The Kano Society

When Barton-Wright gave his lecture before the Japan Society of London in 1901 he took along Tani and Yamamoto to demonstrate jujutsu technique. The three men showed the throws and locks of the art and then Yamamoto performed what seems to have been pretty much a standard feat among many of those early jujutsu pioneers. He lay on his back with his hands tied and had a pole placed against his throat. Three men on either side of the pole held it down while two stood on Yamamoto and another two held his legs in position. At a signal these ten men pressed down to prevent Yamamoto moving, but within twenty seconds he had escaped the holds and was a free man.

 At the same lecture Barton-Wright gave a demonstration of "locking" on a volunteer from the audience, the six-foot tall Lt. Douglas. "The lecturer," the report read, "a much smaller man than his opponent with the greatest of ease threw him down and in a variety of practical performances illustrated the modes of obtaining victory." Barton-Wright set up a school of arms with his Japanese instructors. It didn't attract a great deal of interest. Sadakazu Uyenishi's student William E. Garrud thought this was probably because of large entrance and instruction fees. But whatever the reason, the venture failed. At this, Tani split with Barton-Wright and then went into the music halls under the management of William Bankier (the strongman Apollo). In the world of the music hall strongman and wrestler, with its challenges and counter challenges that meant he had to be able to prove his art against any opponent. But Tani had been ready to meet all comers from his first days in England.

Bankier had first met Tani at Barton-Wright's school and tested him on the mat. He later wrote, "As Tani stands only 5 foot in height, the task before me seemed a particularly light one. To my astonishment however, he had me at his mercy in less than two minutes. How it was accomplished I did not know, but there I lay at the end of the bout, completely tied up with the Jap grinning from ear to ear and laughingly asking me if I had had enough? Bankier induced some of the top professional wrestlers of the day to visit Barton-Wright's school.

The group included Jack Carkeek (the self-styled "King of Wrestlers"), Antonio Pierri, and the former English national   champion Tom Cannon, but none of  these big guns could be persuaded to have a bout with Tani. A wrestler called Collins did go to the mat however and within a minute he was thrown heavily, falling outside the mat and on the stone floor. Being a little stunned, wrote Bankier, he was unable to renew the contest.There is a long list of wrestlers who tried conclusions with Yukio Tani -- but, note, under jujutsu rules with which they were unfamiliar -- and they all seem to have succumbed to a stranglehold or armlock. It's worth remembering that there was some skepticism about jujutsu when it originally appeared in England. William Bankier himself wrote that when Tani and a fellow countryman first made their appearance at the Tivoli Theatre, "the art was described as farcical, and the demonstrators knockabout comedians. Bankier put the blame for this on the managers of the Japanese, so maybe that was a cheap shot at Barton-Wright, but other people also wrote about their early reservations on the new Japanese art.

Percy Longhurst was one of England's leading writers on wrestling, and he too recalled those early demonstrations. I have a very lively recollection of the first exposition of the science given to the public," Longhurst wrote. “I was on the platform with several others interested in antagonistics, and we were not impressed. I had witnessed several private exhibitions previously, and my incredulity as to the utility of the new system. The public demonstration left my unbelief somewhat shaken; but I was anything but satisfied that jiu-jitsu , although it provided an interesting spectacle, as a practical form of antagonistics, had any value worth consideration.  Longhurst then went on to say, however, that thereafter he had been able to form "a more practical opinion, and original suspicion and disbelief have not only been greatly modified, but changed to a sound respect."

Tani had to live up to the hype, and he did it by being ready to meet all comers from his very first days in England. That willingness to go on the mat continued years later when he was instructing at the London judo club called the Budokwai. Shaw Desmond, a Budokwai veteran, remembered Tani throwing "an all-in pro-wrestling champion" and then working him over on the ground with a series of locks and strangleholds. He also threw "an 18-stone [224-pound] Greco-Roman style wrestler who had come to study judo with Desmond. But Tani's reputation, and the reputation of jujutsu, was really made in the boisterous world of the music hall, where he worked for years. He had to be ready to meet all comers, regardless of weight, so the worth of jujutsu was proved night after night, in town after town, throughout Britain. According to Percy Longhurst, writing in 1905, "The shrewd Scotsman Apollo, the professional strongman, has taken Yukio Tani in hand, carrying him from place to place until there is scarcely a town of considerable size south of Glasgow where Tani has not given a demonstration of Jiu-Jitsu."

 … I don't know exactly when Tani joined with Bankier to begin his years-long odyssey through the music halls and theatres of Great Britain, but by 1903 he was a well-known figure to the public. Said Health and Strength in December 1903: "Yukio Tani the clever Japanese wrestler, has lately been appearing at the Tivoli music hall, Leeds. His offer of twenty guineas to anyone whom he fails to defeat in fifteen minutes, brought him before the best wrestlers from Lancashire and Yorkshire, but the twenty guineas still stands to Tani's account.

In retrospect, the early propagators of jujutsu in Britain were fortunate in their timing. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japan had emerged as a major world power and victories in wars with China in 1895 and Russia ten years later aroused international admiration for the "plucky little Jap". In addition, efforts to launch the art coincided with a vogue for physical culture and professional wrestling. This was, in the view of many writers, the golden age of professional wrestling, a period, which lasted from around 1898 to 1913, and the retirement of the then "world" champion Frank Gotch.

