The Day Jiu-Jitsu Died in Paris by Mark Hatmaker

 

Let us look to a single historical instance that illuminates a lesson in Task-Saturation or what Musashi called “Sword Flowers.”

Here Jiu-Jitsu just happens to be the vehicle of the combat strategy lesson. The art is not being picked on, not at all,

The focus here is less the art itself, than it is the mind of the combat athlete that “fixes” beyond good sense, or good health.

We will begin in France, then spend time in a Blackhawk chopper cockpit, then allow a samurai to throw shade and wind up, hopefully, with pupils dilated for wiser tactic and strategy choices.

Early 20^th-Century France

Edmond Desbonnet, was a physical culture purveyor and entrepreneur, like all good businessmen he kept an eye on how to increase clientele.

During a trip to London in 1905 he encounters a physical exhibition that was currently the rage, that of the “exotic art of Japanese Jiu-Jitsu” [Judo.]

Taro Miyake was wowing the public and physical culturists alike with his adept use of leverage to toss larger and stronger ones willy-nilly.

Desbonnet sees an opportunity. He hires Miyake and his equally able colleague, Kanaya, to come to France for a few months to teach his core cadre this new sensation. The French public is likewise enthusiastic for the “new” form of martial art.

Desbonnett then contracts Ernest Regnier, a combination man, that is a boxer who is also a wrestler, to go to London and learn all he can from Miyake and Kanaya, then bring it home and teach the art in Desbonnet’s establishment.

Regnier, not only an able boxer-wrestler, he was also a powerful [if smallish] man who took to the art like a duck to water.

Regnier is immediately smitten by the art, and thanks to his conditioning base and solid foundation in wrestling he is soon deemed as able as his worthy instructors.

The newly combat evolved Regnier then returns to France and to show his commitment to the new way decides to “Japanize” his name, he is now dubbed, Re-Nie.

In the summer of 1905, Desbonnet opens a studio in the upscale Champs-Elysees quarter of Paris and dubs it, The Japanese School of Jiu-Jitsu.”

It is a rousing financial success and Re-Nie, Miyake, and Kanaya become celebrities, touring the continental capitals giving demonstrations.

Re-Nie sees the financial success and decides to go it on his own without Desbonnet and comes up with the idea of a moneymaker of an exhibition.

With the confidence in his newly mastered art, he schedules himself to fight all-comers at the Folies Bergere.

The evening of November 30^th, 1905, one of those all-comers happened to be a wrestler named Witzler. [he is described as “savage and surly.”]

Witzler possesses good-condition but…only one art, that of wrestling.

Whereas, Re-Nie, has good conditioning and boxing, and wrestling, and the ace in the hole of Jiu-Jitsu.

In short, he is no stranger to any type of scrum

So how does the match of the triple-threat celebrity go against the single-arted challenger?

Witzler opens with a head-butt to the nose and then pummels Re-Nie’s face so thoroughly he is unable to continue because he can’t see through the blood.

All fads must end, but this event sped the death of this one for Parisians.

Business after this debacle dried up, and Desbonnet closed his Champs-Elysees Jiu-Jitsu school declaring, “Jiu-jitsu was dead.”

I Emphasize…

No, jiu-jitsu clearly was not dead, merely this fashionable moment.

The match did not prove the superiority of wrestling over jiu-jitsu.

What the match did do was highlight and spotlight the hazards of task-saturation.

Which brings us to…

Blackhawk Helicopters

The human animal often reacts less than ideally in chaotic or unfamiliar circumstances, hence the importance and value of intense methodical training for military, law enforcement, combat athletes, et cetera. Training for chaos with chaos in mind is not a 100% bet that you will perform up to snuff, but it is a nice bit of insurance.

Task saturation is, in short, being exceptionally focused on your training protocol to the exclusion of new data.

That is, it is possible to have an operator performing everything scrupulously, in perfect order no matter what.

But to their detriment.

Task-saturation is well-studied by the military because the nature of military training requires high-performance under so many chaotic circumstances that they will have a higher likelihood of manifesting. Where this can go awry is when one aspect of the hierarchy or checklist is no longer available or ideal, an operator who is task-saturated will fixate on completing the task despite its loss of validity and in face of it being a potential harm.

Example: There were some puzzling cases of helicopters being ditched in the sea and pilots being found drowned within the cockpit. The latches were not jammed, and in some instances, harnesses had sheared so “seatbelt entrapment” was not on the table.

It was determined from a bit of forensic backtracking, that some pilots were following the ditch checklist so assiduously they continued to struggle with the latch even if the step was no longer required.

Some pilots were trying to free a belt or harness latch even in cases where the harness had separated, in other words, no need to release a latch. The pilots could have gone on to the next step and swam out.

Task saturation is a tough glitch to overcome, as it is the opposite of bad form in training, here, we have an operator/athlete so well-trained that the protocol will not be broken come hell or literal high water.

Task saturation is seldom experienced by good improvisers, folks we would call quick on their feet, what David Epstein calls "Generalists" in his book Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. We must walk the fine line between being very well trained with an eye on protocol, and having an awake eye for when the protocol [or aspects of it] need to be tossed.

[I plead the case that the history of Rough 'n' Tumble Frontier fighting, with and without weapons, is one long case study of how the Frontier Indigenous Generalists triumphed, influenced and changed those who "invaded." See The Black Box Project for the fun physical proof.]

The military training attempts to thwart task-saturation by varying tasks and programming scenarios in training where the protocol must be scrambled, that is forcing improvisation upon the operator.

We Return to Paris

Witzler scrambled Re-Nie’s protocol. The highly trained Re-Nie sought Jiu-Jitsu answers where they no longer applied.

When Jiu-Jitsu answers apply they are manna.

When they do not---they are anathema.

But, we must not rest on assumptions that scrambling our methods is enough.

Sometimes the glitch is in the complexity of the approach itself.

To Our Samurai

Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings is a foundational text in Samurai lore.

Musashi grouses that he too sees danger in blind adherence to “Just because…” tradition that no longer fits combative realities, but…

And this is the chewy part of Musashi’s observation…

He also warns that much “innovation” that comes after “tradition” [read that as foundational and effective] is equally rife with superfluities.

He places the blame on turning the war arts into commerce, the supplier needs to keep the buyer at the teat, so to speak, so the “master” multiplies complexities to keep the milk flowing.

“As I see society, people make the arts into commercial products. They even think of themselves as commodities, and also make implements for their commercial value. This attitude is like flowers compared with seeds: the flowers are more numerous than the seeds, there is more decoration than reality.”

All martial tactics and strategies have an essence, often a thrusting point of simplicity as the chaos of true battle will support nothing more than the Occam’s Razor of stripped-down choice.

The flowers may be beautiful but how many are as useful as a head-butt to the nose when you were expecting a collar-tie-up?

That zumbrada may be lovely, but there is the pig-stickin’ to contend with.

Again, I could have selected from many an art: boxing, wrestling, Muay Thai, et cetera, where we see examples of something that is without a doubt effective in most circumstances, but may provide the wrong answer simply because it is the task-saturated answer, or the post-foundational sword-flower answer.

[For nothing but seeds and rip-roarin’ to the point Old School tactics, historically accurate and viciously verified see verified see our RAW/Black Box Subscription Service.]

Or our brand-spankin’ new podcast The Rough and Tumble Raconteur available on all platforms.