Stick Scholars

 

Every once in a while a person or a piece of work appears in the ever growing universe of martial arts, and leaves a mark that can change the shape of our understanding of that universe. Some do it by shaking things up, almost causing seismic effects on the previously accepted views, like Jigoro Kano, Bruce Lee or the Gracies. Some give new appearance to older traditions and propel them to unforeseen levels of popularity, like Choi Hong Hee, Morihei Ueshiba and Karl Gotch. Some leave behind written works that keep providing inspiration and food for thought for future generations, like Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi and, again, Bruce Lee.

It is the last category that I’d like to discuss today. In the Western world, the topic of martial arts has for a long time been treated in a book format primarily as either an esoteric phenomenon to feed the imagination, or as a rather banal sort of pictorial book. The endeavors that would successfully join a scholarly approach in study and popular accessibility in presentation have been few and far between. Interestingly enough, in Europe that path originated with fencing treatises, especially those in the second half of the 19^th century, penned by the likes of Alfred Hutton or Egerton Castle. However, the man who took it to a higher level was the legendary sir Richard Francis Burton with The Book of the Sword, and he gave this field of study a name – hoplology. 

Burton and Draeger

 However, it took several decades for this approach to gain some traction in the 20^th century, under the guidance of Donn F. Draeger and his associates (Armstrong, Beltzer, Smith etc.), with special emphasis on the martial arts of the Far East, resulting with several excellent books on the arts of Japan, China and Indonesia. Unfortunately, with Draeger’s passing in the the early 1980’s, hoplological research slowed down drastically.

A few years ago I was thrilled to see the emergence of a new “player” in the field, namely the organization called The Immersion Foundation (TIF for short), which injected the much needed energy into this field of study, with its driving force Mahipal Lunia at the helm. To be brief, they undertook a two-pronged strategy in continuing the development of hoplology: on the one hand they continued the model of expeditions, in order to learn the arts in their “natural habitat” (such as the Caribbean, Philippines, Portugal, South America etc.); on the other hand they organize the annual Immersion Labs, i.e. seminars with several instructors giving presentations and providing deeper insights into a chosen topic for that year.

 

During all of those events, the material is carefully recorded and processed for archiving, analysis and publishing. Owing to such work, a couple of month ago we got the brilliant opportunity to enjoy the benefits in the form of The Book of the Stick! What we have here is a four-volume anthology of articles, interviews and scholarly papers on various facets of stick fighting arts and methods from all over the globe. With more than 2000 pages worth of material, this is an unprecedented presentation, both in terms of breadth and depth. Besides the soft cover edition with b/w photos (see the previous link), it is also available as a hard cover, full color version or even an eBook.

Now, each volume is available separately as well, but it may be really hard to take your pick. Namely, the material isn’t organized and presented along the lines of geographical or cultural criteria, but rather in the alphabetical order of featured authors’ names. While this may seem strange at first, I really came to appreciate this decision by the editorial team. See, it would be too tempting to immediately go for the “usual suspects” of Chinese, Japanese or Filipino arts, in line with personal experiences and preferences. And yes, it might appear to be a rational way to invest your money, right?

 

 

Well, I firmly believe that disadvantages would outweigh the benefits here. I mean, you would easily miss on some true gems that are to be found in each of the four volumes this way. Let’s have just a quick glance at some of the great featured to be enjoyed:

Vol.1 – the introduction to hoplology and TIF, which gives us a better understanding of the whole field and the scope of work; Kalinda, the stick art of Trinidad; Bonafont cane system of urban Argentina from 1930’s; African stick practices in the House and Zulu cultures; the Irish methods of Bataireacht.

Vol.2 – the Colombian art of Grima; war club in Native American war arts; actual application of stick skills in the modern day environment; the so-called hermit training avenues; combat measure methodology of Antonio Tatang Ilustrisimo.

Vol.3 – framework of the Hawaiian art of Lua; the Cuentada training methods of FMA; the rarely seen stick aspect of Burmese Bando; the amazing presentation of how HEMA material can be approached in a modern way for general applications; stick arts of North Africa.

Vol.4 – the Italian tradition of stick fighting; the Lathi of India and Punjabi stick arts; dueling and multiple opponent engagements in the Portuguese Jogo do Pau; Indonesian Ulin Limbuhan.

Don’t get me wrong – this is just a small sample of what can be found in this invaluable resource. Of course there is an abundance of material on the Japanese and Chinese methods, as well as those less expected, such as Greek/Byzantine legacy of pole arms, Maori arts, when it comes to geographic origin, and various approaches on the traditional-modern continuum. Above are simply some of the “chapters” that I found most interesting, for one reason or another. Obviously, the amount of work that went into preparing this seminal publication was astounding, so I would like to say the entire editorial team and organization deserve thumbs up and hat off for their effort.

In the end, no amount of reviews or talk about The Book of the Stick will ever convey just how excellent and important this series is. You will have to get the books and see for yourself.