Spring Cleaning

I sat down this morning to work on a project looking at sword aficionados in China, their customers in the West, and how the relationship between the two creates both spaces for innovation in Chinese martial arts and as well as political arguments about the proper relationship between martial artists, society, and the state. This exchange is mediated by powerful economic market forces and Western perceptions of China (e.g., those forces that we have been calling “globalization” for the last several decades) that are now coming under greater strain than at any time since the early 1970s.

Sadly, my OCD will not allow me to address the task at hand until I first clear and organize my computer’s cluttered desktop. I am sure that many of you can relate.

In starting that task I ran across a small collection images, taken at another point in time, when changing perceptions of China fueled an explosion of interest in their traditional weapons by Western collectors. Whereas the current moment focuses on elevating a certain view of historical martial arts, and is rooted in a fundamental admiration for Chinese culture, the circumstances around this prior spread were very different. In the final years of the 19th century a vast media empire had grown up around the need for regular reports on the progress of the Boer War. Following its conclusion this entire information infrastructure, steeped as it was in the imperialist ideology of the time, turned its attention to Boxer Uprising in China, and the subsequent intervention by Western and Japanese military forces.

The global export of increasingly sophisticated hand-made swords in the current era is a supply side project, meaning that it began when a relatively small number of Chinese aficionados decided to create a new market largely as a means of changing the perception of Chinese sword making (as well as legislation around the keeping and use of these weapons) at home. Certainly one might make a bit of money exporting high quality swords to the vanishingly small numbers of Western collectors and martial artists capable to appreciating the care and effort that went into these weapons. Yet if we are honest, one must admit that you could make vastly more money producing and exporting almost anything else. It is actually hard to think of a market more niche than “museum quality replicas of obscure Han dynasty weapons suitable for use by modern martial artists, priced under $1000 USD.”

It is hard to understand this recent development as anything other than a passion project. These are individuals who really love archaic Chinese sword design and would like more people to appreciate it as well. Of course, Paul Bowman might ask us to take a step back for a moment and apply some rudimentary psycho-analysis to the situation. Loving archaic weapons is slightly eccentric in our modern world. Weapons, such as these, have not been carried in anger in hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years. So what do these individuals desire by desiring to recreate and evangelize such swords? And what about martial artists in the West, small our numbers may be, who are the primary consumers of such pieces?

Perhaps we may start by thinking about the last time that highly utilitarian Chinese swords flooded global markets in early 20th century. Of course those arms were not recreations, but the real deal. They were seized in huge numbers following the failed Boxer Uprising.

As the preceding Russian Postcard reminds us, the Chinese were not only armed with swords at this time. Modern firearms had been a critical part of the Empire’s arsenal since the massively destructive Taping Rebellion. And while Western images of the period tend to focus on groups of soldiers armed with archaic matchlocks or massive, strange looking, wall guns, the Western armies marching on Beijing in 1900 quickly learned that other Chinese until were armed with the latest technology and knew how to use it.

Comparatively well armed imperial soldier, sometimes trained by European officers, were the greatest threat to Western troops. Yet media reports from the period tended to focus instead on fanatical peasant martial artists streaming into the capital armed with nothing except a sword or perhaps a spear. In the wake of the failed uprising large numbers of these traditional weapons were seized and shipped to the West where they were sold through curio shops, auction houses and even mail-order catalogs. Anyone of moderate means who could own their own piece of one of saddest incidents in modern Chinese history if they so desired. It goes without saying that this sort of commercial interaction reinforced Western beliefs about both the “backwards” and ideologically dangerous nature of Chinese society. Nor were the boogeymen of paganism and the “occult East” far behind. The collection and display of Chinese arms in this period was practically an argument for Western imperialism rendered in steel.

It would be difficult to imagine a more different situation than the production and export of high-end, hand made, Chinese swords today. And yet….

The answers may differ, but I suspect that some of the unspoken questions motivating current trade would still be familiar to earlier collectors. Steeped in imperialist propaganda coming from the daily news and penny dreadful novels extolling the “yellow peril,” Western consumers in the early 20th century found themselves repeatedly asking “Is China dangerous?” The fact that their arms seemed to be 100 years out of date and could be ordered from the Sears catalog following the defeat of the Boxer Uprising offered a reassuring “No.” Not only that, they seemed to justify the imposition of a type of colonial dependence necessary for further economic modernization, military rationalization and missionary work. Indeed, even prior to the Boxer Uprising most Chinese intellectuals had been calling for a very similar set of reforms. I love antique arms more than most, but it must be admitted that the collection of an adversaries swords, at a time like, that was not just a byproduct of conflict. It was an actual political act – the embrace of an imperialist ideology at the individual level.

The indelible association between the blade and violence, not to mention the strong mythic resonances that such weapons tend to evoke in the modern imagination, suggests that the collection and study of weapons probably continues to be a political act today. Of course it is a bit more subtle now. This is politics by subtext. We do not say, nor do we admit, how these object function in the social and the symbolic realm.

For instance, the creation and ownership of swords is very tightly controlled in modern Japan for several reasons, a full exploration of which would go beyond the current post. But the primary concern motivating the Western occupation forces in the 1940s, or the Japanese government today, is not that someone would use a $20,000 shinto Katana to rob the local 7-11. Rather, the strong association between swords and the extreme right wing of Japanese politics, and the memory of the shocking political violence that it unleashed in the 1920s, is the issue. Rather than banning something that remains a key symbol of the nation, the state instead asserts its ability to regulate who has access to these blades, and it does so in such a way to promote a specific relationship between Japanese society and the state. It is the state alone that dictates who will wield the symbolic, as well as the kinetic, properties of the blade.

This bring us back to the psychoanalytic question of what we desire by desiring a finely made Chinese sword. But rather than focusing on the Western consumers, let us instead consider, for a moment, the individuals in China who are developing and promoting these weapons. Again, the concerns and goals of the state set the parameters of any discussion.

On one hand, the Chinese government has expressed strong interest in promoting a certain version of wushu as being key to producing healthy citizens and promoting uniquely Chinese values and identities. Ultimately the state is grows through the strengthening of its citizens. Taking part in such training is one way that citizens can feel the influence of, and personally participate in the completion of, these larger goals.

This process can be seen in many degrees and registers. It manifests in the promotion of highly athletic taolu by elite, university trained, martial artists, the development of Sanda as an indigenous combat sport (“MMA with Chinese characteristics” if you will) and the re-imagination of certain types of traditional or “folk” martial practices as vessels of intangible cultural heritage. Yet what one is unlikely to see in any of these setting is a functional sword. The security apparatus of the modern Chinese state has always looked upon civilians owning “real” weapons with a certain degree of suspicion and there have been further restrictions following the highly publicized knife attack at a train station some years ago.

The end result of this is that the buying, collecting and use of high-quality hand made blades in mainland China exists in what might be thought of as a legal grey area. While some of these arms are in circulation, it is not easy to purchase or ship them domestically, and certainly not on a larger scale. However, the government has no qualms about the export of these same weapons from the postal offices of Longquan, the center of traditional Chinese blade smithing, to consumers in the West. On the most basic level, the development of what can be thought of as a new “cultural heritage industry” within China, driven by a relatively small number of aficionados and martial artists, is dependent on global consumers to secure both respectability and an economic foothold. Yet unlike the exports of the early 20th century, this is a deeply cooperative project.

As Andrea Molle argued in his recent book on Krav Maga and nationalism, there is no martial practice that is not, on some level, a political act. The intrinsic connection between swords, violence and community regulation makes those connections even more obvious in weapon based systems. And that is important as the Chinese state has seen itself in the leadership position, dictating terms and shaping society, in order to advance its vision of the development of the nation. Yet martial arts communities in China traditionally helped to defend and shape their communities, and their culture has spawned its own, somewhat different vision, of what the ideal relationship between society and the modern Chinese state should be. As scholars of wuxia literature in the early and mid-twentieth century have noted, these alternate pathways have been document in a wide, and surprisingly sophisticated, body of literature. Nor has the basic discontent that spawned these calls ever really gone away. If anything, the rapid economic development of the past several decade, and growth of a more secure middle class, has led some of these longings to resurface and assume new, consumer driven, forms.

Perhaps the place where this is most obvious is in the “Hanfu” fashion trend. This movement, in which young, typically urban, workers spend their days off dressed in sometimes fanciful recreations of Han dynasty (or sometimes Tang) clothing quite consciously bemoan the loss of traditional Chinese culture while articulating a demand to look back to a time when China was the strongest state on the planet. These were also periods in which the social strictures and limitations were different than they are now, as was the relationship between individuals and the state. This sort of subtle discontent can be safely expressed when wrapped in an entirely patriotic (and sometimes even nationalistic) discourse that openly romanticizes notions of a resurgent China reclaiming its culture. The difference, however, is that now private actors are asserting their own vision of what the relationship between modern Chinese society and the state should be through a creative reinterpretation of the past.

