Unit 16 · Compare Without Ranking

In 1977 nine Japanese federations joined with the Nippon Budokan to form the Japanese Budo Association. The nine arts were judo, kendo, kyudo, sumo, karatedo, aikido, shorinji kempo, naginata and jukendo. Kyudo is Japanese archery. Naginata uses a long curved blade on a pole, and jukendo uses a wooden rifle with a blunt bayonet.

The Nippon Budokan is the hall in Tokyo built for judo at the 1964 Olympic Games. It became the home of the new association. In 1987 the association issued the Budo Charter, a short document of principles. The charter describes budo as a way of building character, respect and self-discipline, in the words of its authors.

The list is a category, a group drawn around shared traits. Its borders were set by people. Many Japanese arts older than 1868 are not on it, and neither is kickboxing. The list tells a historian which modern federations worked together in Japan after 1977. It does not say those nine arts are better than others.

In Japan the word koryu means old school or old stream. It usually names a martial tradition founded before the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Many koryu passed teaching through one family or one licensed line. They kept written scrolls that listed the school’s founder and its later heads.

The word gendai budo means modern budo. It names arts organized after 1868, such as judo from 1882, kendo’s national rules, aikido and karatedo. Gendai budo usually has open membership, printed rules and national federations. Many of these arts also hold public contests with referees.

The American author Donn F. Draeger wrote three books on this split: Classical Bujutsu and Classical Budo in 1973 and Modern Bujutsu and Budo in 1974. He used 1868 as a working border. Later historians noted that many koryu kept changing after 1868 and that modern arts borrowed from old ones. The border helps sort records; it does not settle which art is more genuine.

UNESCO adopted a Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003. Intangible heritage means living practices such as songs, crafts, festivals and games, not buildings. A state nominates a practice, and a UNESCO committee decides whether to inscribe it on a list.

Turkey’s Kırkpınar oil wrestling festival and Iran’s Pahlevani and zoorkhanei rituals were inscribed in 2010. South Korea’s taekkyeon followed in 2011, Brazil’s capoeira circle in 2014, and Korean ssireum in 2018. That ssireum listing was the first joint nomination by North and South Korea. Taijiquan from China joined in 2020.

The list mixes wrestling, ritual exercise, music and flowing routines. What joins them is a nomination, a formal request by a government. Governments choose what to nominate for reasons of pride, tourism and protection. A historian reads the list as a record of states naming their heritage, not as a ranking of arts.

Glima is the traditional wrestling of Iceland. Wrestlers wear a leather belt harness around the waist and thighs, and they hold it during a bout. Icelandic sagas written down in the 1200s and 1300s describe men wrestling at gatherings. Glima is often named as Iceland’s national sport.

At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Icelandic wrestlers performed glima as a demonstration. A demonstration event is shown at the Games but awards no official Olympic medals. Iceland was then still under the Danish crown. Showing glima in Stockholm let Icelanders present a sport of their own to a world audience.

Glima belongs to the grappling family, the arts where contestants seize and control each other rather than strike. The family is very old and very wide. It also holds Greek wrestling, Japanese sumo, Mongolian bökh and Swiss schwingen. Each kept its own clothing, ring and rules, so the family name groups them without merging them.

In the early 1800s, savate was a street fighting style in Paris and the port of Marseille. Its name comes from an old French word for a worn shoe. Michel Casseux, a Paris teacher, opened a training room for it in the 1820s. Police and polite society often saw savate as the fighting of the poor.

Charles Lecour, a pupil of Casseux, studied English boxing in the 1830s. He joined English punching with French kicking and taught the blend in his salle, or training hall. The result came to be called boxe française, French boxing. Wealthy Parisians began to attend Lecour’s salle.

Late in the century, Joseph Charlemont and his son Charles ran a well-known Paris salle and wrote books on the sport. Their work gave boxe française printed rules and a teaching system. Savate belongs to the striking family, which also holds boxing, Muay Thai and karate. Like those arts, it moved from street or village use to a salle with rules.

