From Lee to Li: An A–Z guide of martial arts heroes. Ben Stevens

       B

      BARTON-WRIGHT, EDWARD WILLIAM

      Long before Jon Bluming, Donald ‘Donn’ Frederick Draeger and Robert W. Smith—all martial artists who helped to introduce Asian fighting styles to the West—there was the Englishman Edward William Barton-Wright.

      Born in 1860, Barton-Wright (a civil engineer by trade) went to Japan when aged thirty-three, where he stayed for four years. There he trained in a number of different jujitsu (there are various spellings) styles in Kobe, Yokohama, and Tokyo, and was so impressed by what he learned that he made the rather confident claim that ‘…(any) man who attacks you with a knife or other weapon can be easily disarmed’.

      But even before his trip to Japan, Barton-Wright was an expert in several Western fighting styles, including boxing, fencing, wrestling, and savate . In order to test the practical application of such arts, he was apparently in the habit of ‘engaging toughs’ (i.e. picking fights) in various seedy places, such as inns and music halls.

      Upon his return to England, Barton-Wright found that many questioned whether this strange martial art he’d brought back with him was actually any good. The simplest way to prove that it was, decided Barton-Wright, was to challenge his doubters to a fight. Though even then he couldn’t really win: soundly thrashing a wrestling champion called Mr Chipchase, he was subsequently accused of cheating—the mysterious throws, locks and holds of jujitsu being classed as ‘unsporting’. (Mr Chipchase himself, however, was gracious in defeat, and positively gushing about jujitsu declared that its ‘…system of defence and retaliation is so much more scientific than my own style’.)

      Barton-Wright went on to found his own dōjō (Japanese for ‘training hall’) within England, where he mixed jujitsu with the other fighting arts he also knew—such as boxing and fencing—resulting in his own,unique style that he labelled ‘Bartitsu’. (So popular did Bartitsu prove—if only fleetingly—that it was mentioned in the 1903 Sherlock Holmes’ short story The Adventure of the Empty House. In this, the resurrected Holmes informs Doctor Watson that his victory over his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls was due to his ‘…knowledge of baritsu [sic], or the Japanese system of wrestling’. Note here the accidental misspelling of Barton-Wright’s style.)

      Unfortunately, Bartitsu’s popularity had quite declined by around 1920; and by the time Barton-Wright died in 1951, aged ninety, he was all but a pauper. However, he can certainly be remembered as being one of the true pioneers of ‘mixed’ or ‘hybrid’ martial arts—having demonstrated the idea that techniques from various different styles can, and should, be put together to form the most efficient way of fighting.

      BENKEI, SAITO MUSASHIBO

      A much-loved folk hero of Japan, Saito Musashibo Benkei was either: a) the supernatural offspring of a temple god, or b) the son of a blacksmith’s daughter, depending on which story you choose to believe. (Personally, I tend to go with the latter.)

      Apparently coming into the world with hair and teeth already in place, Benkei was a natural troublemaker—so much so that he soon earned the nickname oniwaka or ‘young devil child’.

      In spite of this, he trained as a monk and, at the age of seventeen, stood two metres tall with the strength of a small bull. It was at this point that he decided he’d had enough of living in a Buddhist temple. What he really wanted to do, he decided, was to join the yamabushi —a sect of mountain priests who were also quite adept at fighting.

      So, now trained in martial arts and warfare (and particularly expert in his use of the sword), Benkei decided to place himself by Gojo Bridge in Kyoto, where he set himself a target of beating 1,000 men using his sword.

      He almost succeeded; 999 men proved absolutely no problem whatsoever, but it was the very last man who was to be Benkei’s undoing. Along he came, playing a tune on his flute, a little sword hanging by his side.

      ‘He looks easy enough,’ Benkei said gleefully to himself. ‘Certainly easier than some of the other men I’ve had to fight.’

      As the man grew closer, Benkei called, ‘Hey, you. Just hand over that sword, eh? That is, if you want to continue breathing!’

      ‘You idiot,’ scoffed the slightly-built man. ‘I am Minamoto no Yoshitsune, son of the infamous warlord Minamoto no Yoshitomo. Step aside this instant, or taste my wrath!’

      ‘You’re for it,’ growled Benkei as he rushed forwards.

      Yoshitsune, however, merely stepped aside before using his flute to hit the giant sharply around the head. Benkei let out a roar and flashed his great sword all around him, but each time Yoshitsune was simply not there.

      So undemanding did Yoshitsune find the battle that he was frequently able to play a tune on his flute in the course of it. Finally, exhausted with cutting through nothing but thin air, Benkei sat on the ground and conceded defeat.

      ‘Okay, you win,’ he told Yoshitsune. ‘Here, take my sword, as proof that you’re the better man.’

      But Yoshitsune only laughed as he sat down beside the dejected giant. He explained that he’d been trained in martial arts and swordsmanship by supernatural goblins called tengu, and so only needed to draw his sword in moments of extreme peril.

      ‘I’m sorry, Benkei,’ said Yoshitsune gently, ‘but this was a battle I knew I’d win before you even challenged me.’

      It was at this point that Benkei begged to become Yoshitsune’s loyal follower, for however long they both should live.

      So from that day on they had a multitude of adventures, until the day finally came when Yoshitsune found himself betrayed by his powerful brother, Minamoto Yoritomo. Holed up in Takadachi Castle, an entire army just about to force their way inside, Yoshitsune killed first his family and then himself, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.

      Benkei, loyal to the last, remained outside the room where his fallen master lay, defending it until his great body was finally brought down by over 100 arrows.

       BIMBA, MESTRE

      Born Manuel dos Reis Machado, Mestre referred to the fact that Machado was a ‘master’ of Capoeira, a martial art created by enslaved Africans in Brazil during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

      Bimba, meanwhile, was the slang for ‘penis’—apparently at his birth there was some confusion over Machado’s gender, until a midwife thought to take notice of the baby’s male part.

      At its conception, Capoeira served a number of uses: it was a way for the slaves to stay healthy and to learn self-defence skills, while to those onlookers watching the ‘fights’ it acted as entertainment and a general way of raising the spirits.

      I use quotation marks for the word fights as Capoeira’s fundamental purpose—that of teaching self-defence—was heavily disguised. Due to the techniques used it could look as much like a dance as a fight, and was anyway often accompanied by music, chanting, and singing. Thus anyone watching who might otherwise have been concerned by the fact that the slaves were learning to fight (for example, the slaves’ owner) would be lulled into thinking that the slaves were merely amusing themselves with a bit of singing and dancing. (Something that was doubtless deemed acceptable by a more ‘liberal’