Other scholars have already addressed the Hanfu movement. I think what has been missed is that this same basic ideological framework can be seen in various areas of China’s diverse martial arts communities, though perhaps nowhere more strongly than in the recent resurrection of Han and Tang dynasties weapons. Indeed, many of the people producing and consuming these weapons in China are themselves practitioners of Hanfu.

While not the weapons that most modern martial artists need for daily practice (something that is rooted quite strongly in the much different blades of the Qing and Republic eras), we again see a desire to look back and recapture the genius of Chinese smiths in an era when they were acknowledged by all for their innovations and brilliance. By comparison, the more modern martial arts of the Ming, Qing and Republic periods are all colored with concerns of foreign influence and social decay, whether in the form of the of the Manchu invasion of the Ming, their subsequent occupation of China, or later humiliations at the hands of European armies.

Such anxieties do not darken the historical annals of the Han dynasty, at least not at first glance. While there were foreign threats, the Han were largely successful in overcoming them and expanding their influence along the silk roads. Critically, existing literary works, surviving artworks, and the archeological record, all seem to suggest that this was a period in which civilians owned and openly carried weapons. Not only did the Han dynasty generate some of the most sophisticated blades in China’s history, but it also spawned a unique martial culture that centered around the mastery of these weapons.

Unfortunately the historical record is scant and almost no reliable sources survive. Thus we will never know with certainty what the actual techniques or values of these martial systems were. Yet it is this very silence that allows them to become an important ideological space for those who would seek to contest the current direction of the Chinese martial arts, dominated as it is with flashy taolu and the floppy props that the state sponsored athletic officials allow in the place of true dao and and jian.

Ironically, the first step in this process seem to be creation of desire and legitimacy by Western martial artists and collectors. Once that is accomplished it may be easier to call on the government to do the patriotic thing and promote a more realistic set of practices domestically as well. On a certain level what these blade smiths are asking us to do is to reconsider the seemingly settled question as to whether the Chinese martial arts can be “dangerous.”

Such questions can never be answered in a vacuum. We are destined to come back to such nagging doubts over and over again. And in every iteration of the question it is not just the Chinese martial arts that change (the Boxer Uprising, Bruce Lee, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Tiajiquan, Xu Xiaodong) but also the global political and economic forces that frame that answer (imperialism, defeat in Vietnam, end of the Cold War, growing economic friction with China).

There is nothing new about using Western views of the Chinese martial artists to frame domestic debates as to what the Chinese martial arts, or Chinese society, should be. This is a long established patterns that even predated the Boxer Uprising itself. It is seems that not only the practice of martial arts, but the discussion of them, is intrinsically political in an era of increasing competition. Still, the values of different actors are not monolithic, and that means that during the period of globalization that lasted from roughly the end of the 1970s to the present that there has been a unique window for cooperation between martial artists enthusiasts in China and the West. Perhaps they did not alway share exactly same desires or goals, yet both benefited from the exchange. The question that remains to be answered is what will happen to these relationships as the current iteration of globalization evolves, or perhaps withers. All of that promises to reframe of the question “Is China dangerous?” in ways that might have profound impacts on the practice of martial arts in the West.

I know that everyone is looking forward to the upcoming Martial Arts Studies conference in Switzerland this summer, but it never too soon to start thinking about that next paper, chapter or plane ticket. This looks like it will be great! If you have questions be sure to reach out to Paul or Wayne.

50 Years After Bruce Lee: Asian Martial Arts on Screen and Off

19-21 July 2023, University of Sheffield (UK)

In the half-century since Bruce Lee, what has been the story, status and significance of Asian martial arts? Bruce Lee was pivotal in making Asian martial arts into a global phenomenon, both on screen and off. His on-screen choreography set new standards and his polemical publications about martial arts training threw down a gauntlet, the reverberations of which are still being felt, in film, television, media, popular culture, and of course, martial arts practice around the world.

This conference – held on the 50^th anniversary of his tragic death – seeks to interrogate the status of Asian martial arts, both on screen and off, in the wake of Bruce Lee. We invite abstracts that engage with the connections between Bruce Lee and Asian martial arts, whether in terms of cinematic styles, the development of martial arts discourses, or in the diverse connections of these realms with other areas of media, culture and society.

The conference seeks to bridge and connect the disciplinary fields of film studies, media studies and cultural studies, but the organisers are also open to proposals from related fields such as sociology, ethnography, anthropology, history and other forms of martial arts studies.

To submit a proposal for an individual paper (20 minutes) or a complete themed panel (of three thematically-connected papers), please send one Word Document to Dr Wayne Wong (k.wong@sheffield.ac.uk) containing the following information:

• Title
• Abstract (300 words max)
• Bio-note (150 words max)
• Keywords (5 max)
• Contact email address
• Link to personal or professional webpage (if available)

Deadline for Proposals: to be confirmed
Notification of decision: to be confirmed
Registration opens: to be confirmed

If you have any questions or wish to discuss potential ideas, please contact either/both Professor Paul Bowman (BowmanP@cardiff.ac.uk) and/or Dr. Wayne Wong (k.wong@sheffield.ac.uk).

“The lightsaber has become an important touchstone, both within the films and within our culture…They serve as a source of identification and identity.  They are the ultimate commodity: a nonexistent object whose replicas sell for hundreds of dollars.  This is not bad for something that defies the laws of physics and cannot and does not exist.  And, in conclusion, if I am honest. I must admit that I still want one.”

Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. 2007. “’Your Father’s Lightsaber’ The Fetishization of Objects Between the Trilogies.” in Carl Silvio and Tony M. Vinci (eds.) Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & co. p. 187.

“This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight”

Wetmore concludes one of the first truly scholarly discussions of the lightsaber with a candid admission.  Critical theory and the laws of physics aside, he still wants one.  It’s a shame really.  There is one sitting on my desk right now.

I understand his sentiment as it is one of my prized possessions.  And I say that as a practicing martial artist and student of history who is currently surrounded by several antique swords and knives.  Nor am I alone in this. Darth Nihilus, my lightsaber combat instructor, was just telling me how much he wanted the particular model that I am currently looking at.

It is, after all, the quintessential fencer’s saber.  Named the “Caliburn Pilgrim” the hilt is just under 10.5 inches long, with a svelte 1.25 inch diameter.  The whole package is surprisingly light.  The good folks at JQ Sabers have produced a weapon that is compact enough to easily wielded with a single hand (for those Makashi users), but with enough length that it can accommodate double handed techniques.

Designing (or possibly marketing) a saber like this is more difficult than it sounds.  These are, after all, artifacts that come from a technologically advanced civilization in a galaxy far, far away.  To remind their owners of this fact even sabers that are not prop replicas tend to have all sorts of accouterments that get in the way of actually using these hilts in training or sparring situations.  Extra buttons, retro-switch boxers, large “emitter windows”, thin necks and the like can make for a visually impressive weapon, but one that is also uncomfortable in the hand.

Like many of the martial artists in the lightsaber combat community, I prefer simple, almost minimalist, hilts.  I like to think that they look elegant, but it is how they feel that is critical. The Pilgrim manages to keep its visual appeal with a parkerized grip that offers the look of leather wrapping with none of the maintenance.

This not to suggest that the Pilgrim is lacking in features.  It has a single (lit) activation button which can also be used to manually trigger the “blast deflection” and “lock up” effects that some individuals like.  I also ordered mine with a RGB tri-cree LED which, when paired with the standard Spectra Blade Control board allows the saber to cycle through six blade colors. These include a rich guardian blue (as seen in the prequels), ice blue (more like Luke’s saber in A New Hope), green, a golden yellow, an almost neon red and finally a violet purple (for the Mace Windu fans).  It is hard to think of a more obvious exercise in “embodied intertextuality” than choosing your blade color at the start of a training session.

At times it almost seems like this lightsaber is alive.  How many other training tools must be “fed” on a regular basis or they simply refuse to work?  The addition of electronics (that can have a mind of their own) and eccentric hilt designs conspire to give most lightsabers very definite “personalities.” That tends to be a quality that one becomes progressively more aware of as you use them.

Weapons of any kind have a disciplinary effect on the movement of a martial artist. We must accommodate the new possibilities that the materiality of a sword or a spear make possible.  Yet I often wonder whether it all boils down to purely material factors.  How important are the stories, myth and discourses that I have been exposed to in my understanding and actual experience of a weapon?

Before practicing my forms, drills, or sparring, I must choose a blade color when I activate my lightsaber.  It seems that there are certain colors I never use.  If I am working with someone on a choreographed piece and they need me to be “the bad guy” I will turn my saber red.

Yet I would never practice forms with a red blade at home.  They just don’t feel “right.”  I don’t feel right.  The cognitive dissonance between what I see in my hands and my goals are as a martial artist become a bit much. In the Star Wars universe red is a very loaded color, and I experience those associations on an almost subconscious level every time I pick up my weapon.

