear reactorsin the world, including the Ignalina reactor in Lithuania and theCHOOZ-B1 reactor in France, generated around 1.4 megawatts.)

Black Belt magazine enters production in California.

After a woman named Rusty Glickman defeats a male opponent during anAAU-sanctioned judo meet in New York City, the AAU bans women fromparticipating in judo tournaments. (The reason was not that themale-dominated AAU leadership believed that women couldn’twrestle, but that it believed that women shouldn’twrestle.) Under pressure from women’s groups (including one led by theby-then Rusty Glickman Kanokogi) the AAU finally relents in 1971, andallows women to compete against women using special "women’s rules."The women kept pushing for equality, and women were allowed to competeusing standard rules in 1973. While a blow for equality, there remainslittle interest in having women compete against men. Yet, if judo iseverything that its proponents claim, namely an activity where skillmatters more than size, then shouldn’t women compete directly againstmen of the same age, experience, and weight?

The 6’6" Dutchman Anton Geesink shatters the myth of Japaneseinvincibility in judo by winning the world heavyweight championship.

Oyama Mas establishes formal links between board breaking, Zen, andKyokushin Kai karate.

Richard Kim begins teaching Shorinji Ryu karate at the Chinese YMCAin San Francisco, California. (From the late 1890s to the late 1950s,YMCAs were often segregated.)

While attending college in San Francisco, Yamaguchi Gosen (a son ofYamaguchi Gogen) introduces Goju Kai karate into California. Earlystudents include Rodney Hu. In 1963, Gosen returned to Japan, but in1964, his older brother, Gosei, replaced him in San Francisco.Yamaguchi Gosei stayed in the United States, where he became the headof Goju Kai USA.

Following a South Korean military coup, Martial Law Number Sixorders the karate styles known as Chung Do Kwan, Chang Moo Kwan, SongMoo Kwan, Moo Duk Kwan, and Ji Do Kwan reorganized into a unifiedsystem called taesoodo. It also ordered that Korean soldiers receivetaesoodo instruction as part of their regular training. Leaders fromthe Moo Duk Kwan and the Ji Do Kwan disagreed with the new system’spromotional policies, and resisted this consolidation as best theycould. The government steamrollered the opposition, and by 1965, theassociation was firmly in place under its new name of Korea TaesoodoAssociation (KTA). (The modern name, Korea Taekwondo Association, onlydates to 1966.)

1962:

Honor Blackman becomes the first actress to win theatrical fightsusing techniques borrowed from the Asian martial arts. The reason wasthat Ray Austin (Blackman’s fight arranger on The Avengers)believed that judo throws and aikido wristlocks were more visuallyexciting than .25 automatics. Austin also choreographed some of thefirst karate fights on television using Diana Rigg, Blackman’sreplacement on The Avengers, and a stunt double named CydChild. Austin’s choreography invariably favored form over function.This was partly because Rigg, unlike Blackman, had little martial artexperience, and mainly that the show’s lawyers feared that Britishschoolchildren would copy Rigg’s techniques and use them during theirschoolyard fights. Child, by the way, was also a model for the comicbook character Modesty Blaise.

John Leong introduces hung gar and t’ai chi ch’uantoSeattle, Washington. Leong’s patrons included Ruby Chow, the head ofSeattle’s Chong Wa Benevolent Association, and with her support, hisstudents included many non-Chinese people. Leong’s instructors in HongKong included Wong Lee.

Cheng Man-ch’eng publishes an English-language text called T’aiChi Ch’uan: A Simplified Method of Calisthenics for Health andSelf-Defense.

The Ministry of Education authorizes the use of the word "kendo" inJapanese public schools; it had previously been in disfavor due tounpleasant associations with WWII-era militarism.

Taesoodo becomes part of the Korean National Sports Festival. (Itsfirst public appearance at the games was actually in 1963; this wasjust the announcement.) For political reasons, the style’s Japaneseorigins were minimized and this in turn led to the development of newethics, philosophies, and techniques. For example, while karateemphasizes single punches, taesoodo started emphasizing kicks thrown inrapid combination. Furthermore, it prohibited hand techniques to theface or any attacks below the waist, and eliminated all grabs andthrows. Additionally, sparring rules were modified to emphasizecontinuous action, and pads were developed that allowed heavierphysical contact between players. Finally, emphasis was placed ondeveloping character through athletic competition rather than throughcontemplation of self-defense applications. Consequently, as Herb Perezwrote in Black Belt in February 1998, competitive taekwondo"isactually traditional taekwondo by virtue of the fact that it wasdeveloped wholly in Korea."

The South Korean Army sends four taesoodo instructors -- Nam Tae Hi,Kim Seung Kyu, Jung Young Hwi, and Choo Kyo -- to the Republic ofVietnam. Over the next decade, the Koreans send another 657 instructorsand another 40,000 more heavily armed soldiers to Binh Dinh, Phu Yen,Khanh Hoa, and Ninh Thuan provinces. In Korean units, martial arttraining was widespread. For example, in 1967, the Korean CapitalDivision had 15,000 men. Of these, three were fourth-degree, 29 werethird-degree, 57 were second-degree, and 115 were first-degree. Therewere also 600 red belts (red is higher than black in Japan, so GeneralChoi made it lower than black in his system) and 2,300 blue belts. Theprincipal style taught was the Shotokan derivative known as Chung DoKwan, and about 1,250 Vietnamese and 150 Americans attended themonth-long course at Qui Nhon Air Force Base. Foreign instruction wasoften in English, and the primary trainers included Captain Yoon DongHo and Sergeant Jun Jae Gun. Other than making the soldiers physicallyfitter, there is debate concerning the military value of the training.Lieutenant General Chae Myung Shin, Commander of the ROK Forces,Vietnam, said, "Through Taekwondo, the soldiers’ moral armament isstrengthened, gallantry to protect the weak enhanced, courage againstinjustice fostered, and patriotism firmly planted." Unfortunately, thiswas not demonstrated in combat. For example, Major General Charles P.Brown, Commander of I Field Force, Vietnam, said that the Koreanmilitary frequently failed to show initiative when conducting militaryoperations or sympathy when dealing with civilians. General Brown’spredecessor was less kind, saying that the two Korean divisions wereless use than one US brigade, a unit ten times smaller. Finally,General Creighton Abrahms told Vice-President Spiro Agnew that theKorean forces were militarily no better than the South Vietnamese, forwhom Abrahms had nothing but contempt. As for the art’s reported effecton character-building, tactical uses included the beheadings of a womanand her eight children following a sniper attack, and a beatingdelivered to a US Army major who complained about a Korean Marinecolonel’s involvement in black market profiteering.

The Soviet Union sends its first team to the European JudoChampionships. Although trained solely in sambo, the Soviets’ AnzorKiknadze captured the grand championship and the team itself tookthird. This got the attention of European judoka, and started changingthe face of competition judo. Specific changes included increasedemphasis on bodily lifting opponents and then applying leg and armlocks to gain submission and less emphasis on proper form, spectacularthrows, and etiquette. Aesthetically the new methods left much to bedesired, but they were brutally practical.

Los Angeles County coroner Cyril Courville publishes a study showingthat dementia pugilistica, or punch drunkenness, is caused by thesevere atrophy of the frontal lobes of the brain and the premature lossof huge numbers of nerve cells within the hippocamus and cerebellarcortex.

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a Berkeleyphysicist named Thomas Kuhn uses the word "paradigm" to describe themodel problems and solutions that communities of practitioners used todefine their science. New Age writers quickly misappropriate and misusethe term, causing Kuhn to wish that he had used the word "exemplar"instead of "paradigm," and to complain that he was fonder of hiscritics than his fans.

1963:

As part of a post-graduate project at Oxford University, a retiredMarine Corps general named Samuel Griffith publishes a heavilyannotated translation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Reasons forthe translation included Griffith’s belief that the United States couldno more win a war against the Chinese without understanding Sun Tzu’sthirteen chapters than it could win a war against the Nazis withoutunderstanding Mein Kampf. Nevertheless, other Western generalsuntil do not come to appreciate the wily Chinese until after the USwithdrawal from Vietnam in 1972.

A New York woman named Kitty Genovese is slowly knifed to death infront of her apartment. None of the 38 witnesses try to help her, oreven call the police. "I was tired. I went back to bed," explained oneof the witnesses afterwards. Quickly exploited by media and academicphilosophers, the story continues to be cited as an example of thecallousness of modern urban dwellers. Still, given the response of thecoal miners living in Audenried, Pennsylvania to a street killing in1862 (one man locked himself in his cellar, another carefully finishedhis drink, then turned around and went home by a different route, whilea third looked out his window, then shut his window and went to bed),the suspicion arises that discretion is the normal human response tounexpected situations requiring individual acts of moral and physicalcourage.

The massive muscle bulk of the Soviet judo team causes a French judoteam to start demanding weight divisions. When the Japanese officialsin charge of the International Judo Federation resisted the suggestion,the French gathered support from the Australians, Swiss, Spanish, andseveral African countries, and then voted the Japanese out and theweight divisions in. All of which proves the point of IndonesianPresident Sukharno, who simultaneously said of Olympic posturing, "Letus declare frankly that sport has something to do with politics."Ironically, while steroids may have enhanced the size of the Sovietplayers, their successes owed more to good nutrition, sophisticatednational-level training programs, and directed visualization.Furthermore, despite their emphasis on identifying athletes at an earlyage, the Soviets never encouraged youths to do gymnastics before theage of eight, to wrestle before the age of ten, or to box before theage of twelve. Finally, they did not disburse steroids except undermedical supervision. This was rather different than in East Germany,where in 1989 Hans-Jürgen Noczenski, a former chairman of the EastGerman judo federation, told the newspaper Bild am Sontag thatEast German Olympic athletes were virtually force-fed performanceenhancing drugs. These allegations were supported by the East Germanski jumper Hans-Georg Aschenbach, who told reporters that athletes whobalked were not allowed to compete internationally, and were harassedin their private lives.

An interviewer asks Vincente Ferreira Pastinha, the elderly doyen ofthe Angola players, how many strikes there are in capoeira.The mestre replied: "They are without number. For every strike which islaunched, there are two defenses already prepared, and for those twodefenses, four more strikes. One is [always] improvising and thinkingwhile fighting." However, for the edification of the literal-minded, agroup of capoeiristas decided in 1969 that there were 141defensive movements, 238 takedowns, and 400 strikes. Afterwards, saysBira Almeida, who was there when this decision was rendered, "We foundnothing had changed. Nobody agreed with anybody."

An article in China Sports reports that doctors at theShanghai No. 1 Medical College had found that elderly people whopracticed t’ai chi ch’uanregularly were one-third stronger and six times more flexible thanelderly people who did not. The Chinese government, however, was notentirely happy with t’ai chi chuan, as it encouraged workers toleave productive jobs to teach students in parks, or to become infectedwith the "ideological poison of many feudal superstitions."