 …. When Gunji Koizumi founded the London judo club known as the Budokwai in January 1918, Yukio Tani was member number 14, and much of his free time was spent at the dojo. Therefore he helped form the first generation of British     judoka.

Pupils received individual instruction, which meant that Tani would often be on the mat for four or five hours at a time. In person he was friendly and cheerful, but on the mat he was a strict taskmaster. One of his pupils, Marcus Kaye, wrote: "Throughout all his instruction there ran a steadfast devotion to the realities of judo, with a corresponding avoidance of anything flashy, unsound, or easy."

Tani was a man who believed in learning by doing, and students remembered the effects of his throws, particularly his hane-goshi  ... But it was in groundwork where his real skill was felt.

At Barton-Wright's lecture to the Japan Society of London in 1901, given just after Tani arrived in London, the quality of his groundwork was noted against the much heavier Yamamoto. Richard Bowen, the historian of British judo, picked up an echo of Tani's skill when he did randori with Len Hunt, a veteran British judoka, during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Hunt had started training with Uyenishi's student William Garrud during the 1920s before moving over to Tani and the Budokwai. Dicky Bowen told me that "Hunt, in his mid-seventies, could even deal with some of the young internationals on the ground -- it was Tani's groundwork. It was astonishing. I mean, I'm a former international and he just tied me in knots when he was in his late sixties or early seventies."

We know little about Tani's early training. Apparently his father and grandfather were teachers of jujutsu and he started training at a young age. So this must have been around 1890.

Shingo Ohgami told me that Tani trained with Fusen-ryu groundwork specialists Torajiro Tanabe and/or Matauemon Tanabe. This is supported by information in Takao Marushima's Maeda Itsuyo: Conte Koma (1997), where it is said that Matauemon Tanabe was a friend of Tani's father. This is interesting because the latter Tanabe, the fourth headmaster of the Fusen-ryu, features in the early history of Kodokan judo.

In the September 1952 edition of Henri Plée's Revue Judo Kodokan, Kainan Shimomura, 8-dan, wrote:   Encounters between professors of the state were the exception. However, public opinion got so worked up that in January 1891 an inter-group combat took place in which Tobari (then 3rd dan judo, he died an 8th dan) for the Kodokan opposed [Matauemon] Tanabe, expert of the Fusen-ryu school. One must not commit the error of considering the ancient jujutsu as being a priori inferior to modern judo.

Straightaway Tanabe sought the combat on the ground, but Tobari succeeded in remaining standing up. After a fierce fight Tanabe won by a very successful stranglehold on the ground. Tobari, bitterly disappointed by the defeat, began to feverishly study groundwork.   The year after, he challenged Tanabe again. This time it was a ground battle and once more Tanabe won. He was now famous and, in the name of the ancient schools, challenged the members of the Kodokan, and even Isogai (then 3rd dan, at the time of his death he was a 10th dan) was put in danger from his ground technique. The Kodokan then concluded that a really competent judoka must possess not only a good standing technique but good ground technique as well. This is the origin of the celebrated 'ne-waza of the Kansai region'. And in conclusion to all this one may very well say that Mataemon Tanabe, too, unconsciously contributed towards the perfecting of the judo of the Kodokan.

So this may go some way towards explaining Tani's skill. All those years on stage must have had an effect, too. In those matches a clean throw was not enough to win: challengers had to be subdued by an armlock or stranglehold, and moreover Tani always had to work hard against the clock, too. When he practised ground work with a student his method was to pick a weakness and work on it. Trevor Leggett, the late British judoka, recalled that his neck was relatively weak when he began his own study of judo. So Tani would take him to the ground and apply a stranglehold, then release it just as he was about to tap. Leggett would begin to fight back and then the hold would go on again. This was repeated time after time. Leggett wrote (Judo, July 1955):   'No, you're still alive!' he would say. When I thought I was absolutely exhausted he would give up on the necklock theme and come down over my face in a hold-down. It used to drive me nearly frantic but after some years I appreciated the training. I now know instinctively how to get out of a necklock. I can feel the slightest hint of weakness in the attacking method and am also fairly difficult to hold.

As for contests, Leggett continued:  “We were told to attack all the time. In one of my early contests at Cambridge I scored quickly with a foot throw. Then we went to the ground, where I got astride. He started to push at my throat with both hands, and I knew I ought to go for the armlock but was afraid of the risk of losing my position. So I clung on for the rest of the time, pretending to try for necklocks. With my one point I won the contest. Mr. Tani wouldn't speak to me after the contest or on the way back to London with the team. But just as we were all separating to go home, he said, 'Coward.' It took me some time to get over that, but it was a good lesson.”

The full artivcle by Graham Noble  appears at the website of the electronic journal of Martial arts http://ejmas.com (extracts printed with permission of Joe Svinth editor). An earlier version appeared in Warriors Dreams, volume 1. If you have any comments or views on this article—please write in for inclusion in a future Bulletin

Samurai Early photo c 1850

 Bulletin 6 part 2