In the early 1960s, Thai boxers and Japanese karate fighters met in bouts in Japan and Thailand. The Japanese promoter Noguchi Osamu watched these meetings. In the mid-1960s he organized a new ring sport and gave it the English name kickboxing. Japanese television soon broadcast kickboxing cards, and the sport grew popular in Japan.

Kickboxing was a hybrid, a sport built from parts of several older arts. It kept the gloves and rounds of Western boxing. It borrowed scoring and kicks from Muay Thai and fighters from karate schools. Its rule books were new, and so were its title belts and weight classes.

In 1993 a Japanese karate leader, Ishii Kazuyoshi, founded the K-1 promotion in Japan. K-1 held kickboxing tournaments with fighters from many countries. Kickboxing shows how a modern mix grows: promoters, broadcasters and rule writers join pieces of older arts into a new promotion. The sport’s history can be read in its founding years and its companies.

Early Japanese sword schools trained mostly with wooden swords in set, paired routines. In the 1700s, teachers in the Jikishinkage-ryū and Ittō-ryū lines are credited with spreading protective armor and bamboo swords. The shinai is a practice sword made of four bamboo staves bound with leather. The armor, called bogu, covers the head, body and hands.

The new gear allowed full-speed contests with less risk of injury. By the early 1800s, large sword training halls in Edo, today’s Tokyo, held such contests. After 1868 the sword lost its place in daily life, and the contests became public shows called gekiken. Around 1920 the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai adopted the name kendo, the way of the sword.

Kendo belongs to the armed-as-sport family. In these arts, a weapon has been made safe enough to score with. Olympic fencing, sport arnis and kendo all share this trait. In each, a change in equipment came before a change in rules, and the rules then shaped how the sport was judged.

Yang Luchan, who lived from 1799 to 1872, studied taijiquan with the Chen family in Henan Province. He later taught in Beijing, the capital of the Qing dynasty. His students included men of the Manchu banner households. The Yang family line he began became one of the most practiced forms of taijiquan in the world.

In 1956 China’s national sports commission published a simplified taijiquan routine of 24 movements. It was drawn from Yang-style forms and was shorter than older family routines. The goal was a practice that millions of people could learn for health. Group practice in parks and squares at dawn became a familiar sight in Chinese cities.

Taijiquan is often placed in a flowing family: solo forms done slowly, often without a partner or opponent. Many practitioners describe it as exercise, health care and moving meditation. Contest events also exist, such as judged taijiquan routines in modern wushu. So the same art can be sorted into more than one family, depending on the room.

Ueshiba Morihei, who lived from 1883 to 1969, studied Daitō-ryū jujutsu under Takeda Sōkaku from 1915. In 1931 he opened a training hall in Tokyo called the Kobukan. The name aikido came into official use in 1942. After the war, in 1948, Japan’s government approved the Aikikai as a foundation to run the art.

The Aikikai chose not to hold contests. Its members practice in pairs and test for ranks before examiners instead of winners and losers. Ueshiba described aikido in spiritual and ethical terms, as a way of harmony. Those are his words and beliefs, and many Aikikai schools teach them as part of the art.

Not every aikido teacher agreed. Tomiki Kenji, a judo and aikido teacher, developed an aikido branch that includes competition. So aikido itself has more than one room. A family label such as flowing practice fits one branch well and the other less well.

Kalinda is a stick-fighting tradition of Trinidad in the Caribbean. It grew among enslaved Africans and their descendants on the island. Fighters, called batonniers, meet in a ring while drummers and singers perform. The songs, called kalinda songs, are part of the event, not an extra.

Britain ended slavery in its colonies by law in 1834, with full freedom in 1838. Freed people in Trinidad made Carnival their own, including the night festival of Canboulay. In 1881 police in Port of Spain tried to stop the Canboulay procession, and fighting broke out. In 1884 the colonial government passed a law that restricted drumming and the gatherings of stick-fighting bands.