Chuck Norris opens a Tang Soo Do school in Torrance, California.Norris had studied at Osan Air Force Base in Korea, and his successesin California open tournaments soon allowed him to turn his school intoa major Los Angeles-area franchise operation. Norris later quit thisbusiness to become a film and television performer.

Ed Parker’s students Jim and Al Tracy open a commercial kenpo karateschool in San Jose, California. It made a lot of money, so in 1966 theTracys decided to begin franchising their operations. The salesmen forthe system included the Tracys and a man named Tom Connors, but the manthey hired to show the effectiveness of their system was the famoustournament fighter Joe Lewis. (Lewis did karate rather than anythingrelated to kenpo, but to the Tracys, that was an unimportant detail.)Anyway, the way these franchises worked was that the Tracys would helpsomeone establish his own storefront school, and then pay the initialrent, advertising, and other expenses. In return, the instructor had topay the Tracys about $4,000 a month. To pay these franchise fees andeat, an instructor needed two things: high monthly fees and severalhundred students. While some instructors had the charm, charisma, andskills needed to maintain both high monthly fees and several hundredstudents, others did not. Consequently, many individual franchiseowners soon found themselves faced with the choice of loweringstandards or going out of business.

Stan Schmidt introduces JKA (Shotokan) karate to Johannesburg, SouthAfrica.

Mervyn Oakley introduces Goju Kai karate to Sydney, Australia.

About 1964:

Religico-magical hunting rituals, many of which involved dancesmimicking the actions of the hunt and its aftermath, begin dying outamong school-educated Africans. The reason had to do with independencefrom colonial rule. While the colonialists had restricted blackAfricans’ access to firearms and found magic entertaining, the newWestern-educated African elite encouraged people to own shotguns andhunting rifles, and believed (publicly, if not always privately) thatmagic was old-fashioned.

So that children who were physically or temperamentally unfit forsports such as gymnastics or basketball could have their ownafter-school sport, the Chinese introduce t’ai chi ch’uan intotheir middle school pedagogy. (The Chinese government expected allchildren aged thirteen to fifteen to participate in after-schoolsports.) Class structure followed Soviet pedagogical models, andincluded five minutes of attendance-taking, ten to fifteen minutes ofwarm-ups, about half an hour of actual instruction, and a five minutecool-down and closing. A Confucian aspect of the instruction was thatthe teacher was expected to take an active role in the child’s privatelife, and to mingle with the students before and after class.

1964:

To improve its submarine-launched ballistic missile targetacquisition, the United States Navy launches a global positioningsatellite called Transit. In 1967, global positioning system (GPS)technology becomes available to civilians. For the next fifteen years,GPS was used mostly by the airline industry. However, over time pricesdropped, and in 1991, GPS-using soldiers involved in the Desert Stormcampaign became the first soldiers in history to know where they werewithout compass, map, or previous experience in the area.

A Yale University psychology professor named Stanley Milgrampublishes experimental data showing that cruelty is usually a functionof people obeying orders or reacting to peer pressure rather than acharacteristic unique to sad*sts. Indeed, follow-on studies found that60-80% of the populations studied would grudgingly engage in personallydistasteful levels of violence whenever directly ordered to do so bysomeone in authority. As a rule, middle-aged males were more likely todisobey authority than adolescent males or females.

Former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson explains courage towriter Gay Talese using the following words: "We’ll find out what he’slike after somebody beats him, how he takes it. It’s easy to doanything in victory. It’s in defeat that a man reveals himself."Meanwhile, trainer Cus D’Amato increases the speed of boxer JoséTorres’ combinations by having Torres punch according to the numbers.Not just the ol’ one-two, but a whole series of numbers. Step one:punch and move. Step two: punch, move, punch. And so on, until by stepsix, Torres was throwing six punches to predetermined areas intwo-fifths of a second. This punching was not done in the air, either,as D’Amato believed that punching the air was worthless. Instead, itinvolved hitting a target made from mattresses wrapped around a pole,and struck according to the numbers called out by the coach or plannedby the fighter. The numbers used in this system were: 1. A straightleft to the head. 2. A straight right to the head. 3. A left uppercutto the chin. 4. A right uppercut to the chin. 5. A left hook to thebody. 6. A right hook to the body. 7. A left jab to the head.

The Summer Olympics take place in Tokyo, and judo is one of theexhibition sports. (It only became an official sport in 1972.) Asexpected, the Japanese dominate the event, but to the horror of theJapanese public, the giant Dutchman Anton Geesink wins the gold medalin the unlimited division. The secret of his success, Geesink said, wasnot his size but his training: "I defeated the Japanese because I knowjudo better than the Japanese. The secret is to train every day in thebasics. This will make you unbeatable."

Pat Burleson and Allen Steen of Fort Worth, Texas, introducebelt-goal karate classes. These guaranteed promotion upon payment for aset number of classes, a trick that increased enrollment and lowereddropout rates.

Angel Cabales of Stockton, California opens the first school toteach Filipino martial arts to non-Filipinos. Cabales, who moved to theUnited States from the Philippines in 1939, learned his stick and knifefighting skills on the Manila docks from a man named Feliscimo Dizon.

By teaching t’ai chi ch’uan and other Chinese martial artstonon-Chinese people, Ark Yuey Wong and Cheng Man-ch’ing upset theChinese communities in, respectively, Los Angeles and New York. Onecause of the unhappiness was their willingness to teach women, blacks,and long-haired white males.

Lee Chong introduces taekwondo to Montreal, and subsequently becomesa leader of Canadian Olympic-style taekwondo.

1965:

DuPont researcher Stephanie Kwolek invents a polyaramid fiber calledKevlar. It was first used to make steel-belted radial tires. Then, in1971, a version called Kevlar-29 was found to provide good resistanceto handgun bullets, and in 1974, this in turn led to the introductionof soft body armor that was resistant to pistol and shotgun fire. InDecember 1975, an off-duty Seattle police officer named Ray Johnsonbecame the first person known to have survived a shooting because ofKevlar armor, and by 2000, Kevlar armor had reportedly saved about2,500 US police officers from death or serious injury. The US militarywas following these developments, and so in 1982, it began replacingits steel helmets and nylon ballistic vests with helmets and vests madefrom Kevlar. Research continued, and during the 1990s, lighter,stronger, and more flexible vests were introduced that had pockets infront and back to hold ceramic armor plates made of boron carbide.These plates were capable of absorbing direct hits from rifle fire, andso their use in Afghanistan and Iraq was credited with saving the livesof British and American soldiers. Unfortunately, the helmets, vests,and plates still did not provide any protection for limbs, and so thenext research goal was to develop a flexible cloth that would changeits molecular structure when struck by projectiles.

A South Vietnamese entomology professor named Ngo Dong combinesShotokan karate with aikido to create his own martial art known as cuongnhu. Cuong nhubecomes quite popular with the urban middle classes of South Floridaduring the 1980s. This is somewhat ironic, inasmuch as the Vietnamesestreet gangs of the region preferred MAC-10s and other self-loadingfirearms.

The Korea Taekwondo Association establishes a committee to designdistinctively Korean practice forms (poomse) with which toreplace the Shotokan/Shudokan kata traditionally taught. Over the nextfew years 25 (eight palgwe, eight taeguek, and nine yudanja)forms were developed, and in 1972 these were promulgated in aKorean-language textbook called Taekwondo Kyobon.There were known errors in the text, but according to Im Chang Soo, theerrors were allowed to remain because the grandmasters weren’t willingto take the time or spend the money to make the corrections.

Paula and Pauline Short open Karate for Women in Portland, Oregon.In 1968, LaVerne Bates started a women’s ch’uan faclass in Los Angeles, and in 1971, Py Bateman established a FeministKarate Union in Seattle, Washington. A stated purpose of all threeschools was to teach women that it was not only permissible, but alsodesirable, to assert themselves during physical confrontations.

In Pakistan, important wrestling matches were not taking place asoften as in the past. Karachi journalist Anwer Mooraj said reasons whyincluded inexperienced promoters, inadequate facilities, and complaintsabout "a certain understanding among members of the fraternity not tobreak one another’s limbs too often." Pre-match publicity alwaysfollowed this pattern. First, photos of the wrestlers appeared in thenewspapers. Then, for the next several weeks, the wrestlers boasted inthe sport pages about what they planned to do to the other once theygot into the ring. Thus, by match time, thousands of fans would craminto the National or Railway Stadiums expecting an exciting match. Andif they didn’t get it, said Mooraj, only half in jest, bookmakers"started offering odds on the referee’s chances of surviving the match."

An author for the Chinese periodical Hsin T’i-yu ("NewPhysical Culture") notes that "low practices and illegalities in takingfees" were a problem in Mainland Chinese t’ai chi ch’uanclasses. According to workers from a Peking automobile manufacturingplant, some teachers had not been reformed by Socialism. Therefore,toward keeping workers following the discredited road of feudalsuperstition, the youth group called the Red Guard orchestrated attackson traditional martial art instructors. The Red Guards also pillagedthe Shaolin Temple at Chang-shao, and drove away the handful ofremaining monks. Photographs taken by the Japanese visitors Tokiwa andSekino show that the Shaolin Monastery was run-down by 1920. In 1927,it was burned during the Northern Expedition. A handful of very passivemonks lived inside the ruins from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s.Consequently, there was probably little, if any, martial artinstruction at the Shaolin Monastery from 1927 to 1980.

1966:

The United States military fields its first man-portable atomicbombs. These were .2 kiloton devices delivered by three-man SpecialForces or Underwater Demolitions teams. The smaller implosion bombsweighed 42 pounds, while the larger gun-type bombs weighed 120 pounds.Inexplicably, the weapons’ timing devices were only accurate toplus-or-minus five hours, and most of their blast went into the airinstead of the target. So, except for making a place lethallyradioactive for a couple weeks, the devices were almost criminallyimpractical. Consequently, they were reportedly deactivated afterlaser-guided smart bombs and radar-guided cruise missiles becameavailable during the early 1970s. Equivalent Soviet devices do not seemto have been any more practical.

While sitting around the house in Berkeley, California, a group offantasy writers and college students including Diana Paxson startswondering what it would be like to really live in medieval times. Theresult is the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. The originalpurpose of the SCA was to recreate life in medieval times.(Selectively, though -- no SCA members wanted to recreate plagues orthe lack of indoor plumbing.) Many members liked sword-and-bucklerplay. Early weapons and armor were crude and tended to build a hightolerance for pain. (Armor consisted of padded jackets and fencingmasks, while weapons were rattan singlesticks.) By the late 1970s,armor manufacture had improved, and metal armor started appearing.Along the way, many members’ training methodology began tipping towarda sporting attitude rather than antiquarian research.