Guardian blue seems like a good color for someone setting out to master a new discipline.  That is the one that I use the most.  If I am having troubling with an exercise and need to slow down or relax I find that I am often holding a green saber.  This probably reflects the fact that Jedi Consulars (diplomats, scholars and students of the Force), as well as teaching figures such as Yoda and Qui-Gon Jinn, favored Green blades.  Yellow and purple both feel like undiscovered countries.

Critics might look at my Pilgrim and note that it is, in fact, “not a real lightsaber.”  As Whitmore correctly notes, science has not yet figured out how to trap that much plasma in a magnetic field, and power everything with a battery that weighs only a few ounces.  One certainly hopes that by the time we have developed the technical expertise to make such a weapon possible we will have also gained the wisdom not to construct it.

Yet in some ways this statement of the obvious misses the point.  Almost every person I meet in the park where I practice takes one look at what I am doing and immediately asks (in breathless fashion) “Where did you get a real lightsaber!”  No one confuses this object with the much cheaper toys that you can buy at your local Walmart.  Even to the uninitiated it appears as something that is qualitatively different than the “fake” lightsaber that children play with.

As a martial artist I have to agree with them.  A one inch heavy polycarbonate blade is the sort of thing that can hurt you if used without the proper safety gear.  When you have been hit in the head with something so many times that you find yourself pricing out heavier grade HEMA fencing masks, it is hard to think of the object in question as anything other than “real” in the most concrete terms.  Yet how does this ever evolving combination of lightsaber as object and myth effect my development as a martial artist?  What other ideas or identities might be coming along for the ride?

Material Culture in Martial Arts Studies

The “salvage Anthropologist” of the early 20^th century loved material culture.  They did not just set out to collect the languages, folklore and life-ways of “primitive people.” They often returned from their expeditions with enough stuff to fill whole museum collections.  The basic idea was to preserve all of this cultural material for posterity before the indigenous peoples of the world inevitably succumbed to ravages of modernity and disappeared forever. And then there were the weapons.

Early explorers, missionaries, merchants and anthropologists all seem to have taken a special interest in the collecting and study of ethnographic weapons.  While wealthy gentlemen might pursue this as a hobby, the more academically inclined saw in these artifacts a key to understanding critical elements of other cultures.

This same impulse seems to have been present in earlier incarnations of martial arts studies as a field.  From the obsessive categorization of ancient Japanese swords to the classification of the seemingly limitless varieties of knives (and other bladed weapons) coming out of South East Asia, a fair amount of attention was paid to the material culture of the martial arts.  We were sagely informed by the authors of the time that “the sword was the soul of the Samurai,” and every Nepalese kukri “invoked Shiva.”  If we could get our heads wrapped around these statements we would be a little bit closer to understanding the societies that called forth these weapons from the vast depths of human imagination.

In contrast, the current martial arts studies literature has had relatively little to say on weapons, or any other aspect of the material culture (uniforms, training gear, architecture, etc…).  Students of the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) have generally been more attentive to these matters.  Who could forget Daniel Jaquet delivering his keynote in a suit of armor at our last conference?   Yet when looking at current debates within the broader literature, there seems to be less interest in these questions.

Given the fields recent birth this may be understandable.  In all honesty there are many interesting topics floating around that no one has had an opportunity to discuss.  Yet given the capitalist character of the current global order, this seems like an oversight that needs to be corrected.  Simply put, most of us encounter the martial arts as a series of goods to be consumed.  These are provided through either the entertainment, fitness or the self-improvement industries.  If we wish to better understand how the martial arts function in modern society, or what they mean to those who practice them, looking at the material goods that these pursuits inspire would be an obvious place to start.

Archaeologists and historians have noted that to a skilled interpreter a medieval European sword is like a book.  It reveals very specific information about the vast network of craftsmen who were necessary to mine, forge, dress and market a single blade.  Both trade and administrative networks are revealed in life histories of individual weapons.  Their embellishments, and in some cases even their basic geometry, can reveal much about the societies that produced and used these weapons.    Material objects do not stand apart from the realm of social values and identity.  They are cultural debates made manifest in steel, wood and leather.

The same is true of the material culture of the martial arts today.  The synthetic training swords of HEMA practitioners, foam foot and hand protectors of TKD students, and the rapid spread of the Wing Chun style wooden training dummy, all have specific stories to tell.  Some of these are technical in nature, others are historical.  For instance, in a previous paper I discussed how the sudden appearance of high quality replica lightsabers as part of an advertising campaign for the prequel movies (episodes I-III) seems to explain the timing of the development of this practice.

Yet there is a rich interplay between the imagined, discursive and physical objects that any society creates.  Martial arts studies is well situated to explore this terrain.  Further, the development of Lightsaber combat suggests that even the most hyper-real of weapons can speak to important puzzles in both the interpretation of texts and the development of new types of physical practice.  All that is necessary is to find the right lens.

“Your fathers lightsaber…”

While few academic studies have taken the lightsaber on as their sole object of interest, the same is not true of the Star Wars film series.  Its momentous following has ensured that students of cultural and film studies have discussed the subject from the late 1970s to the present day.  The movies have been critiqued and interpreted from a number of perspectives, and George Lucas himself has been the subject of a good deal of biographical interest.

A number of scholars have followed the lead of early observers and offered interpretive critiques of these films drawing on various mythological and psychological frameworks.  These have been used to explore issues such as “coming of age” narratives, or the many historical resonances (both real and imagined) that can be found within the films.

Other scholars (including Wetmore) have cautioned against of these approaches.  They rightly point out that when we seek “universal” meanings in a film such as this, we often become blind to the sometimes unpleasant forces that emerge as the narrative advances racial, political and sexual values that are very much grounded in a specific time and place (e.g., post-War America).

Zeroing in on the rhetoric of “empire” and “resistance” found throughout the franchise, Wetmore applied a post-colonial reading to the saga in his volume The Empire Triumphant: Race, Religion and Rebellion in the Star Wars Film (McFarland & Co, 2005).  As the title implies, this study tackled the presence of imperialism, sexism, racism and the practice of cultural appropriation in these films.

One a certain level none of this new.  A variety of fans and commentators had already noticed that Darth Vader appeared to be the only “black” character in the original film. Worse yet, he seemed to become a Caucasian at the very moment of his redemption/death.  Alternatively, lots of Asian American teenagers have noted that while many Jedi have Asian sounding names, there were no actual Asian Jedi in the films.  In his volume Wetmore systematically explored these issues in an attempt to demonstrate that various approaches to critical theory could offer productive readings of the Star Wars films.

He certainly accomplished what he set out to do.  Yet his volume probably contributed less to the development of these theoretical approaches than one might like due to the fact that Wetmore was clearly writing for a dual audience of both fans and other scholars.  That made it hard to break new ground.  I find his shorter paper on the lightsaber, published in Silvo an Vinci’s Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies (McFarland, 2007), to be a more significant and original contribution to both the popular and academic discussions.

Wetmore begins his paper (titled “Your Father’s Lightsaber”) by noting that material objects seems to play an important role in uniting what might otherwise be a sprawling collection of movies.  Indeed, some of them (such as the Millennium Falcon) are more popular than even well-known characters in the series.  Other “objects,” such as R2D2, have even been elevated to the status of principal characters.

No other object is more significant to the series than the lightsaber.  These iconic weapons appear in each of the nine films that have so far been produced. The director Gareth Edwards even figured out how to shoehorn one into Rogue One, a film that focused on the gritty realities of ground assaults and asymmetric insurgencies.

Rather than simply being ubiquitous, Wetmore observed that they are consciously used to bridge historical and narrative gaps.  In Episode IV: A New Hope, Luke receives his father’s lightsaber.  Of course it is the very same weapon that we see Obi-Wan picking up off the ground after literally dismembering Anakin Skywalker at the end of Revenge of the Sith.  Wetmore suggests that these moments of recognition, triggered by the repeated appearance of the same material objects both help to define the materiality of the Star Wars universe and are an important mechanism by which viewers make sense of the action, uniting threads of meaning across both the films and the decades.

Wetmore also suggests that we should pay close attention to how and when lightsabers appear on screen.  In fact, the relative abundance (Phantom Menace) or scarcity (A New Hope) of lightsabers gives us an interesting perspective from which to view these films in both a narrative and critical way.  Doing so effectively requires some sort of theoretical framework.

At this point Wetmore turns to the idea of “fetishism” in an attempt to make sense of the importance of reoccurring physical objects both within (and now outside) the Star Wars universe.  This strategy is not without its drawbacks.  As he notes at the start of the exercise, the very concept of the fetish seems to be hopelessly overdetermined and has been used in many different (sometimes contradictory) ways.