Kalinda survived in villages and at Carnival. Trinidad and Tobago became independent in 1962, and stick-fighting contests still appear in its Carnival season. Kalinda belongs to the diaspora family: arts carried or rebuilt by people scattered from a homeland. Afro-Brazilian capoeira, with its music and ring, shows a similar history of law and survival.

Imi Lichtenfeld, who lived from 1910 to 1998, grew up in Bratislava, then in Czechoslovakia. He competed in boxing, wrestling and gymnastics. In the 1930s he helped organize Jewish young people to defend their neighborhoods against antisemitic gangs. He left Europe in 1940 and reached Mandatory Palestine, then under British rule, in the early 1940s.

There he trained fighters of the Haganah, a Jewish defense force. After Israel became a state in 1948, he became chief instructor of physical fitness and krav maga for the Israel Defense Forces. The Hebrew name means contact combat. He retired from the army in 1964 and then opened civilian schools.

Krav maga is a modern mix: a system built in the twentieth century from boxing, wrestling and other sources, with no contest code. Its main room was a military one, not a stadium. Sambo in the Soviet Union and kickboxing in Japan are other modern mixes. Each was shaped by a specific institution, in a specific decade, for a specific purpose.

In 1567 King Charles IX of France granted letters patent to the fencing masters of Paris. Letters patent are an open royal document that grants a right or a status. The charter let the masters govern their own trade, test new teachers and control who could teach. A master of arms had to pass through years as a pupil and assistant.

Training took place in a salle d'armes, a hall of arms. In the 1600s and 1700s, gentlemen carried a light thrusting sword called the smallsword. French masters developed a lighter training weapon, the foil, with a blunted tip. They also wrote conventions about which fencer had the right to score first.

Those conventions later became the rules of foil fencing. The salle was both a school and a social club for men of the upper classes. Women and working people were mostly shut out of it for centuries. The French words used in the salle, such as en garde, stayed in fencing everywhere.

Edo, now Tokyo, was the seat of the Tokugawa shoguns from 1603 to 1868. By the early 1800s the city had many sword dojo, training halls tied to a named school. Three became famous as the great halls of Edo. They belonged to the Hokushin Ittō-ryū, the Shintō Munen-ryū and the Kyōshin Meichi-ryū.

Chiba Shūsaku founded the Hokushin Ittō-ryū and opened his Genbukan hall in Edo in the 1820s. His hall trained with shinai and armor and drew many students. Students were mostly from samurai families, though some commoners also trained. Young men from many domains came to the capital to study at these halls.

A dojo of this kind had a named school, or ryū, a founder, and licenses that recorded a student’s progress. That makes it similar to the Paris salle, with its guild and masters. Both were private teaching rooms, and both ruled who could teach. Neither was yet a national sport body.

In 1876 the Meiji government issued the Haitōrei, an order that banned most people from wearing swords in public. The samurai class had already lost its legal privileges. Sword teachers lost pupils and income. Some staged public gekiken shows with paid tickets to earn a living.

In France, the sword stayed in public life longer through the duel, a private fight arranged to settle a question of honor. Duels were illegal in theory but often tolerated. The épée, a heavier thrusting sword used in duels, became a sport weapon in the late 1800s. The last widely reported duel in France took place in 1967, between two politicians, Gaston Defferre and René Ribière.

In both countries the real sword faded from daily life over the same broad period. Sword training then needed a new reason to exist. In Japan the new reason was national education and budo. In France it was sport, clubs and international contests, including the Olympic Games from 1896.

Fencing was on the program of the first modern Olympic Games at Athens in 1896. It is one of only a few sports held at every modern Games. At first each country and each tournament used its own rules. Disputes over judging were common, because a touch was hard to see and judges often disagreed.

In 1913 national federations met in Paris and founded the Fédération Internationale d'Escrime, the FIE. An international federation is a body that writes one set of rules for a sport across countries. The FIE took over the rules for foil, épée and sabre. Today its headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland, the city that also hosts the International Olympic Committee.