In Toledo, Ohio, polyethylene foam wrestling mats are used for thefirst time during international competition. Although expensive, foammats were softer (eggs bounced rather than broke) and more easily setup and sanitized than the traditional canvas over horsehair mats. Thiscontributed to the spread of high school wrestling programs throughoutthe United States and Canada.

Bruce Lee appears on a short-lived American television series calledThe Green Hornet.Lee’s getting this role was due in part to his friendship with EdParker, whose students included various Hollywood stars and producers.Unfortunately, because the studios refused to believe that NorthAmerican audiences would ever like an Asian hero, Lee could not getstarring roles in Hollywood. Consequently, he returned to Hong Kong,where he met Raymond Chow of Golden Harvest, who was starting to usehand-to-hand fights in his action films instead of swordplay. Theresult was a series of low-budget chop-socky flicks including TheBig Boss and Way of the Dragon.While the fighting shown in these movies was more spectacular thanpractical, the anti-authoritarian themes of the scripts appealed toworking class audiences everywhere and the result was incrediblebox-office success.

About breaking boards and bricks with the fists, Ohshima Tsutomo ofthe Southern California Karate Association says, "People who do that, Ithink, are perhaps subconsciously strengthening their ki["spirit-energy"]. They think they have to toughen up their hands bybruising them to make them strong and irresistible… [However,] if the kihad been developed and strong enough, [they] could have done thesethings all along, instead of having to rely on such hand tougheningmethods to convince [themselves]."

Peter Urban breaks from Yamaguchi Gogen to establish the U. S. A.Goju-Ryu Association.

Matsuura Hiroshi introduces sh*to-ryu karate to Mexico.

Fujita Seiko dies. Fujita claimed to be Japan’s last practicingninja, but that claim has since been disputed. Anyway, duringinterviews, Fujita always deplored the commercialization of ninjutsuin the movies, and added that people such as Hatsumi Yoshiaki were notdescribing true ninjutsu,only interesting aspects of the traditional Japanese martial arts.These statements correspond with what Richard Bowen wrote in theBudokwai quarterly Judo in October 1957. "I saw in a [Japanese]newspaper to-day that in Veno Mie Prefecture a group of young officeworkers had come across some old books dealing with a defunct school –Nin-jutsu. They became so interested that for fun they decided to trysome of the methods… The idea is to break into fortifications, etc., dowhat you were going to do in the way of murder, abduction, spying,arson, and such like pleasant pastimes, and then get out again withoutbeing slaughtered." However, they are not what Hatsumi’s studentsbelieved, and so to this day the actual history of modern ninjutsuremains a contentious topic.

Cheng Man-Ch’ing and Robert W. Smith provide the first Englishtranslations of the classics of t’ai chi ch’uan. (It is hard,if not impossible, to do t’ai chi ch’uan well without anunderstanding of these classics.) The essential t’ai chiexercise known as pushing-hands is described below. The translation isby Liang T’ung-ts’ai.

You must find the real technique --

If he goes up you follow;

If he goes down, you follow --

Then he cannot attack.

1967:

Although you would never have guessed that there were such things asPost-Traumatic Stress Disorders by watching the year’s movies, whichincluded The One-Armed Swordsman and The Good, the Bad, andthe Ugly, the World War II hero Audie Murphy admits to sufferingrecurring war-induced nightmares.

Bruce Lee names his martial art, which combined wing chunwith boxing, fencing, and arnis, "Jeet Kune Do," which means "The Wayof the Intercepting Fist."

The James Bond movie You Only Live Twice introduces Westernaudiences to the black-clad super-warriors called ninjas. Unlike mostsubsequent movie ninja, the Bond ninja are ultimately destroyed byautomatic weapon fire. Extras included Donn Draeger and Oyama Mas.

When asked about the quality of his European and North Americanopposition, which he routinely destroyed in a matter of minutes, anoutstanding Pakistani professional wrestler called Aslam Bholu replied,"They are making a living, my friend; life is hard." Packing 300 poundson a 6’3" frame, Bholu said that his diet consisted of six pounds ofcurd and two pounds of almonds for breakfast, and eight pounds ofchicken mixed with a couple of loaves of bread for lunch and supper.However, he didn’t drink milk.

About 1968:

African American martial art practitioners begin developing BlackNationalist ("Afrikan") martial arts. Most of these practitioners, suchas Moses Powell and James Cheatham, taught reasonably orthodox Asian oreclectic martial arts, but some, such as Dennis Newsome, insteadstarted studying African heritage arts such as capoeira. In addition, afew practitioners, notably Nganga Tolo-Naa (Ray Cooper) and Shaha Maasi(William Nichols), developed their own arts (in this case, KupiganaNgumi, which includes techniques from karate, t’ai chi ch’uan, andMaung Gyi’s American Bando). African American street versions alsodeveloped. The latter are known today by the generic term "JailhouseRock." Influences on these street versions included Black Islam, rapmusic, popular dance, and kung-fu movies.

1968:

In Vietnam, military lawyers boast of winning 200 convictions for acrime that they called "assault with explosives," and that GIs called"fragging." While popularly attributed to poor leadership in the field,most fraggings actually involved poor leadership in garrison. Explainedone unidentified officer to a reporter, "Given beer, whisky or drugs,mixed in with a crowd of blacks and whites, and you can have trouble.But you never know which came first -- the booze, the drugs, or racialdisagreements." The problem was not unique to Vietnam, either. Forexample, Dr. Joseph W. Owen, the head of a psychiatric section in theSolomon Islands during World War II, has described the case of a Marinecaptain who routinely ridiculed a lieutenant in front of his men. Aftera few weeks of this, the lieutenant planted a mine in the captain’stent and detonated it from the bushes.

For crippling two American M-48 tanks and leading two successfulattacks against a South Vietnamese military base near Saigon, the NorthVietnamese Army awards a 17-year old woman named Vo Thi Mo its VictoryMedal Third Class. "The first time I killed an American," Vo told aninterviewer twenty years later, "I felt enthusiasm and more hatred."After a while, however, her enthusiasm waned, in part because, afterwatching American soldiers look at pictures and cry, she realized thatmost American soldiers were not faceless baby burners, simply scaredyoung men far from home.

The University of California publishes Carlos Castaneda’s doctoraldissertation as Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.While the book was later shown to be a sociological hoax, it stillhelped popularize the idea of the chemically dependent warrior inEurope and North America.

Californian Pat Johnson introduces the penalty-point system to NorthAmerican karate. Under this system, fighters who hit their opponent toohard gave up one point to that opponent, and lost if that opponentcould not continue. (Previously, fighters who couldn’t continue weredisqualified.) While encouraging karate tournaments to become games oftag instead of realistic fights, the "Johnson ruling" also solved theproblem of excessive bloodshed during North American amateur karatetournaments. Today, however, Johnson is best remembered as the fightarranger for The Karate Kid, a Hollywood movie that portrayedexcessive contact and unsportsmanlike conduct as the norm rather thanthe exception during tournament competition.

The Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) starts sendingtaekwondo instructors overseas. Several of these men were subsequentlyarrested in Germany, where they were charged with assaultinganti-government protesters. The Koreans probably were not assassins,however, as in 1991, General Choi’s son Choi Choong Hwa was sentencedto six years in a Canadian prison for attempting to hire some Canadiansto assassinate a serving South Korean president.

1969:

After deciding to admit women undergraduates, Yale University stopsrequiring (not allowing, requiring) nude swimming in its pool. Theofficial reason for the nudity? The wool used in bathing suits cloggedpool filters.

The Swiss-born psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross publishes OnDeath and Dying.This book introduces the theory that human responses to death and otherunpleasant realities go through a continuum comprised of denial, anger,bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In 1995, US Army psychologistDave Grossman modified her schema to identify the human responses.These responses are 1) concern about the ability to kill, 2) the actualkill, 3) exhilaration ("It is vital," says Grossman, "that futuresoldiers understand that [exhilaration] is a normal and very commonresponse to the abnormal circ*mstances of combat, and they need tounderstand that their feelings of satisfaction at killing are a naturaland fairly common aspect of combat"), 4) remorse and revulsion, 5)rationalization, and 6) acceptance. Grossman adds that mostpeople (he says 3 out of 4) are emotionally unable to personally killanother human being. As many societies worship aggressive behavior, anindividual’s discovery that he or she is personally unable to kill canbe as traumatizing as an actual first kill.

A British study finds that while professional boxers’ vocabularieswere below normal, their intelligence levels were equal to or higherthan the general population. As for amateur boxers, a separate Finnishstudy completed in 1982 found that amateur boxing champions tended tohave better average education and higher social status than theirparents or siblings.

In Evanston, Illinois, an amateur wrestling organization known asthe United States Wrestling Federation (USWF) holds its first FreestyleSenior Open tournament. The USWF did things for wrestlers that the AAUnever considered, such as run clinics and pay travel expenses. (UnderAAU auspices, international-class wrestlers hitchhiked to tournaments,and faced banning for appearing on television shows or acceptingspeaking engagements.) The USWF also pushed for rules changes thatwould allow athletes to be coaches without losing their amateur status.Obviously, such changes were popular with wrestlers and coaches, and soin 1982 the USWF replaced the AAU as the arbiter of United Statesamateur wrestling. To reflect this change, the USWF changed its name toUSA Wrestling. USA Wrestling became part of FILA in 1986. Meanwhile,Canadian amateur wrestlers were making similar changes; in their case,the new organization was called the Canadian Amateur WrestlingAssociation.

Lee Haeng Ung establishes the American Tae Kwon Do Association (ATA)in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1992, this organization claimed 80,000members in 250 schools, making it the largest taekwondo organization inNorth America. Explaining his own initiation into the martial arts, Leetold Tae Kwon Do Times in an interview published in March 1992:"After the Korean War, Korea started to import a lot of AmericanWestern and gangster movies. As kids, we loved to watch them fight, andall of us wanted to be able to fight better. I tried Judo when I wasnine or ten, but I couldn’t throw the big guy. Then I took up boxingand I got hit too much and got lots of headaches. I looked forsomething better and found Tang Soo Do. Most people back then didn’tthink martial arts were good; they thought ... only gangsters and hoodsdid them."

Smith & Wesson begin offering practical shooting instruction topolice officers. The chief instructor was a retired FBI agent namedCharles Smith. However, for civilian shooters, Jeff Cooper’s AmericanPistol Institute ("Gunsite"), which opened in Arizona in 1973, wasprobably more influential.

1970:

The United States Army fields low-energy ruby laser rangefinders inVietnam. The American artillerymen found the weapons’ point-of-aim,point-of-impact, accuracy so fascinating that both officers andenlisted began pulling out lawn chairs and cold beers to better viewthe action. International television audiences joined these fascinatedAmerican soldiers during the Gulf War of 1991, when Coalition forcesfired 12,000 laser-guided munitions at the hapless Iraqis.