Yet rather than imposing another definition upon this concept he takes the preexisting debates and uses it to develop a typology of different approaches, each of which might be useful in resolving some different element of what lightsabers mean on screen.  While there are a great many theories and approaches that may be used to explore material culture within Martial Arts Studies, it might be worth briefly considering what contributions the idea of fetishism can make.  Specifically, how might it help to better illuminate the micro-foundations connecting weapons as physical object (subject to history and technique) with their role as mythic symbol (subject to shifting norms and discourses)?

While the origins of the term remain somewhat obscure, Wetmore suggests that “fetish” originally emerged as a pidgin term in West Africa used to describe powerful or sacred objects that could not be traded.  From the Portuguese perspective these may have included items that were desirable, but were resistant to normal commerce. A fetish, simply put, was something that could not be “bought.”

Early Anthropologists later generalized this basic notion by extracting it from its imperialist and commercial framework. For them a fetish was seen as a material object (often very ordinary in appearance) that was endowed with supernatural powers or associations.  As such these objects might become an object of worship or group identification (Durkheim).  In other situations a fetish might take on the characteristics of a magical tool that granted great power to the proper user.

Elements of this sort of system can be found in a number of places in both the films and the real world.  Like other sorts of athletes martial artists can be fairly superstitious when it comes to their training tools.  On a deeper level the idea that a Jedi must make her own lightsaber before their training can be considered complete seems to play into both aspects of the anthropological conception.  On the one hand the completion of this task is often discussed in mystical terms.  In the real world the building of a functioning lightsaber is also the last step necessary before being recognized as a “Jedi Knight” (and thus a fully-fledged member of the community) within some groups like the Terra Prime Lightsaber Academy.  As one would expect, it is difficult to disentangle the mythic and ritual meanings of this object.

Sigmund Freud later adopted the idea and elaborated upon it in a 1927 article where he (characteristically) defined the fetish as a substitute for the female penis.  More specifically Wetmore notes that in Freud’s writing:

“It is a substitute for the penis, a protection against castration, and a source of pleasure.  One might also see the fetish as a weapon against the father, who seeks to castrate the son in response to the son’s own murderous oedipal drive.” (177)

Indeed, it is not hard to see the first of these sentences reflected in the sorts of stunt sabers used by martial artists.  After all, in the current era the pursuit of traditional weapons training is mostly seen as a pleasurable leisure activity.  Alternatively one could do worse than the Freudian reading of the lightsaber as a fetish for a one sentence summary of the Luke/Darth Vader story arc.

Returning the concept to its economic roots, Marxism has also developed a concept of the fetish.  In this case it reflects the surplus value of any trade above and beyond its purely utilitarian value.  An object functions as a fetish both due to the prestige it brings the owner and because it creates a group of individuals that have similar possessions.

One might be able to buy six bamboo Shinai (and then paint them any color that you desire) for the price of my lightsaber.  From a purely utilitarian standpoint the Shinai would work just as well for the sort of training that I am doing.  Nor would one ever have to worry about the batteries dying or the electronics being damaged.  And yet I still felt like I got a great deal when I bought the more elaborate, delicate and expensive training tool?  The Marxist theory gives us a way to discuss and theorize this paradox.  This tool can help us to grapple with the subjective meaning of what classical economists call “the consumer surplus.” It also brings economic markets (through which most of us encounter our lightsabers) back into the discussion.

Finally, Amanda Fernbach has suggested that fetishism might suggest a direct reversal of Freud’s theory.  She sees it as a fundamentally modern phenomenon in which the transformation of the self or the body has become a prominent social goal.  A fetish thus acts as an item that is both transformative and transgressing.  By taking up this object you both transform the self and, by transgressing social standards, create a new identity.

Again, it is not hard to see how this might apply to the world of lightsabers.  These are physical objects that are endowed not just with social meaning, but with strategic purpose.  As I have conducted various interviews over the course of my fieldwork a number of people have noted that they started coming to class because they “wanted to get in shape.”  In short, they had a desire to physically transform the self.  Yet rather than accepting the dominant social image of athleticism, they chose to do so in an environment that self-consciously celebrated geek culture.

It is the sort of looks that one occasionally gets from passersby in the mall (where our schools is located) that reminds you just how transgressive such an activity can be.  Yet sociologists of religions have theorized that it is precisely the “high social costs to entry” within a community that may account for the strong bonding that can take place there. The creation of such identities can be very empowering.  As one of my classmates noted, “The Central Lightsaber Academy is where bad ass nerds are made!”

“This weapon is your life!”

Fetishism is interesting as it allows us to explore both those areas of the use and appreciation of material objects that are amenable to commerce and markets as well as those that are resistant to it.  Ironically the West African conception of the term remains, in some ways, the most interesting and fruitful.

While there are a staggering number of stunt and replica sabers that can be purchased over the internet, the process by which the physical object becomes a “real” lightsaber is less easily captured.  The reality of the weapon emerges as a nexus between the martial artists, the object, technique, mediated images and the desire to craft a new type of identity (or community).  Indeed, the evolution of the material culture of the lightsaber combat movement suggests that it would probably be a mistake to simply reduce this process to the unintended consequences of a massive advertising campaign.

There are many sources selling replicas of the iconic prop sabers used in the films.  Yet the model that I reviewed at the beginning of this essay does not resemble any of those in size, shape or layout.  It is a good deal smaller and simpler than the lightsabers in the film because it was designed to be used as efficiently as possible as a martial arts training tool.  That goal has nothing to do with the sabers that dominated the silver screen.  Nor did George Lucas intend to spawn a new martial arts movement.  Nevertheless, these sorts of robust “battle ready” designs appear to be the quickest growing segment of the market with both large and specialty producers trying to fill the niche.

The lightsaber that most feels like an extension of myself is “real” not because it corresponds to anything in George Lucas’ universe, but because it best fulfills a practical function in my own training.  The existence of stunt sabers such as this suggests that lightsaber combat exists primarily as a mechanism for creative self-expression through the appropriation and reordering of a commercial mythos.  I doubt that it can be reduced simply to an extension of the consumption of the Star Wars franchise.  While the weapons in questions are hyper-real, the emotions, identities and relationships that they generate are both real and transformative.  Nor can they simply be purchased.

Still, this reimagination of the lightsaber happens within certain limits.  It is the internalized structure and limitations of the story that make it seem real.  That is probably why I refuse to train with a red blade.

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If you enjoyed this essay you might also want to see:  Is Star Wars a Martial Arts Film Franchise?

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Introduction

We are very pleased to host the following essay on Karate’s appearance in the Tokyo Olympics by Prof. Stephen Chan. This is an important topic, particularly to readers who follow the debates surrounding the inclusion and exclusion of certain sports from the games. Yet his discussion transcends the more common narrative of nationally bounded scorekeeping and instead asks what other sorts of work Karate’s Olympic moment accomplished.

Prof. Chan is a founding figure within the Martial Arts Studies community who delivered the first keynote address kicking-off what has since became our annual series of Martial Arts Studies conferences. He is an accomplished practitioner of karate, martial arts instructor and a distinguished political scientist whose writing I have always enjoyed. It is truly a pleasure to welcome him back to Kung Fu Tea.

The Politics of an Olympic Medal

by Stephen Chan

Among karate practitioners internationally the advent of their sport in the Tokyo Olympics, after years of campaigning, was eagerly awaited – but curiously not so much in Japan itself; and the reason for this was its image of violence, not necessarily in the sport itself with its elaborate (though not always successful) safety rules, but in its perceived sociological niche as a working class pursuit. Ju jutsu was, in the same stereotyping, a pursuit of Yakuza and other gangsters. Ju jutsu’s refinement as judo, alongside sumo, kendo, aikido, kyudo (archery) and above all iaido were the sports of gentlemen, or had been accepted at court, and were, moreover, (with the exception of judo) more authentically and historically Japanese. However, judo had been refined enough to pass muster, but karate was without noble pedigree and never quite lost its tag of origin in Okinawa, the most ‘backward’ of the Japanese islands.

These are generalisations to be sure but, despite all the increasing overlays of sophistication and efforts to render karate a martial art equal to the others, it probably took the modern phenomenon of manga with its heroes and villains deploying karate techniques to bring it towards public acceptance.

In Olympic terms, the success of South Korea’s tae kwon do with its development of clearly derivative techniques (despite the Korean claim to its own historical authenticity) was a goad to having, finally, its karate ancestor placed alongside it as an Olympic sport. The leverage of the previous Japanese prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, long a powerful politician and himself a karate third degree black belt – a person who rose from exactly a poor farming and working class background – helped greatly with the campaign for karate’s inclusion. Suga’s well-advertised physical fitness routine which includes 200 situps every day meant it was difficult for more sedentary politicians to gainsay him.

But karate’s inclusion in the Tokyo Olympics meant that Japan had two martial arts represented – karate and judo. South Korea had one, tae kwon do. China has none of its martial arts in the Olympics. Karate’s entry was always going to be tenuous in the terms of the numbers game as to who gets how many of which sports.