The FIE rules give referee commands in French. A referee says en garde, then prêts, then allez to begin, and halte to stop. A fencer in Tokyo or Chicago hears the same French words. Language in a rule book keeps a record of where a sport’s code was first written.

The All Japan Kendo Federation was founded in 1952, after the Allied occupation of Japan ended. It wrote national rules and ran grading examinations. In the United States, Japanese American clubs had practiced kendo since before the Second World War. Clubs also grew in Brazil, Korea, Taiwan and Europe.

In 1970 national and regional kendo federations founded the International Kendo Federation, known as the FIK. That same year the FIK held the first World Kendo Championships in Tokyo. The world championships have been held every three years since then, in cities from São Paulo to Paris.

Kendo is not an Olympic sport. Many kendo leaders have argued that Olympic entry would push the art toward winning and away from its educational aims. That argument is a choice about the room kendo wants. Fencing made the opposite choice in 1896 and stayed with it.

At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, épée bouts were scored with electric scoring for the first time. A wire connected each fencer’s weapon to a box that lit a lamp when a touch landed. Foil followed at the 1956 Games in Melbourne. Sabre was the last weapon to go electric, in the late 1980s.

Kendo took a different path. A kendo match has three shinpan, or referees, each holding a red flag and a white flag. A point, called ippon, counts when at least two referees raise their flags for the same competitor. The referees judge not only contact but also form, spirit and posture, following the federation’s rules.

The two systems record different ideas of what a point is. Fencing’s machine answers whether a touch landed, and a referee applies the right-of-way conventions in foil and sabre. Kendo’s panel asks whether a strike met the federation’s full standard. Neither system is more modern in a ranking sense; each fits its own code.

The FIE requires every fencer in its official events to hold an FIE licence. A licence is a paper or digital permit that shows a person may take part. Fencers get it through their national federation, which the FIE recognizes. Without one, a fencer cannot start in a World Cup or world championship bout.

This rule ties each fencer to a nation. In the United States, the national body began as the Amateur Fencers League of America in 1891. It is now called USA Fencing. National bodies choose teams, and those teams represent their countries at the Olympic Games.

The licence gives the FIE a list of who fenced, where and for which nation. That list is a historian’s record. It shows when new countries joined, when fencers changed nations, and when events opened. It also shows the gate: only those accepted by a national body may begin.

The All Japan Kendo Federation runs dan examinations. A dan is a numbered black-belt-level grade; kendo uses the word even though kendo gear has no colored belt. Grades by examination run from first dan to eighth dan. Each higher exam requires a set number of years at the grade below.

The eighth dan examination is known in Japan as one of the hardest tests in any martial art. Candidates must have held seventh dan for many years. Very few pass in any year, and many try again and again. Panels of senior examiners judge the candidates’ matches.

The grade system decides who may judge, teach and examine others, not who may enter a first match. A beginner can join a kendo club and compete in local events. In fencing, results and national rankings open doors; in kendo, examined grades carry much of the authority. Each sport answers the question of standing in its own way.

In 1948 the doctor Ludwig Guttmann held a sports competition for injured military veterans at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in England. Many of them used wheelchairs after spinal injuries in the Second World War. Guttmann believed sport helped patients recover strength and confidence. His games grew each year.

In 1960 the event was held in Rome after the Olympic Games, and it is now counted as the first Paralympic Games. Wheelchair fencing was on its program. The wheelchairs are fixed to a frame on the floor, so fencers face each other at a set distance. Fencers use the same three weapons as in Olympic fencing.

Wheelchair fencing has been held at every Summer Paralympics since 1960. The rule of the fixed frame answered a practical question about who may start: it let athletes who use wheelchairs compete on equal terms. The event shows how a code can be rewritten to open a door, rather than keep one shut.

Professional sumo in Japan is run by the Japan Sumo Association. Its forerunner was formed in 1925 by joining the Tokyo and Osaka groups. Since 1958 it has held six grand tournaments a year. The association sets entry rules for new wrestlers, and since 2002 it has limited each training stable to one foreign-born wrestler.