While watching Joe Lewis (a karate stylist who relied heavily onpunching) knock out Greg "Ohm" Baines (a San Jose kenpo karate stylistwho relied more on kicking), a ringside announcer invents the phrase"kick boxing." Lewis was an excellent puncher. Nonetheless, thecompetition in karate in those days was hardly as stiff as competitionin professional boxing, and when Lewis boxed against a Honolulupreliminary boxer named Teddy Limoz in July 1975, it was Limoz in three.

Cho Sang Min opens Brazil’s first taekwondo school, the AcademiaLiberdade, in São Paulo. His peers included Lee Woo Jae, Oh JuYul, andLee Bo Tee, all of whom opened Brazilian taekwondo academies in 1972.That said, Brazil’s most famous taekwondo teacher was undoubtedly KimYong Min, who, after starting a school in Rio in 1975, did extensiveadvertising on television and in comic books.

Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali shows his trademarkbackward-stepping "Ali shuffle" to the 62-year old New York fighttrainer Cus D’Amato, and says that the shuffle was so fast, that no onealive could touch him. D’Amato laughs and says that wasn’t true. Proveit, replied the Champ. So D’Amato does, twice, bending his body to theright while jabbing with his left the first time, then bending to theleft while jabbing with his right the second. The secret, said thebeaming D’Amato, involved timing rather than speed.

Because NCAA wrestling rules did not apply to internationalcompetition, the Canadian Intercollegiate Athletic Union votes tochange from NCAA free-style wrestling to international freestyle.Although the FILA rules committee had an annoying habit of changingrules in mid-season, the result was nevertheless better overallCanadian performance during Olympic and World Championship events.

1971:

After winning a bruising fifteen-round decision over former championMuhammad Ali, the reigning heavyweight champion Joe Frazier finds thatthe only way to keep his head from hurting was to stick it into a sinkfilled with ice water. Ali evidently felt about the same, as he went tothe hospital for X-rays of his jaw, and then told the press, "I guessI’m not pretty any more."

The British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard claims that theacrobatic dances done by the Nubans, a Nilotic African people living insouthwestern Sudan and northeastern Zaire, were originally designed tosimulate short-ranged individual combats. Perhaps. On the other hand, aMasaai man named Tepilit Ole Saitoti said in his 1986 autobiographythat the Masaai warriors of the late 1960s danced mostly to attractfemale attention. Either way, both the Masaai and the Nuba wrestled toenhance personal and clan reputation. Training included wrestling,dancing, and abstaining from beer and sex.

A Department of Defense study finds that 69% of the United Statesmilitary personnel queried used marijuana while stationed in SoutheastAsia. Another 29% used barbiturates or amphetamines, and 38% usedheroin or other opiates. These staggering levels of drug abuse weremotivated by the soldiers’ desire to chemically escape stress and fear.In the words of one Vietnam veteran, "We’d sit around smoking grass andgetting stoned and talking about when we’d get to go home." This said,alcoholism was an even bigger problem. In the words of another veteran,"You can’t forget... but booze makes it go away for awhile."

A Canadian environmental group called Greenpeace launches its firstRainbow Warriors. While the Rainbow Warriors originally espousednon-violence, they soon turned to spiking trees, vandalizingbulldozers, and ramming whaling ships, for, in the words of the Arizonaenvironmentalist Edward Abbey, "What’s more American than violence?"

Japanese organized crime syndicates become actively involved inkickboxing and female professional wrestling in Thailand and Singapore.

Yamaguchi Gogen defines Japanese Goju karate using the followingwords:

Calm heart.

Strong and swift.

1972:

By creating a television series called Kung Fu and a moviecalled Return of the Dragon,Warner Brothers introduces Hong Kong-style kung fu movies to Hollywood.Bruce Lee starred in the latter movie, and he was originally offeredthe starring role in Kung Fu. However, after auditioning, Leewas turned down for the role because the producer, Jerry Thorpe, didn’tthink that Lee spoke English well enough. The result was that dancerDavid Carradine, whom Chuck Norris has said does martial arts about aswell as Norris acts, got the role instead.

A Hungarian-born Australian named Joe Meissner becomes the firstnon-Japanese to win the world karate championships.

The French national karate champion Dominic Valera introducesWestern boxing’s one-two punches to international karate competition.While this revolutionizes European karate, single attacks (generallyreverse punches and front snap kicks) continued to dominate Japanesetournaments until 1982. Why? Rules. The Japanese rules only awardedpoints for single attacks, therefore discouraging combinations.

With the support of the Brazilian Air Force, capoeira Regionalbecomes an official sport of the Brazilian Boxing Confederation. Inreturn, the capoeiraschools involved agreed to add tournament rules, ranking schemes, andcolored belts. The colors chosen for those belts (green, yellow, blue,and white) were those of the Brazilian national flag.

Twenty-year old Teófilio Stevenson wins the first of threesuccessive gold medals in Olympic heavyweight boxing. While "ElGigante" was Cuba’s national hero throughout the 1970s, his goal was tobecome a well-rounded boxer. "As athletes grow older," said Stevenson," they learn and develop more technique." Other outstanding CubanOlympic boxers included Angel Herra (gold in 1976 and 1980),AndrésAldama (silver in 1976 and gold in 1980), and Felix Savon (gold in1992, 1996, and 2000).

Men’s judo becomes a permanent Olympic sport. Although Japanese wonthe most Olympic gold medals, by the late early 2000s the French, SouthKorean, and former Soviet teams were not far behind in total medalcount.

Taekwondo becomes part of the official curriculum of South Koreanpublic schools.

A Hawaiian named Jesse James Walani Kuhaulua (but known as DaigoroTakamiyama) becomes the first foreigner to win the Emperor’s Cup insumo. The congratulatory telegram by the United States PresidentRichard Nixon marks the only time that English has ever been officiallyspoken in a Tokyo sumo ring. (When the Samoan American sumotori knownas Konishiki became the second United States citizen to win theEmperor’s Cup in 1989, the diplomat sent to read President GeorgeBush’s congratulatory telegram read the President’s words in Japaneseinstead of English.)

The Japanese government imposes minimum education requirements onsumotori. The idea was to keep rural teenagers from dropping out ofjunior high school to become professional wrestlers.

Dan Gable of Iowa, who won 180 consecutive matches in high schooland college, becomes the first Olympic wrestler to win a gold medalwithout his opponents scoring a single point. "I expected to win all ofthese matches," Gable told reporters several years later, "but only oneat a time." According to Gable’s teammate Ben Peterson, Gable fundedhis wrestling by saving the money he earned by teaching seminars.Still, said Peterson, a devout Christian, the hard work and low paybeat wearing T-shirts advertising beer companies, as became the normfollowing the appearance of corporate Olympics in 1984.

1973:

The World Taekwon-Do Federation (WTF) is established in Seoul,Korea. The An official organ of the South Korean government, theproximate cause of its establishment was that General Choi Hong Hi,head of the existing International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF) wasplanning to move to Toronto, Canada. ("The WTF," says Americantaekwondo pioneer Henry Cho, "is not a martial art organization, it isa political organization… They have been successful from the standpointthat they have developed Tae Kwon Do as a sport, and I can appreciatethis... but it hasn’t had much to do with promoting Tae Kwon Do as amartial art.") A second and dispute was over who pocketed the moneycollected through proprietary ranking systems.

A Polish study finds that most elite male athletes came fromworking-class rural backgrounds. Elite female athletes, on the otherhand, usually came from upper-class urban backgrounds. Both male andfemale athletes viewed athletics as a hindrance to marriage, and ruralworking-class women evidently viewed this as a larger problem thanwealthy urban women. Contemporary East German studies showed thatwomen, regardless of social class, were just as likely as men to domorning calisthenics, but were far less likely to participate instrenuous physical competition.

About 10,000 Cambodians jam into Phnom Penh Olympic Stadium to watchKhmer kick-boxing. Bouts consisted of three rounds, each of which wasthree minutes long. Winners received payment via the crowd stuffingbank notes into the winner’s gloves. Although fights supposedly werenot fixed, the only way that Cambodian players ever lost to foreignerswas by knockout. Khmer boxing is similar to muay Thai, and theCambodians say that their method is the older. Favorite techniquesinclude a left jab followed by a right knee or shin to the body. Thereare both male and female divisions, but in the female divisions, thereis less kicking and more wrestling.

International physicians begin studying pain during theirsymposiums. Nevertheless, as late as 1989, no medical school includedthe study of pain in its curriculum.

Reports of cadet abuse cause prisoner of war training at the UnitedStates Air Force Academy to come under congressional scrutiny. Duringthe investigation, an Air Force staff psychologist reports that "some[cadets] become psychotic [during the training], but they snap out ofit."

1974:

Gary Gygax self-publishes a fantasy role-playing game called Dungeons& Dragons.The game was popular with high school and college students, and this inturn inspired academic research into the history of European medievaland renaissance martial arts.

The Canadian national wrestling champion Gord Bertie describes hiscompetition regimen. First, he ran four miles every morning whilewearing three sweat suits. Second, he ate nothing but vitamin pills andfluids (especially tomato juice). Third, he wrestled every afternoon.Finally, he ran again in the sauna at night. The advantage of thisprogram was that it allowed him to wrestle at a lower weight, where hewas stronger. Its disadvantage was that it sapped his physical andemotional reserves and gave him violent diarrhea.

To give audiences the impression that its leaders were more worriedabout the health of athletes than television market shares, theInternational Olympic Committee adds anabolic steroids to its list ofbanned drugs. The ban did not deter many strength athletes from takingthe drugs. Why? In their own words, "Die young, die strong, Dianabol."Put another way, why should a little thing like a rule or possibleliver damage deter athletes obsessed with winning? Said Elliott Gornand Warren Goldstein in A Brief History of American Sports,"Nothing in the socialization and training of first-rate athletes,nothing in the culture of athletic boosterism encourages honor overvictory or rule-following over rule-bending." Of course, by takingsteroids, the athletes actually reduced their ultimate potential.Explained Hal Connolly, a United States Olympic hammer thrower who tooksteroids during the mid-1960s, "I think I was just spending too muchtime getting strong and not enough time improving speed and technique."

Sociological studies reveal that the people most strongly opposed tofemale athletes were female non-athletes. Female non-athletes also werethe quickest to accuse female athletes of harboring hom*osexualtendencies.