If Japan was in this sense in a weak position to insist on karate’s inclusion in the forthcoming Paris Olympics – it already had judo – then other countries were not going to act as karate’s champion. Karate is strong in France, but the international governing body, the World Karate Federation (WKF), does not command total support from the karate community in the USA; and its affiliate in the UK, the English Karate Federation (EKF) has no throw-weight in UK sporting or Olympic politics.  Without the two Anglophonic giants of world sports insisting on karate continuing in the Olympics its dropping from the Paris agenda was accomplished with barely a murmur of protest from sporting establishments with quite enough already on their agendas. 

Moreover, it has to be said that the Tokyo Olympics featured bouts of sometimes dubious quality and certainly enigmatic judging. As a spectator-friendly event, karate appealed to afficionados but not very many others. There was no wave afterwards of members of the public seeking to learn karate.

As for the WKF itself, it is a strange survivor of internecine struggles that have bedevilled karate since its inception as a sport with international participants. Particularly in the USA there were ‘world championships’ that featured in the 1960s and into the 70s almost entirely American entrants – some of whom went on to become movie stars, such as Chuck Norris, and who certainly featured on the covers of the karate magazines of that era – so that the glamour, and also lack of any international regulatory environment, made karate seem almost splendidly anarchic as the Bruce Lee era dawned. With the dawning precisely of that era, regulatory regularity at least became desirable if only to avoid injuries and their almost random causation.

But even now, the WKF, which went through numerous incarnations – beginning as WUKO (World Union of Karate-do Organisations) – remains faced with alternative governing bodies plying their trade. The most powerful of these is the WUKF (World Union of Karate-do Federations) which has its own impressive array of international affiliates, but few national organisations recognised by national sports councils or national Olympic committees. And there remains the unsolved problem as to how to involve Kyokushinkai karate – with its more violent full-body-contact ethos, an ethos eschewed by the WKF in its search for a relatively user-friendly and safer set of rules that would essentially remove overmuch blood from its hoped-for television audiences.

When those television audiences did not materialise, fees levied on national organisations and equipment sponsorship had to suffice. But this means the WKF has never been a rich governing body, and its sponsorship relationship with Adidas has resulted in the most competitor-unfriendly and clumsy (but compulsory) protective equipment of any combat sport in today’s pugilistic universe. It is equipment that manifestly does not suit its purpose, and the injuries and blood in evidence at the Tokyo Olympics bear witness to that. By contrast, tae kwon do was bloodless in both actual body wounds and actual excitement in combat. Finding the middle path is yet to be an accomplishment of the WKF which, as in all other Olympic sports, has developed its own hierarchy of middle-aged men wearing blazers, and these are certainly both out of touch with the requirements of today’s athletes and not seemingly greatly caring about them. While the push to get into the Olympics was moving towards success in Tokyo, all that was laid aside by the competitors. But a one-shot wonder, absent from the succeeding Paris Olympics and possibly others afterwards, will not have the clout to maintain athlete loyalty forever. And the loss of Olympic status will certainly mean the recommencement of the internecine political struggles in the karate world that were significantly responsible for its lack of Olympic inclusion in the first place. A pugilistic sport has, in this case, not developed a fully non-pugilistic approach to international cooperation and regulation.

As for the athletes, it must be said some, but not all, produced amazing performances in Tokyo. Even normally staid newspapers and media outlets were moved to admiration. The matches, however, were uneven. The kumite in the men’s -75 kg category featured a final between old antagonists, Rafael Aghayev of Azerbaijan and Luigi Busa of Italy. These two have faced each other so often, trading victories, that their Olympic match was a rehearsal of cautions gleaned from knowing each other so well.  In the final of the mens +75 category, the Iranian fighter, Sajad Ganjzadeh won the gold medal, despite being kicked unconscious by Saudi Arabia’s Tareq Hamedi. The Saudi was by far the better fighter, but the rules stipulated against excessive contact – even though Ganjzadeh was leaning his head towards Hamedi’s kick as he launched his own badly-defended attack. In terms of who was, in popular perceptions, the victor it was Hamedi and non-followers of karate, tuning into the broadcasts out of interest, would have been mystified by the result.

If the men’s kumite largely disappointed – France’s Steven da Costa’s victory in the – 67 kg category being an exception, the women’s kumite was the opposite. The stylish way in which Egypt’s Feryal Ashraf fought to victory in the +61 category made her an overnight Egyptian heroine. Social media posts expressed the sentiment that she was now bigger than Liverpool football star, Mo Salah, also from Egypt.

   Ashraf securing her gold medal in Tokyo 2021 Olympics.

But Ashraf, fighting in a modified, bathing-cap-style hijab, also asserted that irrefutable emblem of a nascent feminism in the middle east – the emblem and image of the fighting woman. This has been an accomplishment largely un-noticed by middle class Western feminism, but has certainly been noticed in places like Morocco, Turkey, Iran – with its powerful women’s karate team – and in Egypt itself. The fighting woman, one who manifestly can out-fight most men, cannot be denied at least some recognisable place on the social and political podiums, just as she stands on an Olympic podium.

A word on Iran. The theocratic regime of the country deemed karate acceptable for women as the traditional uniform covers the body. Once gloves, foot guards, and sports hijab have been added, almost no trace of the female body is on display. But, because karate is a combat sport, there is a distinct camaraderie that develops among those fight and suffer – and all bleed in the same way. At the World Goju Karate championships in Bucharest a few years ago (Goju is a major specialist style of karate) I witnessed my opposing coach (we were coaching Teams England and Iran) precisely and very accurately instructing the athlete fighting, and he responded very well to all the instructions. He was a male fighter. She was a female coach. And this struck me, quite apart from the quality of female fighting, that here we had a coaching hierarchy that was not gender-dependent.

In the kata at the Tokyo Olympics, the solo performance of routines derived from tradition, but largely modernised along athletic performance lines, the women’s winner Sandra Sanchez was probably the highlight of the Olympics tournament. With her Spanish compatriot, men’s silver medalist Damian Quintero, the two of them elevated the profile of karate in Spain at least. The men’s gold medal winner, Japan’s Ryo Kiyuna – born in the birthplace of karate in Okinawa – performed a storming rendition of kata reminiscent of some of the values of the founding fathers of the art – turned sport – but again with a background of modern training and nutritional techniques. They didn’t make them that big and strong in the Okinawa of old.

And Sanchez herself, in her well-produced and well-distributed training videos, certainly revealed the immense sports science that went into her own preparation. If win an Olympic medal, you train as an Olympic athlete – and that is the inescapable end of the story so far of karate’s development. The advent of karate in the Olympics means an art-turned-sport-turned-science.

But it still means the Olympics as forms of politics. Just as in social terms Ashraf’s gold medal means much for women in Egypt, so Grace Lau’s bronze medal in the women’s kata, Hong Kong’s only medal of the Games, has meant a huge amount to a Hong Kong that feels itself increasingly constricted by Beijing. Her medal was seen as a momentary breaking free, an assertion of capacity that is Hong Kong’s alone.

But the glaring feature of Olympic Karate was noticeable by way of omission – and that is the total absence of athletes from Sub-Saharan Africa. The reason for this is very simple, and that is the WKF Olympic qualifying tournaments were inaccessible, in terms of travel costs, for the majority of African athletes.  Basically, and this includes the state-subsidised athletes of North Africa and even Aghayev’s Azerbaijan, the WKF has become an organisation for elite athletes from either elite countries or countries with elite facilities provided by governments who recognise an entry-point for international publicity. In the sense of a global ‘working class’, or at least a developmental ‘under class’, karate speaks as a sporting and scientific institution from the developed North. 

Which means that the Olympics represent a development as far as possible away from its ‘working class’ rough-shod roots in Japan itself. 

But, with future exclusion from the Olympics can the WKF maintain its hegemony? Will its rivals like the WUKF garner more adherents if its ‘world title’ is more accessible than that of the WKF? Will ‘protective’ equipment become itself finally more scientific and actually protect? And will the rules change to recognise clean harder contact?

Or will there in short be a return to the splits and bad feelings that, for so long, were a prime reason for karate not being included in the Olympics? As I intimated earlier, I do feel that will be the case.

But there are two key take-homes from the Olympics. When, very late in the day, former world kata champion Rika Usami was drafted in to coach the Japan Olympic karate team, she replaced the typical hard-man karate coach, Masao Kagawa – accused of being over-harsh on a female team member. It was the latest in a long line of sexist gaffes on the part of Japanese administrators of the Games. Kagawa’s resignation was simply one of a series. Usami’s first impulse was to increase the science in her team’s preparations.

With Sanchez’s immaculate scientific preparation, Usami and Sanchez themselves represent a new wave of female modernity at the height of publicly visible karate. And certainly so in places like Egypt and even more so in Iran – the latter not successful in these Olympics but with a women’s team that hovers at or near the top in WKF competitions. To that extent, both the Olympics and the WKF have served missions of empowerment. The men in blazers probably didn’t forsee this, but it happened anyway. And, in more ways than one, it is not the karate of the old men in the mountains and on the rough shores of Okinawa.