Schwingen is Swiss wrestling, held in a ring covered with sawdust. Wrestlers wear short canvas trousers over their clothes. The Federal Wrestling Association, the Eidgenössischer Schwingerverband, was founded in 1895. Its biggest festival is held every three years, and the champion is traditionally given a bull as a prize.

The two can be compared with the same questions used for fencing and kendo. Sumo is professional; schwingen wrestlers are amateurs who win prizes in kind, such as livestock, not salaries. Sumo’s home is a national arena; schwingen’s is an outdoor festival. Each is a national tradition, and each body decides who may enter its ring.

Historians of sport use comparison to see what is shared and what is particular. For fencing and kendo, the origin question has dated answers: the Paris charter of 1567 and the Edo halls of the early 1800s. The room question has answers too: the salle and the dojo. Each can be checked in records.

The nation question asks which states shaped each art. France gave fencing its words and its world body in 1913. Japan gave kendo its name, its national federation in 1952 and a place in school physical education. The code question asks who writes the rules: the FIE for fencing, the FIK and national federations for kendo.

A comparison becomes a ranking when it treats one set of answers as the standard. Calling kendo less modern because it uses flags, or fencing less serious because it uses a machine, adds a judgment the records do not support. The dated evidence shows two institutions that made different choices, each with its own reasons.

Every serious school of martial arts puts safety before skill. Judo’s Kodokan, founded in Tokyo in 1882, has long taught students to fall safely before they learn to throw.

1. Make sure a grown-up knows you are practicing. Clear a space two big steps wide all around, with a dry, flat floor.

2. Warm up for five to eight minutes with moving stretches: jogging, leg swings, hip circles, arm circles.

3. Watch the move in the Dojo. Break it into its steps and practice each step slowly.

4. Add speed only when every step is steady. Stop each move just short of locking the elbow or knee.

5. Cool down afterward with gentle held stretches.

What helps: practice both sides, keep sessions short, and come back to it on a new day. Filming yourself, or watching in a mirror, gives you clear feedback.

Stay safe: solo and into the air, never at a person. Kicks stay at knee or belly height until your balance is steady. Falls only on a mat or soft grass. Stop if something hurts.

Comparing stances is a fair way to compare arts without ranking them: each answers its own room’s needs. Horse stance, from Chinese systems and karate, is wide and low. Its base of support, the area under and between the feet, is broad from side to side.

1. Feet about twice shoulder-width, toes forward.

2. Bend the knees and lower the hips; keep the back upright.

3. Knees track over the toes. Fists at the waist.

4. Hold for five breaths, then stand and shake out.

What helps: a lower center of mass and a wider base both add stability. Notice that horse stance is very steady side to side but less so front to back.

Stay safe: rise if a knee aches. Practice on a flat floor.

A boxer’s guard answers a different room: a ring where both people move. The stance is narrower and higher than horse stance, with one foot forward, so the base is staggered front to back.

1. Feet shoulder-width apart, one foot forward, back heel slightly lifted.

2. Knees soft, weight about evenly shared.

3. Fists by the cheeks, elbows in, chin slightly tucked.

4. Bounce lightly on the balls of your feet, then settle. Switch stances.

What helps: compare it to horse stance. The guard is less stable but faster to move from; the staggered feet resist pushes from the front and back.

Stay safe: solo practice, with space around you.

Fencing has been part of every modern Olympic Games since 1896. Its room is a long, narrow strip, so its stance, en garde (French for "on guard"), turns the body sideways and moves only forward and back.

1. Stand with your front foot pointing ahead and your back foot at a right angle, heels in line.

2. Step the front foot forward about shoulder-width.

3. Bend both knees evenly, as if sitting slightly. Keep the back straight.

4. Hold the front arm forward, elbow bent, hand at chest height; raise the back arm behind you, bent. Switch sides.

What helps: compare it to the other two stances. En garde makes the body narrow to the front, a small target, and lets you move fast along a line.

Stay safe: practice with an empty hand, not a stick or sword. Clear a lane in front and behind.