As part of the International Women’s Year, the Women’s InternationalBoxing Federation is created. The organization’s first president wasformer professional boxer Barbara Buttrick of Yorkshire, England. CarolPolis was the New York Athletic Commission’s first female boxing judge.To satisfy legal requirements, each boxer was required to sign thefollowing declaration: "I understand and appreciate that participationin sport carries a risk to me of serious injury including permanentparalysis or death. I voluntarily and knowingly accept this risk."Meanwhile, Pauline Short and Py Bateman celebrated InternationalWomen’s Year by holding the first all-women’s karate tournament inSeattle. "It was exciting to see what the ‘woman’s touch’ could do inthe male dominated world of karate tournaments," said Seattle karateteacher Judy Duleba. Duleba added that it was refreshing "to be withother women in an atmosphere devoid of emphasis on clothes, hairstyles, and make up." Once the novelty wore off, however, bra-lesssparring and hand-made trophies showing women on top instead of menwere about as far as the "woman’s touch" went in Northwesternall-female karate tournaments.

Following the normalization of political relations between theUnited States and the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese national wushutroupe tours the United States. A year later, it toured Europe. Chinesemedical concepts, including those of acupuncture, acupressure, and ch’i-kung,started filtering west about the same time.

"Worker-peasant-soldier students" of the wu shu class of thePeking Physical Culture Institute appear for the first time at thenational wu shu tournament. Two-thirds of the players werebetween 17-18 years old.

Taekwondo becomes an official AAU sport. Although women were allowedto compete, there were usually no weight divisions and sometimes noteven belt divisions. Therefore, many women felt uncomfortablecompeting, especially if they had not been raised to play aggressivegames.

Using Elvis Presley’s money, Ed Parker and Steve Armstrong introduceNorth American free-style sparring to Europe. Featured fightersincluded Benny Urquidez and John Natividad.

In Los Angeles, Masayoshi "James" Mitose (by now known as James M.Mitose) is convicted of murder and extortion, and in March 1981 he diedwhile still in prison. Because Mitose had introduced kenpo karate toHawaii during the 1940s, his conviction for murder caused considerableshock in the US martial arts community. That an individual stylistmight go wrong was one thing, but the pioneer of a system? Thisshattered the old theory that martial arts built character in boys, andthe repercussions continued to haunt karate for decades.

The Okinawan Karate Association awards a retired publicschoolteacher named Kina Shosei a tenth degree black belt in karate.The reason was that when Kina had retired from teaching karate andkobujutsu in 1938, Okinawan karate men had used belts only to holdtheir pants up.

Tohei Koichi breaks with the Aikikai to establish Shishin ToitsuAikido.

Mike Anderson, a taekwondo instructor from Texas, introducesbrightly colored uniforms to North American tournament karate. The ideawas to add visual excitement to the sport; previously karate uniformshad been black, white, or a combination of black and white. Theinnovation was popular with crowds, and by 1988, competitors such asBritain’s Jeoff Thompson were calling for this crowd-pleasinginnovation to be added to international karate competition, too. Toincrease contrast on black-and-white television, the European JudoUnion introduced blue uniforms in 1988, an innovation that even theKodokan reluctantly accepted in 1997.

1975:

University of Maryland mathematicians James Yorke and Tien-yien Ligive the name "chaos" to a new theory that suggested that simplesystems give rise to complex behaviors while complex systems gave riseto simple behaviors. (The older Newtonian assumption was that simplesystems gave rise to simple behaviors while complex systems gave riseto complex behaviors.) The computer models they used to argue theircase caused academics to begin questioning whether linear models are asuseful for explaining the way things work in nature asmulti-dimensional models. If Yorke and Li are correct, they are not.

California’s Ray Chapman wins the first World Combat PistolChampionships, which were held in Zürich, Switzerland.

Inspired by tales of Korean ferocity in Vietnam, the commandinggeneral of the United States Army’s 25th Infantry Division brings ahigh-ranking taekwondo teacher to Hawaii for the purpose of teachingunarmed killing techniques to his soldiers. The plan fails after theKorean is shot to death in a Honolulu nightclub.

A study done by some United States engineers reveals that the impactof a full-power boxing blow to the head exceeded current road safetyguidelines by a factor of four.

A Brazilian immigrant named Jelon Vieira introduces capoeiraRegional to New York City. Vieira trained dancers, some of whomappeared in Hollywood movies, and according to some students of theAfrican American movement arts, these influenced the short-lived dancecraze known as break-dancing. That is not so. For one thing,break-dancing was not short-lived. Instead, it simply evolved intohip-hop. Furthermore, break-dancing lacks the underlying sense oftrickery that exemplifies capoeira. Finally (and probably mostimportantly), the assertion does injustice to the New York streetgroups (examples include Rock Steady Crew and High Times Crew) thatactually popularized "b-boyin’" ("break-boying") during the late 1970s.

An article in the China Post reports that after twoAmericanswho spent a year-and-a-half studying boxing in Taiwan returned home,they opened schools and called themselves "masters of kungfu." Thearticle added that "Local martial artists puzzle over whether the twoyoung men gained a deep understanding of kungfu during their brief stayin Taiwan, and are offended by their emphasis on earning money ratherthan perfecting their skills."

1976:

Mel Tappan, a former investment banker turned survivalist, publishesSurvival Guns,the most thorough look at defensive firearm selection produced to date.Nevertheless, neither the advice, the money, nor the arsenal ultimatelydid Tappan any good -- his death in 1980 at the age of 47 was owed tocongestive heart failure rather than hordes of crazed San Franciscansstorming Rogue River, Oregon.

The International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) is formed.Organizers included Richard Thomas and Franklin Brown, and they left"pistol" out of the title so that in future they could include longguns in their programs.

The People’s Republic of China reports that Chiang Ch’ing, theactress wife of the late Chairman Mao, wanted to replace militarybayonet training with techniques borrowed from the Chinese theater. TheRed Army resisted the innovation, saying, "Amidst heavy gunfire, whowould want to enjoy the dance posture of swordplay?" (The generals’idea of military sports (chün-shih t’i yü) includedmarksmanship, mountaineering, signaling, bayonet-fighting, grenadethrowing, knife-fighting, and first aid, and Korean War veterans taughtsuch "sports" in middle school physical education classes from 1952 to1968. Rifle range targets included photographs of Lyndon Johnson andChiang Kai-shek.)

The Japan Sumo Association rules that only sumotori possessingJapanese citizenship could be managers or trainers following theirretirement. The purpose of the ruling was to keep big foreigners suchas Jesse Kuhaulua from taking over the sport.

Khmer Rouge soldiers in Cambodia are reported collecting humanlivers. Sometimes they put the livers on sticks and hung them in frontof their houses, as a way of scaring people, and sometimes they atethem, as a way of gaining magical power. The eyes of the soldiers whoate those livers were said to be fierce and red, like those of a tiger.

1977:

The Martial Arts Commission is established in Britain. This leads tothe publication of the first books aimed specifically at trainingWestern teachers of Asian martial arts.

Benny Urquidez becomes the first United States citizen to win aJapanese kick-boxing championship.

Oakland sportswriter Ralph Wiley asks former heavyweight boxer LouNova what it felt like to be hit by Joe Louis. "Louis?" said Nova. "WhyLouis didn’t hit me near as hard as Baer did. Not even close." Fine,says Wiley. Baer was a champion once. So how did it feel to get hit onthe button by Max Baer? "Well, I’ll tell ya," replied Nova. "My nervoussystem was on hold. For weeks after the fight, I was afraid to move myhead for fear my neck was broken."

Boxing promoter Don King and Ring magazine are caught fakingrecords in order to secure better matches for fighters under contractto King. The net effect of the discovery is a muckraking article in SPORTmagazine and the cancellation of a television contract between Don KingProductions and ABC Sports. Lost profits aside, the discovery wasn’t abig deal to the world boxing fraternity. Partly this was because, inhis own words, King had "just the right combination of wit, grit, andbullsh*t" to survive. Mostly, though, it was because the revelation wasused to advance the interests of a rival South African fight syndicateheaded by Bob Arum.

Fifty-seven-year-old Cacoy Canete of Cebu City takes first place instick fighting during the Philippines’ first national eskrimatournament. Canete repeated the feat two years later, without being hitby anyone either time.

1978:

During the Fifth All-Japan Shukokai Championships at Osaka, women’ssparring events are introduced into Japanese tournament karate.Ishimaru Yumiko, who took second in the kata division, won thisfighting division. The winning technique was a front kick followed by aleft hook.

A West German study finds that female wage earners were more likelyto play competitive sports than were homemakers, and that homemakerswere more likely to play competitive sports than were unemployed womenseeking work outside the home. Said historian Allen Guttman, "The mostlikely reason for their non-involvement is that they fear a furtherloss of self-confidence as a consequence of poor performance in sports."

1979:

The Peoples’ Republic of China reports that several thousand Chinesechildren aged 8-14 were capable of telepathy, clairvoyance, X-rayvision, or psychokinesis. Touted examples from the Asian martial artsinclude ch’i kung exhibitions, in which men awed audiences bywithstanding spear thrusts to the throat, supporting themselves on theprongs of forks, and receiving hammer blows on their bodies thatsmashed the stone slabs underneath them. Two years later, the ChineseAcademy of Sciences admitted that its initial claims were unfounded.

The United States Army publishes a concept paper called "The FirstEarth Battalion." Its assumption was that soldiers of the 1990s wouldbe involved in more peacekeeping operations than wars. Despite his NewAge rhetoric, the author, Lt. Colonel Jim Channon, had a crystal ballthat was surprisingly clear. Among his predictions were personalstereos ("body vest music"), heads-up map displays, a globalcommunication system called "The Net," and a scenario that involvedsoldiers who "parachuted in that morning and stood in a long linefacing each opposing army. The EARTH BATTALION satellite above beamedthis image to the globe. The earth watched as this potentialcatastrophy [sic] awaited the conscience of one of the two armyleaders to set. For they would have to bloody the EARTH BATTALIONpeople in their path before they could attack -- and the world wouldknow." Replace "EARTH BATTALION satellite" with "CNN," and you have theforeign policy of the United States during the 1990s. (The globalcommunication system described, by the way, was ARPANET. The Departmentof Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency established the systemto provide military personnel and contractors with a redundantcommunications system that might survive a nuclear attack. The name"Internet" dates to ca. 1973.) Channon also believed that soldiersshould learn esoteric aspects of the Asian martial arts. For example,he believed that training in t’ai chi ch’uan could teach themto heal or hurt using touch while training in aikido could teach themspatial awareness. Although the Army was not institutionally interestedin meditation, martial arts, or biofeedback, during the 1980s SpecialForces hired outside contractors to provide two A-teams, a total of 25men, with training in biofeedback, aikido, and "mind-body psychology."The trainers for this project included former Marines Jack Cirie andRichard Strozzi Heckler, and a typical training day included running,swimming, "industrial-strength" calisthenics, and 1-1/2 hours of aikidopractice. After six months, the soldiers were not aikido masters butwere considerably fitter than when they started. (On average, 75%fitter.) Navy SEALs received an abbreviated version of the same coursein 1988, as did a company of US Marines in 2000. Army Rangers, on theother hand, adopted Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in 1994, and the program that theUS Marines adopted in 2000 was based on judo and karate. Whatever themethod taught, the idea was not to create great hand-to-hand fighters,but instead to instill the warrior ethos.