About the Author

Stephen Chan is a scholar of African politics at SOAS University of London’s Department of Politics and International Studies, Centre for Global Media and Communications, and Centre of African Studies. His research spanning multiple areas and disciplines centres on the political thought and practice in Africa. For years, he has taught African Political Thought, Political Thought on the Just Rebellion, Religion and World Politics, and Politics of Africa. Chan was also an international civil servant involved with several key diplomatic initiatives in Africa, helping to pioneer modern electoral observation, and continues to be seconded to diplomatic assignments today. He won the 2010 International Studies Association prize, Eminent Scholar in Global Development and broadcasts and lectures internationally.

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If you enjoyed this post you might also want to read: Stephen Chan Discusses the Life of Chan Wong Wah Yue: Swordswoman, Militia Member and Grandmother

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Mysteries

In a post reviewing the portrayal of weaponry in Han Dynasty mortuary art I confessed that I really, really, want to assemble a recreation of the sorts of long, horizontal, weapons racks that you see in some of these panels.  While undeniably cool, doing so would be a challenge for even the most diehard Chinese martial arts nerd.  To begin with, who has that much wall-space?  Sword racks takes up enough room.  Yet most of these images focused on large collections of period polearms (typically shown in matched sets) with just a smattering of swords, and the occasional crossbow, for flavor.  That alone makes this something of a long term project.  LK Chen has done more to create an international market for high quality replicas of Han dynasty weapons than just about anyone one else, and other Chinese smiths are increasingly expanding the their offerings in this once obscure realm.  We have even been fortunate to see the release of a couple of exotic polearms in the last few years (including both the iconic Han Sha and the Ji).  Still, modern collectors seem to focus most of their attention on the jian and dao, whereas artisans at the time portrayed a martial culture that was much more focused on the spear, javelin, glaive and dagger-axe. All of this was utilized in what appears to have been a mature martial arts subculture.

We know that books on fencing and martial culture were produced and read during the Han dynasty as their titles were preserved in the library catalogs of the Imperial household. Sadly, the books themselves have not survived leaving us to with none of the detailed sources necessary to reconstruct the era’s practice. Perhaps one of the reasons why so many individuals are drawn to Han weaponry is precisely this sense of mystery. Huge numbers of archeological artifacts, and wonderful pieces of art, survive suggesting the existence of a mature and sophisticated martial culture quite different from anything that exists today. Yet we don’t have enough information to reconstruct with any certainty what it would have been like. 

There is nothing that motivates the mind like a good mystery.  It sparks the imagination and can even lead to a creative, and somewhat disruptive, turn within martial arts communities.  Anytime large numbers of people of start constructing alternate ways to imagine China’s glorious past through the practice of new systems of armed combat, sociologically inclined martial arts studies scholars should sit up and take notice.  The subject becomes especially important when all of this happening at a moment when globalization is threatened by growing great power conflict. But that more serious subject is a topic for another day. As a practicing martial arts nerd I am just trying to figure out how to create a Han dynasty weapons rack of my own.

One of the most mysterious elements of Han images of arms collections was the ubiquitous appearance of a type of buckler, or small shield, referred to by historical sources as the gou-rang.  Swordsmen in many cultures have employed bucklers to provide basic defense in combat.  These small shields were typically easily carried and versatile, making them an ideal sidearm for civilians who were generally not expecting trouble when they left the house in the morning, but knew that they might find it anyway. 

Where the Chinese gou-rang departs from its more common counterparts is in the inclusion of two long steel prods, both terminating in a blunted hook, that emerge from the top and the bottom of the shield.   It was also common for a spike to be placed in the center of the shield itself. This may have been used offensively, though I suspect it played an even larger role in the trapping and manipulation of an opponent’s weapons. The parrying hooks, handle and the spike generally exhibited integral construction.  A protective plate was then attached to this underlying structure to protect the hand.

We should state right at the beginning of this discussion that we have no detailed written sources explaining how the gou-rang was deployed or used.  And while archeologists have recovered literally tons of Han dynasty jian and dao from the era’s often flooded tombs, these hooked bucklers are much less frequently encountered.  As with so much else in the menagerie of Han arms, our knowledge of these weapons is really a set of informed guesses coming from scattered literary references, experimental archeology and a careful reading the era’s much more complete artistic record.

This suggests the first paradox that we need to keep in mind.  While the gou-rang is relatively scarce in the archeological record, it is ubiquitous in the period’s artistic representations of martial culture. Almost every funerary image of a weapons collection includes at least one gou-rang in the mix.  They are also seen in many battle sequences.  Yet they were not left as grave goods with the same frequency as the dao, jian, ji or sha.

The more “action oriented” images on tomb walls are our main source of information of how this weapon might have been used.  Unsurprisingly they show the upper and lower hooks being used to bridge or entangle an opponent’s weapon.  In many of the most striking images the gou-rang is used to neutralize the ji, a Han dynasty update on the ubiquitous dagger-axe. This has led some people to speculate that the gou-rang was developed specifically to counter this weapon, but I suspect that is reading too much into a limited documentary record.

Period art also contains other clues about the nature and use of these weapons. Individuals employing the gou-rang often used the popular short dao as their primary weapon.  Typically the hand holding the shield was held in the front while the weapon hand is held in reserve.  Further, it is civilians, rather than soldiers, who typically carry these bucklers. A surviving inventory of an imperial Han arsenal lists over 100,000 shields in its stores, but only a single gou-rang. While we cannot say anything for certain, this suggest that the gou-rang may have been primarily a civilian weapon that evolved to help the martial artists of the era deal with the specific threats that they faced.

The ability to block an opponent’s weapon and disrupt their defenses is critical in any sort of dueling culture.  Indeed, shields were the predominant tactical challenge that Han swordsmen would have faced.  One of the few things that we can say about the period with certainty was that the use of shields by swordsmen was very common.  Indeed, this is likely why era’s highly sophisticated blades rarely featured much in the way of hand protection. Complex guards are not as necessary when shields are brought into play. The pronounced hooks on the gou-rang would have been ideal for pulling shields down, creating a pathway for the dao to then do its work.  Of course this sort of risky maneuver is exactly the sort of thing that civilian duelists would tend to obsess over while militaries would just train groups of soldiers to work in teams to overcome an obstacle. 

In any case, we can now put forward a set of likely deductions.  The gou-rang was almost certainly a civilian/dueling weapon that supported someone armed with either a dao or short hand ji.  It would likely have been employees against individuals armed with either the standard polearms of the day, or a sword and shield.  Finally, these weapons would have been somewhat expensive to produce and likely required extensive training, making them a sort of status symbol.  This might be one reason why they are more likely to be found in the art decorating the walls of a tomb than in the actual cache of grave goods. 

Several surviving examples can be seen in museums and private collections, but after 2,000 years in the ground these are typically in poor shape. Any organic material that may have been used to wrap or shape the handle is long gone. They also show a fair degree of variability in the shape of the central shield and curvature of the upper and lower prods.  These weapons typically had a forward facing spike on the face of the shield.  The upper prod tended to be straight and hook only at the end.  The lower prod, in contrast, tended to exhibit more of a curve.  Yet the depth of this curve seems to vary from example to example.  Some are relatively straight, whereas others exhibit dramatic sweeps on both the top and the bottom, making the weapon look like a bow. The exact purpose and tactical usage of these curves remains a bit of a mystery.  In general these bucklers are on the heavy side, especially compared to the light and fast swords that dominated the Han. 

While the gou-rang is a unique weapon it is not without precedent. Similar weapons are still employed in multiple countries today, suggesting that perhaps we can use ethnographic analogy to divine its function.  Students of African martial arts might notice that the combined small shield and spear combination carried by zulu warriors during their stick fights bears more than a passing resemblance to the gou-rang and dao.  While lacking a hooking or trapping function the combination of shield and parrying stick is very similar.  This same basic set up has continued to be passed down and can still be seen in underground “township” stick fighting contests in South Africa today.

Similar, though not identical, arms can be found on the Indian subcontinent, a region that was known to have had cultural exchange with China.  The madu was well documents in the 19^th century and continues to be used by Indian martial arts practitioners today. Superficially it resembles the Gou-rang in that a central buckler is combined with an upward and downward set of protruding horns.  These function as parrying sticks while the buckler protects the hand.  However, while the gou-rang is understood as a fundamentally defensive tool, the sharp horns of the madu are often coated in metal and can be used to stab and slash at an opponent.  Even more similar are 19^th century variations of this weapon made entirely from steel.  In this case a steel buckler is combined with a simple spike that comes to sharp point on the top, while a more familiar looking hooked prod is fitted to the bottom.  It is fascinating to think that such similar weapons were still in use almost two millenniums apart. Still ethnographic analogy can only take us so far.

