Contact with Britain

The time the art was dying in Japan was the same time it first became known to the West. During the 1890's, articles about jujitsu began to appear in English and outsiders' were able study it.

One of these was an engineer called E. W. Barton-Wright who was determined to bring back what he had learned to Britain. London had seen a few demonstrations before, but Barton-Wright's plan was the establishment of a permanent club. He called the art bartitsu from his own name. Success was somewhat mixed. Many of the Japanese experts who made the journey ended up touring the music halls. Here they took on challengers and staged elaborate stunts.

One of the first was Yukio Tani, an instructor from the Tenjin shinyo ryu. Tani toured for a while under the stage name "the pocket Hercules" where he met up with a wrestler called William Bankier (stage name "Apollo"). This was a long way from the gentlemen's sports clubs which had been envisaged but did introduce jujitsu to the general public.

Eventually, a club was set up in Oxford Street called The British Jiu Jitsu Society. This was a much more respectable affair and membership was difficult to obtain. Its combination of fashionableness and mysteriousness made it perfect for Sherlock Holmes, the most famous character of Arthur Conan Doyle. This is the skill which saves the heroes life in his final encounter with his enemy, Moriarty.

We tottered together upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds and clawed the air with both his hands. But for all his efforts he could not get his balance, and over he went.