Soviet émigrés report an outbreak of pulmonary anthraxnearSverdlovsk. While the CIA said that this was the result of an accidentat a Soviet biological warfare research center, the Soviets blamed iton people selling black market meat. Who was right? Probably both,since the Russians admitted testing genetically engineered biotoxins asrecently as 1992.

West German officials charge several highly ranked British, Dutch,and US judoka with using hollowed-out judo mats to smuggle LSD intoBritain and the United States. United States officials also linked theUS judoka to four California homicides. But, as the killers used knivesrather than bare hands, the suspicion arises that the lethality of theunarmed Japanese martial arts is somewhat overrated. That suspicion issupported by FBI statistics indicating that the typical victim of anunarmed homicide was not a healthy adult, but instead either an infantor an invalid.

New York fight trainer Cus D’Amato decides to make Mike Tyson, aphysically gifted 12-year old street hood, into a future heavyweightboxing champion of the world. Besides teaching Tyson his "System" andgetting him good coaching and professional sparring partners, D’Amatobuilt the youth’s low self-esteem by having him repeat every morningand evening, "Day by day in every way, I’m getting better and better."D’Amato also lectured the youth on his need to confront and control hisfears. Fear, said D’Amato to Tyson, is your best friend. So what if youcan’t sleep the night before a fight; your opponent can’t, either. Sowhat if your opponent looks calm on the outside; he’s burning upinside. In the end, said the professor, "the fight itself is the onlyreality that matters. Learn to impose your will and take control overthat reality."

An American Ph.D. candidate named Edward Powe describes dambe,or Hausa boxing, in detail. According to Powe, most dambeplayers were poorly educated members of the butchers’ guild. Ruralmatches were associated with post-harvest festivals, and were heldduring mornings and evenings. On the other hand, urban boxing matcheswere associated with bars, gambling, and prostitution, and were heldyear-round except during Ramadan. Both village and urban boxers woreshorts or charm-festooned loincloths, and fought barefoot. They wrappedtheir strong side hands in cloth and cords, and used their unwrappedweak side hands as shields. Their goal was not to beat the one anothersenseless, but to knock the other fellow to the ground. Meanwhile,other rural Nigerians were reported using wrestling as a way ofinstilling community pride into young people. As with boxing, thewrestling matches were associated with harvest festivals and adolescentrites of passage. Youths practiced by wrestling with other youths insandy streambeds during the day, or by wrestling with their uncles andfathers in courtyards at night. They learned endurance by harvestingyams, by running hills barefoot, and by learning the old wrestlingdances that taught rhythm and respect for tradition. Young women alsoparticipated in these matches, partly by cheering for their heroes andpartly by vying among themselves to see who had the best clothes or themost acrobatic dances.

1980:

Jackie Chan makes his North American film debut. Chan’s martial artbackground included training for the Peking Theater.

Stephen Hayes introduces the Togakure-ryu ninjutsu ofHatsumiMasaaki into the United States. Although Togakure-ryu is a relativelymainstream Japanese martial art, its popularity in the United Stateswas owed mainly to the unrelated (but essentially concurrent)publication of The Ninja, a novel by fantasy writer Eric vanLustbader that portrayed ninja as bulletproof, black-clad sad*sts.

The Amazigh ("Berber" or "Tuareg") dominated government ofMauritania declares slavery to be illegal, and orders the emancipationof hundreds of thousands of black African slaves. Yet, as theemancipation was qualified by the requirement for the freed slaves tocompensate their former owners for the owner’s financial loss, theproclamation was more symbolic than real.

Tom Waddell, a former United States Army decathlete, decides toorganize a Gay Olympics. Outraged, the US Olympic Committee tookWaddell to court. The judge agreed with the Olympic Committee and toldWaddell that he could not have a Gay Olympics. Undeterred, Waddellchanged the name to the Gay Games. He then said that the name changewas probably best, as "the Olympics are racist, the Olympics areexclusive, they’re nationalistic, they pit one group of people againstanother, and [are] only for the very best athletes. That doesn’tdescribe our Games." Instead, in the Games Waddell had in mind,"Winning’s not important, doing your best is important." Although justa few thousand people attended the first Gay Games in 1982, the fourthGay Games in 1994 boasted more participants and nearly as manyspectators as the 1992 Winter Olympics. Nonetheless, the Gay Gamesreceived almost no television coverage, corporate sponsorship, orcelebrity endorsem*nts.

1981:

Due to the commercial success of kung fu movies, the People’sRepublic of China repairs the damage to the exterior of the Shaolintemple at Chang-shao and replaces its four aged monks with dozens ofpolitically reliable martial art teachers. From a commercialstandpoint, the move was wildly successful, and by 1996, there werenearly 10,000 Chinese and foreign students attending wu shuacademies in the Shaolin valley. Meanwhile, in rural Hupeh, Hunan, andKwangtung Provinces, villagers hired less politically correctinstructors to improve youngsters’ fighting capabilities during landuse and genealogical disputes. Knowing the worth of fists during gunfights, a clan on Hainan Island bought some pistols from a bank guard,only to discover a few weeks later that the same bank guard had soldassault rifles to its rivals.

Park Jung Tae, a senior instructor of the ITF living in Canada,introduces taekwondo into North Korea. The South Korean government isoutraged.

During a full-contact karate match in Tijuana, Mexico, a 15-year oldMexican named Alfredo Castro Herrera dies. "The death failed to calmthe audience down," said a local newspaperman. Instead, it had the2,500 fight fans "jumping from their seats yelling for the match tocontinue."

At Fort Lewis, Washington, the United States Army unveils MILES, thefirst military training system to simulate bullet strikes usinglow-energy laser pulses. Meanwhile, outside Henniker, New Hampshire, adozen middle-aged middle-class men invent the Survival Game, a.k.a.paintball wars. Because several of the original players were writers,their games received national media exposure, and tournaments, prizemoney, and a host of paintball-related products followed in 1983. Whatwas paintball’s fascination? "I thought it was silly at first,"admitted one urban executive. "But once I got started, it was afantastic experience. I never thought it was so much fun shootingpeople." Police and militaries were also intrigued, and by themid-1990s, this led to the Canadian arms manufacturer SNC developingSimunitions, a non-lethal projectile that could be fired from .38caliber and 9mm weapons during force-on-force training.

"As [the other wrestler] was easily pinning me he was inadvertentlychoking me very effectively," former NCAA wrestling champion LesAnderson told journalist Mike Chapman. "The coach who was looking forthe fall didn’t notice or take heed of my plight. I can rememberwaiting for the coach to help me. When he didn’t the thought flashedthrough my mind as I was weakening that I had better help myselfinstead of depending on someone else. I came off my back and pinnedhim. Subsequent tryouts also ended in my beating him. As I pieced ittogether many years later as a coach, I truly believe that asubconscious factor registered -- that one must make his own breaks ina match and cannot depend on others."

1982:

During the South Atlantic (or Falklands) War, the British use"dazzle sights," or direct-fire laser weapons, to flashblind attackingArgentine pilots.

To set a Guinness record, fifteen members of a Canadian karate clubuse their kicks and punches to demolish a seven-room wooden house. Thedestruction took 3 hours, 18 minutes.

The Canadian ethnobiologist Wade Davis finds that voodoo sorcererscreate zombies using puffer fish poisons. He also found that theprocess was not diabolical, but part of a system of judicial disciplineimposed by politically powerful secret societies.

Professional boxer Earnie Shavers auditions for a role in RockyII.As Shavers kept pulling his punches, actor Sylvester Stallone toldShavers to punch a little harder, to make it look real. Shavers did.Stallone "stopped the workout and the camera and went to the bathroomfor a little while. When he came back he tol’ me he was sorry, but theycouldn’t use me… Only thing, people come up to me now, they know who Iam, and they say, ‘Hey Earnie, think you could beat Rocky?’"

With 50 million admissions a year, rassling becomes the third mostpopular spectator sport in North America. (Football and automobileracing were number one and two.) According to rassler Adrian Adonis,this was because the "American people are sickos who love violence andthe sight of blood." Perhaps. But if so, then how to explain the horrorthat millions of people expressed after seeing boxer Ray Mancini beatto death a Korean club fighter named Kim Duk Koo in November 1982?Approaching the question from another tack, academics such as TheodoreKemper claimed that watching rassling released testosterone in viewers,thereby giving them vicarious thrills that they didn’t get in theirdead-end jobs. (According to his theory, most rassling fans are elderlyor working class.) Perhaps. But then how to explain the sales ofwrestling action figures to children, or the opinions of academics suchas Gerald Morton and George O’Brien who equate rassling with folktheater? In short, there is still no easy answer to explain why manypeople enjoy watching professional wrestling and dislike watchingamateur wrestling.

1983:

A Korean boxer named Duk Koo-Kim is beaten to death on nationaltelevision. About the same time, a medical study reports that about 15%of professional boxers suffered long-term brain damage that wasdirectly attributable to boxing. Consequently, Dr. George Lundberg,editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association,calls professional boxing an obscenity rather than a sport, and saysthat it should not be sanctioned by a civilized society. Lundberg’s crywas met with the response that he neither understood the use of pain asa means of self-expression, nor the aspirations of working-class menwho preferred the risks of brain-damage to the certainty of a lifewithout hope. The counter-argument does not show causality. (Thoseyoung men might have become doctors or teachers instead of auto plantworkers or dishwashers had their social class or educational levelsallowed it.) Nor does it show much understanding of economics. (No morethan 10% of professional boxers makes after-tax profit.) Nonetheless,it does reflect the attitudes of the boxers themselves.

The United States starts building high-energy lasers designed toshoot down aircraft and missiles. Similar programs began in France andWest Germany three years later and probably also in the Soviet Unionand the People’s Republic of China. By 1988, such lasers wereconcentrating 2.6 megawatts on pinhead-sized targets for 9.5 x 10^-11seconds, which was supposedly enough time to vaporize incoming nuclearwarheads.

1984:

The US Secret Service commissions the development of foam-paddedtraining suits. The idea was to allow for opponents in trainingscenarios to provide more resistance, thereby increasing trainingrealism. People involved with the original suit design included JohnDesmedt, and early makers included Macho Products, which alreadymanufactured a line of foam-dipped taekwondo sparring gear. Meanwhile,bulkier custom suits were also under development by people interestedin allowing essentially full contact to the head, body, and groin.Pioneers of these "pumpkin-head" or "bulletman" suits included MattThomas and Mark Morris of Model Mugging.