Two Answers

Even if all of its uses remain unclear, we can say with confidence that the gou-rang was an important aspect of the Han dynasties martial arts landscape. As such, we should not be surprised that the revival of interest in Han arms has also sparked efforts to resurrect the gou-rang.  The mastery of this weapon would be a critical aspect of the re-invention of Han martial culture.  

LK Chen was the first individual that I am aware of to offer a high quality commercial reproduction of the gou-rang to Western martial artists and collectors.  Two variants were released at about the same time as the original “LK5” collection of Chu and Han jian, suggesting the centrality of the gou-rang to his larger historical project. These strange bucklers did not, at first, capture the imagination of Western martial artists who were struggling to get their minds wrapped around the reality of Han jian and dao that looked so different from the cheap fantasy pieces that had been coming out of Longquan for years. While fairly inexpensive to make, the unorthodox shape of these bucklers made them very expensive to ship overseas, especially once COVID put an end to cheap air freight. The gou-rang was subsequently dropped from the catalog.

Yet that did not make it any less vital to the larger project of re-inventing Han martial culture. During this period LK Chen started to distribute free plans and instructional videos for Western collectors who wished to make their own gou-rang.  A couple of friends and I decided to tackle this project.  Or more precisely, we decided to commission Christopher Manuel, who runs a small business called the “Exotic Sword Emporium” to build them for us. To the best of my understanding the Exotic Sword Emporium specializes in the construction of steel training weapons for SCA events, but they accept a wide variety of commissions.  When approached with LK Chen’s original plans they turned to their forge in Pakistan (an area if the world that is already familiar with similar bucklers) to produce a couple of prototype sets for us.

After looking at the project and doing some initial experimentation the forge asked to make some changes to LK Chen’s original design. And given that we had just gotten another group of swordsmiths involved with the recreation of a 2,000 year old (poorly understood) weapon, who were we to say no? 

Some of their changes were an attempt to keep the cost per shield at a reasonable level. Others were efforts to create a more effective weapon.  First off, the curve in the bottom prod was eliminated to keep production costs down. Still, I cannot help but note that this also brought the overall profile of the weapon more in line with its South Asian cousin, the Madu.  One wonders if this simplification wasn’t also based on some sort of subconscious theory as to how the buckler was going to be used. 

The width of the top and bottom prods was slightly increased to create a sturdier, more robust, weapon. The handle was reworked so that it could be used more easily with any HEMA type sparring glove on the market today.  Taken together two changes had a substantial impact on how the weapon handles, which we will explore bellow. It was also decided that the weapon needed to be tempered (something that was never mentioned in LK Chen’s original plans) and given an oil blackened finish rather than the suggested coating in black paint. Finally, the shield is permanently affixed to the integral handle assembly with heavy rivets.

As we received notification from Pakistan that our project was nearing completion, LK Chen announced that his original gou-rangs were being redesigned and would be released to the public once again.  To address the prohibitive cost of shipping these shields around the world (ask me how I know….) these would be mailed in two parts that required assembly once they arrived at their destination.  It would be the customer’s responsibility to use the included rivets to attach the laser cut shield to the handle and prod assembly.  Alternatively, the two can simply be bolted together by those who might wish to dissemble them again for easy storage or travel.

While LK Chen’s plans had originally called for the use of flat stock in the construction of the upper and lower hooks, his new and improved gou-rang instead used cylindrical cast forged elements making the upper and lower prods almost identical in shape and diameter to examples seen in the archeological record.  This also seems to have lowered the weight of the new model by creating a sort of distal taper. While the top prod remains basically straight, the bottom one has been given a dramatic curve. Given that I was already hip deep in the gou-rang project I decided to go ahead and order one of his as well.  It was in this way that I ended up with two very different answers to the questions, “what is a gou-rang?” 

One is immediately struck my how much LK Chen’s new offering differs from the prototypes produced by the Exotic Sword Emporium even though they both share a common origin in his original public offerings.  The most apparent difference is in their length.  The pair from Exotic Sword comes in at 95 cm, while Chen’s is notably shorter at 87 CM.  I suspect, however, that the actual bar stock that both suppliers started out with was likely about even in length.  What we are seeing here is the difference between the more linear and curvaceous design philosophies.

The prods on LK Chen’s guo-rang are circular in shape with a diameter of 13 mm (similar to historical examples), while the prods on those from Exotic Swords follow Chen’s original plan and are cut from flat sheet stock.  In this case they decided to increase the specs by making their prods 31 mm wide at the base with a 6 mm cross-section.  The width of the prods narrows as you move towards the tip, but they exhibit no distal tapper resulting in a notably heavy weapon.  By way of comparison, the guo-rang that I received from LK Chen weighs in at 1574 grams.  The examples from Exotic Swords are notably heavier at 1914 grams,

While the shields on the two weapons look identical from a distance, there are actually some subtly differences here as well.  LK Chen’s laser cut and hand-shaped shield is 26 cm long by 16.5 cm wide and 2 mm thick. In contrast, Exotic Sword Emporium stretched their shield to 28.6 cm but reduced its width to 15.25 cm.  And in keeping with their general design philosophy, they also went with a heavier gauge 4mm plate.

These minor differences in how the shield is constructed reveal a more fundamental difference in design philosophies between these two manufactures.  Namely, they seem to imagine the end user of their products very differently.  Looking at the original plans Exotic Swords decided that it would be difficult for anyone wearing modern HEMA gloves to actually get their hand inside the opening.  Indeed, the handle on LK Chen’s rang fits my hand beautifully, but only if I am bare handed. While the shield causes no rubbing or hot spots, as soon as I put on something as light as a set of Red Dragon sparing gloves, I immediately had trouble actually getting my hand through opening.  I think it would be much more difficult, if not impossible, to use it with the sorts of clamshell gauntlets that are standard issue in the HEMA community these days.  

One suspect that LK Chen didn’t really design his new gou-rang with sparring in mind as the front facing spike is actually very sharp.  This could easily punch through a fencing mask and would give lighter fencing jackets a run for their money.  It is important that anyone who trains with these gou-rang first address this issue by adding a rubber guard to the end of the spike, or simply reprofiling it with an angle grinder.  LK Chen’s weapon is certainly the more elegant of the two, but it fundamentally privileges historical accuracy over practicality in a training environment. When used in sparring LK Chen’s agent in America suggest using something like this to ensure everyone’s safety.

In contrast, the gou-rang from Exotic Sword Emporium seems like it was purpose built as a training tool from the ground up.  The forward facing spike is blunted and rounded for safety.  All of the edges of the shield have been carefully beveled so that there is nothing sharp.  And the weapon is overbuilt to such a degree that I doubt it will show any damage after years of heavy training.

Turning the gou-rang over it becomes apparent that Exotic Swords lengthened the shield precisely because they increased the handle length to 15 cm, and increased its minimum depth to 2.25 inches.  In the middle it actually has 3 inches of clearance between handle and the front of the shield.  While this feels oversized in bare hands, it means that their gou-rang can handle pretty much any hand protection used in HEMA today.  Indeed, their baseline assumption is that no martial artist in their right mind would pick this buckler up until all of your safety gear is in place. Their piece is not aimed at the collector market, nor is it for someone looking for the greatest degree of historical accuracy. They know exactly who their target audience is and what sorts of safety gear they are going to be using.

There are also substantial differences in how these two guo-rang handle and how I find myself predisposed to use them.  We have already seen that LK Chen’s buckler is lighter, but more important is the fact that its handle is only 17 mm wide as opposed to the 31 mm barstock used by Exotic Swords.  This means that if you grab LK Chens’s offering and make a fist the shield naturally wants to sit parallel to your fingers.  This buckler wants to directly face the opponent and this naturally puts the prods in a more vertical orientation.  This seems to be how most people naturally assume a gou-rang should be held. 

The offering from exotic swords, however, cannot really be held this way for any length of time.  The width of the handle makes it uncomfortable and the weight of the piece makes fine movements with the wrist and forearm exhausting.  That doesn’t mean the piece is difficult to use however.  But it requires a different grip.  The wide handle must be placed across the palm of the hand meaning the shield naturally runs parallel to the back of the hand rather than the fingers.  This with this grip it is natural to lock your wrist in place and control the movements of the gou-rang from the shoulder and with rotations of the forearms.  In short LK Chen’s gou-rang presents itself as a larger, fairly complex buckler.  The Exotic Sword Emporium prototypes feel like light, skeletonized, shield.

Which is preferable?  I have to admit a certain preference for the Exotic Sword set-up.  As someone with a background in Wing Chun covering the center-line by moving the shoulder makes a huge amount of sense to me.  I have spent years thinking about the geometry of defensive diagonal lines that run right to left, front to back and top to bottom. When combined with the possibilities for bridging and hooking that the guo-rang offers, everything just feels very natural to me. Its more than that actually.  It feels like coming home. This may simply be an artifact of my own prior training, but I don’t have a difficult time keeping track of where the top and bottom hooks are when I move the weapon in this way. Everything just goes into auto-pilot and the natural arcs of the shoulder ensures that I never hit myself with the prods.

