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Radical Bodies and Dangerous Ladies: Martial Arts and Women's Performance, 1900–1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2010

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Abstract

This article explores women's practice and theatrical presentation of jujutsu and judo in the early years of the twentieth century in the United States, Britain and New Zealand. My discussion treats three figures in particular: Fude Yamashita, who tutored upper-class Washington socialites and performed judo demonstrations on the American stage; the English militant vote-seeker, playwright and jujutsu practitioner Edith Garrud, proponent of jujutsu as a political activist performance and coordinator of the ‘fighting suffragettes’; and New Zealander Florence Le Mar, vaudeville performer and ‘the World's Famous Ju-Jitsu Girl’, who enthralled audiences with her spectacular show designed as an educational enterprise to empower women through transferable self-defence skills. A historical survey of these women's activities contributes to our understanding of the varied ways that women during this period used performance to resist patriarchal institutions and definitions, while offering insights into some of the ways that the Japanese martial arts were reinvented following their introduction to the West.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 3 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2010

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References

NOTES

1 That judo and jujutsu were the first arts to gain popularity in England, continental Europe, and the United States at the turn of the century is supported by numerous newspaper and magazine articles of the period, as well as being the subject matter of early training manuals.

2 Ono, Ayako, Japonisme in Britain: Whistler, Menpes, Henry, Hornel and Nineteenth-Century Japan (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. 6Google Scholar.

3 Gordon, Andrew, A Modern History of Japan from Tokugawa Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 61–137Google Scholar.

4 Particularly following victories over China in 1894–5 and Russia in 1904–5.

5 Uyenishi, Sadakazu, The Textbook of Ju-Jutsu as Practised in Japan (London: Athletic Publications, 1905), pp. 13–14Google Scholar.

6 Shun, Inoue, ‘The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kanō Jigorō and Kōkōdan Judo’, in Vlastos, Stephen, ed., Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 163–73Google Scholar, here pp. 163–4, 169.

7 Lindsay, Thomas and Kano, Jigoro, ‘Jiujutsu: The Old Samurai Art of Fighting without Weapons’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 16, 2 (1889), pp. 192–205Google Scholar, here p. 192.

8 Ibid., p. 205.

9 Wingard, Geoffrey, ‘Sport, Industrialism, and the Japanese “Gentle Way”: Judo in Late Victorian England’, Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 12, 2 (2003), pp. 16–25Google Scholar, here p. 17.

10 Ibid., pp. 16, 22.

11 Graham Noble, ‘Early Ju-Jutsu: The Challenges’, Dragon Times: The Voice of Traditional Karate, 2003, online, 8 January 2008, available at http://www.dragon-tsunami.org/Dtimes/Pages/articlee.htm. See also Chapman, David L., Sandow the Magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the Beginnings of Bodybuilding (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

12 Tani, Yukio and Miyake, Taro, The Game of Ju-Jitsu for the Use of Schools and Colleges, ed. Giblin, L. F. and Grainger, M. A. (London: Hazell, Watson & Viney, 1906), pp. 85–6Google Scholar.

13 Lindsay and Kano, ‘Jiujutsu’, p. 192.

14 Wingard, ‘Sport, Industrialism, and the Japanese “Gentle Way”’, p. 17.

15 See, for example, Hancock, H. Irving, Physical Training for Women by Japanese Methods (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904)Google Scholar.

16 Kneeland, L. A., ‘Jujitsu for Ladies: The Art of the Weak’, Dignam's Magazine, 3, 2 (October 1905), pp. 4–5Google Scholar, here p. 4.

17 Hargreaves, Jennifer, ‘Playing Like Gentlemen While Behaving Like Ladies: Contradictory Features of the Formative Years of Women's Sport’, British Journal of Sports History, 2, 1 (1985), pp. 40–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 40.

18 Hargreaves, Jennifer, Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women's Sports (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 281Google Scholar.

19 Glenn, Susan A., Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 217Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., p. 3.

21 Svinth, Joseph, ‘Professor Yamashita Goes to Washington’, Aikido Journal, 25, 2 (1998), pp. 37–42Google Scholar, available at http://www.aikidojournal.com/article.php?articleID=43, accessed 10 January 2008.

22 ‘Society's Open Door for the Japanese’, New York Times, 20 March 1904, p. SM4.

23 See Klens-Bigman, Deborah, ‘Towards a Theory of Martial Arts as Performance Art’, Journal of Asian Martial Arts, 8, 2 (1999), pp. 8–19Google Scholar.

24 ‘A Japanese Woman Teaching American Girls Japan's Secret Science of Self Defence’, World, 29 May 1904, p. 7.