University of California anthropologist Gilbert Herdt reports thatsome warrior cultures living in Papua, New Guinea require theirprepubescent boys to regularly fella*te adult warriors, as it wasbelieved that boys could only become men by swallowing their seniors’sem*n. As for the adult warriors, while they enjoyed sex with women,they also feared it, as it exposed their precious male substance tofemale pollution and stole it from the next generation of warriors. Thesocieties described were some of the most homicidal on earth, withmurder rates approaching two per thousand.

Concerning the risks of describing the great wrestlers of the past,the former Canadian Olympic wrestling coach Glynn Leyshon warns, "Theolder we get; the better we were!"

About 1985:

The growing popularity of capoeira among North American women,particularly those with dance backgrounds, causes the deletion of manyof the macho songs previously sung in capoeira classes. What did thesewomen see in the historically chauvinist sport? Said one to the teacherBira Almeida, "The beautiful movement, the use of space, sense of‘play,’ qualities of motion, and the rhythms -- it was the dance thatcaptured me."

Professional boxing moves from smoky sports arenas into swank LasVegas and Atlantic City resorts. The reason, explained casino ownerDonald Trump, was that he had observed "a direct relation between ahigh roller in the gaming sense and a boxing fan. Boxing, more than anyother sport, brings out the highly-competitive person." What that meantto Trump’s casinos was an extra $15 million a week in business, andalmost $2 million a week in profits.

1985:

Kilindi Iyi of Detroit publishes a paper called "African Roots inAsian Martial Arts," in which he argued that the martial arts developedin Africa rather than China or India. Although the theory provedpopular in Afro-centric circles, elsewhere, it was widely dismissed.

Ranking sumotori including Hawaii’s Saleva’a Atisanoe visitWashington, DC, where they are greeted by Secretary of State GeorgeSchultz. However, President Ronald Reagan’s wife Nancy refused to seethem, saying she didn’t want to see semi-naked wrestlers tramplingthrough her garden.

The International Wrestling Federation (FILA) introduces an upperweight limit of 286 pounds to international free-style wrestling. Whilethe change was announced as a way of protecting mere 200-pounders frombeing hurt by larger opponents, it was actually designed to keep400-pounders from competing.

Nintendo introduces a computerized first-person shooter game calledHogan’s Alley, in which the object was to distinguish between good guysand bad guys, and only shoot the bad guys. The following year, the FBIbegan construction on a "Practical Applications Unit" at Quantico,Virginia, that was known popularly as Hogan’s Alley, and in whichactors portrayed civilians and bad guys while trainees went throughtraining scenarios.

1986:

In Tokyo, the Ministry of Education proposes allowing kendo and judoto be termed budo ("native Japanese techniques that constitutemartial ways") rather than kakugi("combative technique"). Although intellectuals protested, pointing toabuses of the term during World War II, the Japanese public failed toreact to the complaints, and in 1989, the Ministry of Educationformalized the conversion.

A medical study finds that many of the men renewing professionalboxing licenses in New York City were hiding vision-threateninginjuries (mainly posterior subscapular cataracts and retinal tears).While there was no statistical correlation between handedness andprevalence of right and left eye injuries, there was direct correlationbetween the number of bouts and losses, with the risk of injury jumpingnoticeably every six bouts or two losses.

Mayan peasants are described as waiting for December 23, 2012, onwhich date great wars would reduce the world’s armies to fighting withsticks and machetes, and the Mayans would again rule Central America.The date and the theory are a combination of Cold War propaganda,Christian eschatology, and the end of a Mayan Great Cycle.

Female Jell-O wrestlers working in Chicago bars describe theirmotivation as the high that they got from doing whatever they damn wellwanted. Said one of them to a Washington Post reporter, "Ittook me two years to get aggressive enough to be a good wrestler. I’dnever hit anybody before. I had to learn to be aggressive and that’shard for a woman because we were taught to be sweet and nice and cute."Replied General Foods, the manufacturer of Jell-O®: "It’sdisgusting tohave people swimming around in food."

1987:

The Soviet defector Viktor Suvorov reports that Red Army studies hadfound that when a soldier fired his rifle at an armed enemy duringhand-to-hand combat, the enemy generally fired back. On the other hand,when the same soldier threw his entrenching tool at the enemy insteadof shooting at him, then the enemy usually dropped his weapon and ranaway. Suvarov offered this curious detail as an explanation of whymeter-long entrenching tools remained popular with Soviet SpecialForces soldiers, despite their not having to dig many holes with them.

Although theorized during the 1940s and developed in laboratoriesduring the 1970s, the first well-documented "wild" computer virusesemerge. Originally, amateur "hackers" mostly designed viruses. However,by the early 2000s, there was growing evidence that governments(primarily the United States and China) were also designing computerviruses for the purpose of attacking the computers used to control eachothers’ weapon systems.

1988:

The United States Army purchases 100,000 pairs ofpolycarbonate-filled wrap-around sunglasses for use as ballistic andlaser protective spectacles. While these provided much more protectionagainst debris than lasers, that was hardly an insignificantconsideration, as 6-10% of modern battlefield casualties are the resultof rock, bomb, or shell fragments in the eyes.

In Seoul, taekwondo is introduced to the Olympics as a demonstrationsport; it became an official sport of the Summer Games in Sydney in2000.

Aurelio Miguel becomes the first Brazilian to win an Olympic goldmedal in judo. He was not the first Brazilian to win an Olympic medalin judo, however, that being Chiaki Ishii in 1972. Since Ishii had nohopes of making the Japanese national team, he took a job working inBrazil. There he continued doing judo, and after becoming a Braziliancitizen, he had no trouble making the Brazilian judo team. Ishii laterwon Olympic bronze, and in 2000, his daughter Tania was an Olympicjudoka for Brazil.

After the Japanese judo team turns in a disappointing showing at theSummer Olympics (well, disappointing by Japanese standards -- the teamstill won one gold and three bronze medals), its coaches announce theirintent to return to the fundamentals. Publicly, this meant that infuture the Japanese judo team would put more emphasis oncharacter-development than winning. However, in practice it mostlymeant that the team’s financial backers supported the change ofterminology from kakugi ("combative technique") to budo("martial way").

West African wrestling matches are described as allowing headbutting and thumb gouging, but not joint-locks or body slams. Thissaid, the wrestlers’ usual objective was to use their upper bodystrength and dance-like movement to force their opponent’s knees orback to the ground. As the first fall usually decided the bout, fewmatches lasted longer than five minutes. Thirty or more matchescomprised a Sunday afternoon fight card. This said, the realentertainment went on between the matches, when the amulet-festoonedwrestlers strutted about the ring, pausing after every second step toboast of their previous victories or to do gymnastic tricks. The WestAfrican wrestlers were also flanked by praise-singers and squads ofchanting female admirers, and made their money by accepting presentsfrom the crowd. According to novelist Buchi Emecheta, the charms usedin Southern Nigerian wrestling included crocodile teeth (to prevent thewrestler from becoming breathless) and nut kernels (to ensure that thewearer was hard to crack). Wrestlers also took herbal baths to protecttheir spirits from evil intentions, and drank special potions to avoidbecoming faint-hearted in the ring.

1989:

During harvest festivals in Southwest Bolivia, local champions areseen donning leather helmets and breastplates, then using sticks andknuckle-dusters to beat one another senseless. Similar ritual battleswere also reported in villages north of Quito, Ecuador. Beer flowedfreely before and after such battles, which combined elements offaction fighting, rites-of-passage, and goddess (Pacha Mama)veneration. Says archaeologist Michael Moseley, "Ritual intoxication isa very ancient Andean tradition to judge from the quantities oflibation vessels found in prehistoric graves." Probably the battlesare, too.

A retired US Army colonel named David Hackworth claims thatfratricide caused at least 20% of the United States casualties duringthe Vietnam War. Hackworth offered no proof of the allegation, and theArmy only admitted to a fratricide rate of around 3%. Probably truthlies somewhere between these extremes.

"We receive hundreds of letters from all over the world," a monk atthe Shaolin monastery in Honan Province tells a reporter named MichaelBrowning. "Some are written in blood. All beg to study here." The realmonks Browning met were a handful of wrinkled old men who "don’t domuch kung fu anymore." Nevertheless, movies made Shaolin kung fu worth$270,000 a year in video sales. That didn’t count souvenir sales ormartial art instruction. In 1996, Craig Smith of the Wall StreetJournalreported that the streams near the temple were filled with shampoobottles, dirty socks, and old underpants, and that the temple’s wushuinstructors wore long hair and Harley-Davidson T-shirts. Rooms forforeign students cost US $35 a night, and ordination certificates costUS $500. A discouraged Belgian student named Daniel Reul told Smith, "Iwanted to make a life in which money isn’t important, but I fell into aplace where money is even more important than at home."

1990:

The US Army deploys Stingray, a vehicle-mounted laser weapon, toSaudi Arabia. Stingray was designed to knock out targeting devices, butif you were looking through those binoculars at the time, you would goblind. Human rights groups were appalled, but official Armypublications were more blasé, saying that enemy soldiers lookingat theworld through their own blood were likely to panic, and so contributeto overall victory. Five years later, a much less powerfulrifle-mounted laser, Saber 203, was sent to Somalia, where it was usedto put large red dots on potentially hostile civilians, reportedlydiscouraging them from attacking. This reportedly chased off a fewpeople, but the general consensus was that the main thing the weaponaccomplished was giving away the shooter's position.

The first Internet user’s group dedicated to martial arts,rec.martial-arts, is established. Early e-mail lists devoted toindividual martial arts include Aikido-L, established in 1993, andIaido-L, established in 1994.

The Canadian sociologists Philip White and James Curtis find thatProtestant women participate in competitive sports almost as often asRoman Catholic men, and three times more often than Roman Catholicwomen.

The Afro-Venezuelan martial art of broma ("just joking") isdescribed by a teacher named Bernardo Saenz as "using whatever you’vegot." Its moves included some karate learned by watching television, alittle wrestling, and a lot of Afro-American sweeps, head-butts, andspinning kicks.

Tatsuhiko Konno, one of three professional sword polishers in theUnited States, tells a Seattle reporter that it takes about ten days toproperly sharpen and polish a Japanese sword. "Sure, the first stagesare hard work, especially if there’s much rust," Konno says. "But thenit’s fun watching the pattern of the grain and tempering emerge. I keepgoing to see what’s there. And every blade is different." The cost forKonno’s work, which he freely admitted was not museum-grade, was about$30 an inch. Museum-grade work was only done in Japan, where the bestpolishers had a three-year waiting list and charged about $90 an inch.

