Recently a student at one of our clubs ‘resigned’ from London Ju Jitsu as he thought one of the techniques I was teaching was dirty and not worthy of the budo tradition. The offending technique was a head butt, and as I grew up in Liverpool and spent the first 13 years of my martial arts study in Dojo’s there, I was quite shocked to learn that a head butt was considered dirty! I always thought it was just one of your best weapons! If you’ve ever been on the end of a real Scouse (or Glasgow) kiss you’ll know why. Funnily enough I was teaching the same technique in the leafy suburbs of Surrey many years ago when one of the students, Lindsay Comens (now 3rd Dan Daito Ryu Aiki Jutsu) said
“Excuse me Sensei, but how exactly do you head butt somebody”. Up until that point I’d never really thought about it, but once this question was asked I realised that there were good techniques for this just like any other move. People from Glasgow, Liverpool and any other inner cities must have these techniques in our DNA!
So what constitutes a dirty technique? Is it breaking fingers, head butting, eye gouging, fish hooking or something else? In my opinion there is no such thing when it comes to self defence and a lot
depends on the situation. It’s better to have all of these things in your armoury in case you have to use them. Of course I wouldn’t advocate breaking someone’s arm because they’ve stolen your sweets! But what if they’re trying to kill you? In the case of the offending head butt the technique being demonstrated was a defence to a strangle. You can of course be strangled to death so in my opinion anything goes once someone’s hands are on your neck! Also saying some techniques are dirty implies that there is an acceptable level of violence which I don’t think is true.
There is a wider issue here of course and that is what does bushido actually mean and what is its place? There are lots of Hollywood films that romanticise bushido of course. There are also books such as Hagakure that eulogise the Samurai way and their code of honour. This code of honour largely came about during the Shogunate era when nearly four hundred years of peace caused the Samurai to look for some meaning to their lives. Before Tokugawa Ieyasu became the first Tokugawa Shogun there were many times when a Daimyo (lord) would order his troops to change sides during battle. Does this sound honourable to you? One of these times was at the Battle of Sekigahara which led to Tokugawa taking power. Before this the Samurai would often use poison, assassins, kidnap and many other less than honourable means to ensure one thing and one thing only, victory over their enemies. There was no imaginary line they wouldn’t cross to achieve this. Honour to a Samurai meant one thing only and that was obeisance to your master. Even then you can judge for yourself to what extent the threat of execution for a samurai and his whole family played a part in that obedience. I’m not saying that the virtues advocated by the various writers on the subject if bushido are wrong. In fact I largely agree with them and aspire to being honourable myself. I also think that a lot the world is moving forward slowly towards a more caring civilisation and long periods of relative peacetime has brought that about. What I am saying is that there is no such thing as an acceptable level of violence. Luckily most of the serious martial artists I know aren’t violent people. They are capable of defending themselves, sometimes with extremely brutal techniques but that is not what they wish to do. They understand however that it’s easier to achieve peace from a position of strength. If you aren’t prepared to at least match the violence inflicted upon you then you’ve already lost.