LK Chen’s weapon is lighter and more elegant.  Despite that, or perhaps because of it, I find it harder to use.  In some sense the vertically orientated alignment of the prods should be easier to manipulate.  But I find myself relying on my wrists and elbows to move the gou-range and that seems biomechanically weaker when receiving a blow.  It also opens up too many planes of movement and rotation.  This might not seem like a bad thing, but in practice it means you are more likely to hit yourself in the face (or the legs) with your own weapon because you lose track of where they are space. I am sure that I will get better over time and these are only my initial impressions.  But anyone doing serious training or sparring with gou-rangs needs to be wearing fencing helmets and proper protective gear, not only to protect you from an opponents blows, but also accidental contact with your own weapon.  While a lot of fun, in a training environment the gou-rang is utterly unforgiving.

I think I will close this review with a few words of unsolicited feedback to both manufactures.  LK Chen’s weapon is light and elegant, yet straddles the divide between a training tool on the one hand and a historical artifact on the other.  Certain elements of its construction, such as the sharpened forward spike, make that sort of dual mission difficult to sustain. Further, I love the blued finished that Exotic Swords Emporium used on their prototypes and would highly recommend that over the black paint. 

I was really surprised by how much I liked the heavier and more linear gou-rang from Exotic Sword Emporium.  And the fit and finish on their piece was great for the price.  I really appreciated the fact that it was designed with a clear mission in mind.  Still, this is just overbuilt for what it is.  I would like to see the weight of this piece reduced by a few hundred grams and the traditional curvature put back into the bottom bow.  I think trapping pole weapons would also be easier if the hooks on the top and bottom of their shield were a bit wider and more open.  Lastly, while I personally was able to adapt to their handle construction I don’t know if other users will be as lucky.  Real thought needs to go into whether the gou-rang is best imagined as a large and complex buckler, or a small, minimalist shield.  That all comes down to the geometry of how the handle is constructed.  For me that remains the biggest mystery that these wonderful prototypes have yet to resolve.

Hot Off the Press!

I am happy to announce that the journal Martial Arts Studies has just released a new special issue focusing on the always popular topic of martial arts, religion and spirituality. The guest editors for this project are Gabriel Facal (Southeast Asia Centre, CASE, Paris) and Laurent Chirop-Reyes (French Centre for Research on Contemporary China in Hong Kong), both of whom will already be well known to readers of this blog and the journal. It is such a pleasure to see their many months of hard work coming to life!

Martial Arts Studies is an interdisciplinary journal presenting academic work of the highest quality. As an imprint of Cardiff University Press it is always free to read by anyone with an internet connection and published under the Creative Commons. I have copied an image of its table of contents below to give everyone a taste of the sorts of topics that are covered.

In the coming weeks I will repost and feature some of these articles here at the blog. Maybe we can start a discussion that we can continue in person when we all meet in Switzerland for our annual conference later this month? But in the mean time, head on over and download a copy of the issue, or maybe start with Gabriel and Laurent’s guest editorial? Enjoy!

Call for Papers for our 8th Annual Conference!

50 Years After Bruce Lee: Asian Martial Arts On-Screen and Off

19-21 July 2023, University of Sheffield (UK)

On the 50th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s untimely death, our 2023 conference will be structured by two overarching questions:

1. What is the current status of Asian martial arts in the world?
2. What are the key debates and issues facing Martial Arts Studies today?

The conference will have three pathways of concurrent parallel sessions, each engaging with a specific theme for the duration of the conference:
 

• Theme 1. Studies of Bruce Lee and his influence on martial arts, both on-screen and off;
• Theme 2. The status and significance of Asian martial arts more broadly, both on-screen and off;
• Theme 3. Studies of current debates and pressing issues in and around the academic field of martial arts studies.

Those attending the conference will therefore be able to focus entirely on one theme throughout the duration, or dip into different themes for specific panels and papers.

To submit an abstract for the conference, please signal which theme you are primarily responding to, from the three themes below.

Theme One: Bruce Lee and Asian Martial Arts

In the half-century since Bruce Lee, what has been the story, status and significance of Asian martial arts? Bruce Lee was pivotal in making Asian martial arts into a global phenomenon, both on-screen and off. His on-screen choreography set new standards and his polemical publications about martial arts training threw down a gauntlet, the reverberations of which are still being felt, in film, television, media, popular culture, and of course, martial arts practice around the world. This conference – held on the 50^th anniversary of his tragic death – first seeks to interrogate the status of Asian martial arts, both on-screen and off, in the wake of Bruce Lee. Thus, for our first theme, we invite abstracts that engage with the connections between Bruce Lee and Asian martial arts, whether in terms of cinematic styles, the development of martial arts discourses, or in the diverse connections of these realms with other areas of media, culture and society.

Theme Two: Asian Martial Arts Beyond Bruce Lee

The world of Asian martial arts – both on-screen and off – is extremely diverse and far-reaching. Many kinds of study of Asian martial arts should not be tethered to a discussion of Bruce Lee. Accordingly, we also invite proposals for papers on aspects of Asian martial arts that are not necessarily connected with Bruce Lee. We are particularly interested in papers that focus on the significance, status, controversies and issues around Asian martial arts connected with film, television, and other media.

Theme Three: Current Debates and Issues in Martial Arts Studies

Martial Arts Studies has emerged as a vibrant research nexus in English language scholarship over the last decade. Articles, monographs, collections and conferences are appearing with increasing frequency and with ever-greater thematic, conceptual and methodological interconnection and cross-disciplinary literacy. Given this proliferation, it is arguably a good moment to pause and take stock of the development of martial arts studies as a field. Accordingly, we invite papers that reflect on current debates and issues in martial arts studies. What have been the major achievements? What have been the stalemates or sticking points? What should be the current concerns of scholars? What are its current, emergent and possible new directions?

To submit a proposal for an individual paper (20 minutes), please send one Word Document to Dr Wayne Wong (k.wong@sheffield.ac.uk) and Professor Paul Bowman (BowmanP@cardiff.ac.uk) containing the following information:

• Title of your presentation
• Abstract (300 words max)
• Bio-note (150 words max)
• Keywords (5 max)
• Theme (1, 2, or 3 – see above)
• Contact email address
• Link to personal or professional webpage (if available)

Deadline for Proposals: 1 January 2023
Notification of decision: 1 February 2023
Registration opens: 1 March 2023

If you have any questions or wish to discuss potential ideas, please contact either/both Professor Paul Bowman (BowmanP@cardiff.ac.uk) and/or Dr. Wayne Wong (k.wong@sheffield.ac.uk).

We are excited to announce that the latest issue of the interdisciplinary journal Martial Arts Studies (an imprint of Cardiff University Press) is now out. As always, it brings high level scholarly research within the field of Martial Arts Studies to anyone with an internet connection. Just click this link to get started.

What can you find in our latest issue? Something for practically everyone. Head on over and check it out!

We are delighted to announce the publication of issue 14 of Martial Arts Studies!

In addition, we are very happy to let you know that Martial Arts Studies has recently been accepted by Scopus for indexing, which will give the journal a boost in visibility. This is an important development and something that we have all been looking forward to for years. For one reason or another it was never the right moment to have the journal indexed in the past, but its welcome development whose time has come. There is no doubt that this will aid the further development of our field.

And finally, as we discuss in the editorial of this issue, we are excited to let you know that, in addition to the well-established Martial Arts Studies Research Network, we are now able to announce the birth of The Martial Arts Studies Association. 

The Martial Arts Studies Association is a new scholarly society dedicated to the development of cutting-edge scholarship in martial arts studies. It is our hope that it will help to foster new and exciting types of research, exchange and publication.

Further details are in the editorial. So, dive in, read on, and enjoy:

For 2024, our conference is returning to its roots with an open theme at Cardiff University! We are welcoming proposals for 20-minute papers (or 3-paper panels) on any topic relevant to the interdisciplinary field of martial arts studies. Come, present your work and meet other scholars from the community.

The deadline to submit a proposal is February 1, 2024.

The conference dates are June 4th through the 6th at Cardiff University.

To submit an abstract, follow the guidelines for submission and submit here.

To give your proposal the best chance of being accepted, please ensure that you are clear on how your paper will contribute to current debates in martial arts studies and which relevant literature and/or methodologies it engages with or develops.

The price of conference registration covers everything except your accommodation. That is: breakfast, refreshments, lunch, attendance at all academic elements of the conference, drinks receptions, and conference dinners! The conference begins on the afternoon/evening of 4th June and concludes on the evening of 6th June. See below for prices and further information.

Watch a short video about the conference location, venue, prices, etc. here.

I look forward to seeing everyone back in Cardiff this summer!