An Irish rassler named Pat Barrett writes that he had always beenfascinated with unconventional holds. Therefore, during a bar fight inGermany he tried one. It involved thrusting the first and secondfingers in behind the bottom teeth of the victim’s mouth. The thumbthen pressed under the chin while the hand squeezed and twisted."Getting the grip was child’s play," said Barrett. "Then I started toexert pressure. That’s when things went wrong." [Namely, the otherman’s jaws closed like a vise on his fingers.] "Understanding camequickly. I simply didn’t have enough power." [Actually, Barrett, whowasn’t much of a wrestler, had his hold wrong. Done correctly, the holdrequires virtually no hand power, and is excruciatingly painful.] Atany rate, Barrett realized the technique wasn’t working, immediatelyquit trying to be cute, and solved his problem by simultaneouslysqueezing and twisting his opponent’s testicl*s. (Like plucking figs,said Barrett.) The story offers three lessons that all self-defenseclasses should teach. First, fights are not places to experiment.Second, many techniques work better in theory than in practice.Finally, and probably most importantly, if Plan A fails, then you needto immediately try something else.

1991:

With funding from the National Park Service and the Bishop Museum, luaclasses begin to be taught publicly in Hawaii. The teachers were formerstudents of Charles Kenn named Jerry Walker, Richard Paglinawan,Mitchell Eli, and Moses Kalauokalani. Students had to be aged 21 yearsor older and be at least part Native Hawaiian. In these classes, theidea was not to teach a modern hand-to-hand combative, but to helppreserve ancient Hawaiian culture. "As in ancient times," BettyFullard-Leo wrote in August 1998, "battle begins with chants that giveway to insults, threats and gestures to show strength. The warriorsbegin their challenging haka, or dance, lunging and dodging from sideto side. As the battle commences, it is not a fight ending in death,but an event that promises life -- life for an ancient art that is justone more piece of the puzzle being assembled to save the Hawaiianculture."

In California and New York, "karate aerobics" and "executive boxing"becomes the rage among working women looking for a new form of aerobicexercise. An advertisem*nt for the activity claimed that "the only painyou inflict is on yourself." The ad then went on to say that theactivity "sorts out the women from the girls," and that "after thefirst few rounds of training you’ll start to lose weight and gain...long, lean muscles, not bulk." Sniffed British boxing historianJennifer Hargreaves, "This introspective approach reflects widespreadinsecurities about the body and self, but also reveals how anxietiesare mediated and perpetuated through dominant modes of consumption suchas advertising." Of course, the idea was not new, for as early as the1930s Philadelphia Jack O’Brien had been offering "Boxing withoutPunishment" to both men and women at his gym in New York City.("Philadelphia Jack doesn’t say that boxing can be learned withoutpunishment – just taught," explained A. J. Liebling, who likedO’Brien.) Either way, both karate aerobics and boxing withoutpunishment were better for muscular conditioning and weight reductionthan practical self-defense.

David DeLaittre of Seattle, Washington, becomes one of the few blindpeople in the United States to earn black belt ranking in judo."Everyone has some problems," DeLaittre, a law judge, told a Seattlereporter. "That’s what life is all about – how to deal with theproblems we have."

To reduce factional violence, the apartheid-era government of SouthAfrica prohibits blacks from carrying traditional weapons such as iwisa(knobkerries) and iklwa(assegais). Although the Zulus got the most publicity, Xhosa, Ndebele,and Swazi men also practiced stick fighting. Due to thewhite-supremacist South Africa Police ignoring the "cultural weapons"retained by Zulu supporters of the Nationalist regime, the ban onlyleads to increased violence inside racially segregated townships.

Just before Operation Desert Storm, a US Marine Corps attorneyprovides this description of the laws of war: "All the laws of war boildown to these three fundamentals. One. If it needs to be killed, killit. Two. If it doesn’t need to be killed, don’t kill it. Three. If yousee somebody killing something that doesn’t need to be killed, try tostop them. Any questions?"

1992:

Camel racing is described as the favorite sport of the desertAmazigh ("Tuareg") of Niger. One rider would grab a scarf from a woman,then the others would chase after him and try to get it away while thewomen screamed, danced, and clapped to the accompaniment of drums.While outsiders often thought these races had hidden ritual meanings,it seems just as likely that they were simply races, and that the chiefprize was the attention of willing females.

After being a demonstration sport in 1988, women’s judo becomes apermanent Olympic event, and a second-place finish allows 25-year oldYael Arad to become the first Israeli to win an Olympic medal. As arule, however, the world's best female judoka trained in Japan, France,Korea, or Cuba.

Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X, which defined McJobas"a low-pay, low prestige, low-dignity, low benefit, no-future job inthe service sector," appears in paperback, and within weeks, the term"McDojo" appeared at rec.martial-arts as a description of franchisemartial art schools run by people with more ego than talent. Couplanddid not invent the term McJob, however, only its popular definition, aspublished articles indicate that the term was used, in print, at leastfive years prior to the publication of his novel.

1993:

Inspired by a 1959 science fiction novel called Starship Troopers,the United States Army announces plans to use satellite feeds andcomputers to link individual infantrymen to their peers and commanders.Army press releases neglected to mention concurrent research intorobotic devices designed to completely replace human infantrymen.However, when the Army did mention these devices during 1995, itsreports emphasized only those devices that would supplement humansrather than replace them. The Marines, on the other hand, decided toplace increased emphasis on developing warrior spirit in humans.

Iran hosts the first Islamic Countries’ Women’s Sports Games. Elevencountries sent teams to compete in eight sports. Men were permitted atevents such as shooting in which women could be decently attired, butwere barred from watching basketball, where the women wore clothingthat was more revealing. The organizer was Faezeh Hashemi, the 30-yearold daughter of the president of the Iranian Olympic Committee.

New York music promoter Robert Meyrowitz organizes a pay-per-viewUltimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in which competitors were free topunch, kick, or wrestle their opponents. At first, most participantswere trained in styles that emphasized either striking (e.g., punchingor kicking) or grappling but not both, and during such contests, GracieJiu-Jitsu, which emphasized groundwork, proved most successful. Thenboth strikers and grapplers began cross-training. Within a few years,champions had to be competent at both striking and grappling. Then, asthe Dutch trainer Jon Bluming put it, "What I was teaching was neitherKodokan judo nor Kyokushin Kai karate, but instead a mix of one-thirdkarate and Thai boxing, one-third throwing techniques – I teach sevendifferent throws – and one-third groundwork. That altogether is thefull circle of unarmed fighting. That is not arrogant, that is thetruth." Yet even this greatly expanded vision represented only aportion of the story; the circle was really a sphere, and inside it,intangibles such as spirit, stamina, and strategic insight continued toplay leading roles. Anyway, because the UFC name was a licensedtrademark, training in the new mixed methods went by a variety ofnames. Examples included all-round fighting, extreme fighting, hybridmartial arts, submission fighting, No Holds Barred (NHB), Vale Tudo(Brazilian Portuguese for "anything goes"), and shoot fighting.Comparable rival organizations also went by a variety of names; amongthese were Pancrase, PRIDE, and RINGS. Noted mixed martial artchampions of the 1990s included Brazilians Royce Gracie and PedroRizzo, Americans Ken Shamrock and Mark Coleman, and the Japanese SatoRumina and Sakuraba Kazushi.

1994:

U. S. News and World Report estimates that the fear of crimecaused United States citizens to spend $78 billion a year on criminaljustice and $64 billion a year on private security. Yet, as the sameUnited States citizens were simultaneously spending $55 billion a yearon sports and $10 billion a year on illegal drugs, they cannot havetaken the fear of crime all that seriously.

Kamengen, or youth wrestling matches, are described as thekeystones of the dry season harvest festivals of the Diola people ofSenegal’s Lower Casamance region. Their importance was due to thematches giving unmarried men the chance to develop their reputationswhile simultaneously meeting and impressing prospective wives.Therefore, although the wrestling was often good, the drinking,dancing, and singing that preceded and followed the wrestling eventswere probably more important to everyone but the wrestlers themselves.

The Hawaii JuJitsu Kodenkai, a Danzan Ryu club in Honolulu, becomesthe first martial arts club known to have established a permanentpresence on the Internet. The same club also pioneered "UnderwaterJuJitsu," a course aimed at helping lifeguards and dive instructorsdeal with panicked swimmers.

1995:

From a bumper sticker seen in Miami, Florida, reportedly the mostviolent city in North America: "Thank you for not shooting."

Rob Redmond of Atlanta, Georgia establishes the Internet web sitethat later becomes Shotokan Planet. That same year, Neil Ohlenkamp ofCamarillo, California created the online Judo Information Site. As faras is known, these were first martial art web sites designed to beinformation-intensive rather than advertisem*nts. About the same time,an unrelated Chinese martial art discussion group called Dragon’s Listgoes online. In 1997, Dragon’s List started publishing articles, and in1998, it became the first web-based martial art publication known tohave obtained an International Standard Serial Number, or ISSN. This isthe eight-digit number that libraries use to identify periodicalpublications, and it is (in part) what distinguishes e-publicationssuch as EJMAS from web sites.

1996:

The International Olympic Committee holds its first world conferenceon women and sport. It was notable for being the first women’s sportconference to be attended by women from Islamic nations such as Iran.

A junior varsity wrestler named Jessica Salmeron tells a reporterfrom a Lynnwood, Washington, newspaper that she was not at adisadvantage wrestling against males, as "muscles aren’t the point.Strength and skills are the point. If they [women] want to wrestle,they should go for it."

For knocking out a badly outclassed opponent named Bethany Payne,female boxing champion Christy Martin receives a purse of $75,000. Thissets a record for female boxing championships. "By contrast," said theAssociated Press, "Ricardo Lopez, who defended his 105-pound title forthe 17th time earlier on the card, was paid $50,000." Martin worked forpromoter Don King and fought on the undercard of Mike Tyson titlefights; by 2000, her record was 40-2-2.

To circumvent the problem of not being able to find enoughphysically fit young people to fill its ranks the British Army lowersits admission standards. In 1997, the US Army followed suit.

1997:

The International Defensive Pistol Association holds its firstdefensive pistol championship. The idea behind these contests was touse duty weapons and holsters rather than specialized equipment. Earlyleaders of the IDPA included Richard Thomas, Ken Hackathorn, and BillWilson.

1998:

The US government passes legislation prohibiting anyone from usingthe name "Olympic" or the symbol of five rings (interlocking orotherwise) unless they had been using that name or icon prior toSeptember 1950. Two years later, the International Olympic Committeefiles a lawsuit in US Federal court asking for an injunction againstanyone using the word "Olympic" in an Internet domain name.

2000:

Licensed Ultimate Fighting Championship video games are released.

2004:

The US Air Force tests a directed energy weapon system known asActive Denial System in Iraq. Basically, this was a microwave devicethat made your skin feel as if it was being burned. Originallydeveloped to protect US nuclear weapons, it was being tested in Iraq tosee if it had potential for crowd control.