25 Ibid., p. 7.

26 Ibid., p. 7.

27 ‘Summer Theatricals’, Washington Post, 25 June 1905, p. S9.

28 James Paxton Voorhees, ‘This Week's Play Bills: Jiu Jitsu the Feature of Chase's Bill of Vaudeville Novelties’, Washington Post, 23 April 1905, p. 7.

29 Kneeland, ‘Ju-Jitsu for Ladies’, p. 4.

30 See Peta Tait's excellent historical survey of trapeze acts, Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance (London: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar.

31 Churchill, Winston, The Title Mart: A Comedy in Three Acts (New York: Macmillan, 1905)Google Scholar.

32 ‘This Week's Theatrical Attractions’, Washington Post, 15 September 1907, p. SM2.

33 ‘President Tries Jiu Jitsu’, New York Times, 31 December 1904, p. 1.

34 Lancaster (pseud.), ‘On and Off the Wrestling Mat: Jiu-Jitsu for Women’, Sandow's Magazine of Physical Culture, 7 December 1905, p. 650.

35 Crawford, Elizabeth, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 240Google Scholar.

36 Raeburn, Antonia, The Militant Suffragettes (London: Michael Joseph, 1973), pp. 95–7Google Scholar.

37 Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement, p. 240.

38 Health & Strength, 23 July 1910, p. 101.

39 This feat garnered international attention. See ‘Militant for Ballot: English Suffragettes Learning Art of Jiu-Jitsu’, Washington Post, 18 July 1910, p. 3.

40 Punch, 6 July 1910, p. 9.

41 Health & Strength, 23 July 1910, pp. 101–2.

42 Health & Strength, 8 April 1911, p. 339.

43 Wilson, Gretchen, With All Her Might: The Life of Gertrude Harding, Militant Suffragette (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1998), pp. 131, 138–9Google Scholar.

44 Hill, Leslie, ‘Suffragettes Invented Performance Art’, in Goodman, Lizbeth and Gay, Jane de, eds., The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 150–6, here p. 155Google Scholar.

45 Daley, Caroline, Leisure and Pleasure: Reshaping and Revealing the New Zealand Body 1900–1960 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2003), pp. 13–40, 82Google Scholar.

46 New Zealand Graphic, 22 April 1905, p. 16; 18 August 1905, p. 6; 9 December 1905, p. 60.

47 Cossgrove, David, Peace Scouting for Girls (Christchurch: W. Strange/Dominion Scout, 1910), pp. 85–9Google Scholar.

48 Much of the primary information on Florence Le Mar comes from a private family archive. I am grateful to Jo Prejza and the late Ronnie Gardiner for access to this archive, and to the Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand, for supplementary historical documents.

49 New Zealand Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic Review, August 1911.

50 Le Mar, Florence, The Life and Adventures of Miss Florence Le Mar, the World's Famous Ju-Jitsu Girl (Wellington: Turnbull, Hickson & Gooder, 1913), p. 126Google Scholar.

51 ‘Gardiner and Le Mar: Star Turn at Wonderland Exhibition’, Auckland Truth, 21 February 1914, p. 6.

52 Review of ‘The Burglar and the Lady’, King's Theatre, Newton, Auckland, July 1918. ‘The Burglar and the Lady’ was a later alternative title for the show.

53 Advance review and interview for ‘The Hooligan and the Lady’ at Crown Pictures, St James’ Hall, Lower Hutt, 1912.

54 The equivalent of US$10,000 today. Palmerston North Truth, c. Nov. 1918.

55 Le Mar, Life and Adventures, p. 62.

56 Ibid., p. 10.

57 In the revised edition of her Self-Defence for Women (Auckland: New Women's Press, 1990), p. 7, Sue Lytollis writes of her discovery of Le Mar's work: ‘When I first wrote this book in 1983 I thought that it was the first book on women's self-defence to be published in New Zealand. I was wrong. I was more than delighted to find that I had been beaten to this dubious honour by not ten years but seventy!’

58 Edith Garrud was recently commemorated in the play Mrs. Garrud's Dojo (2003), written by Peter Hilton and performed by the Lady Cavaliers theatre company in New York.

59 I base this claim on a survey of documents relating to women's martial arts practice in Britain, the United States and Australasia during the twentieth century. The evidence suggests that while some martial arts and/or self-defence training continued to occur in schools, in scouting organizations, in police training institutions and in more formal competitive sporting contexts, it is not until the 1960s and 1970s that documents recounting and advertising women's martial arts training for feminist political ends become notable (and these accounts frequently acknowledge the male-dominated nature of the practice). It is also during this period that we witness the publication of women's self-defence manuals couched in a similar kind of rhetoric.