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■lebeor)uUi?ciieJAPANESE HAVEFETISH WON BYFOUR ALIENSW11u*eL1-TAKES TEN THOUSAND JUDO FALLS TOGET IT.CLOSE RECORD KEPT ON MENBelow the Black Belt is the Brown Belt and the White Belt the Novice Class.(By IJutfh By«s International NewsService Correspond ont).TOKIO, April 1L—Thu Japanese have a decoration, the wearer of which in a scrap would have no physicnl reason to fear .Jess Willard. The precious churm can neither bo bought nor gained by favor. There is hut oiVe way to win it—ten Lhoiir-utul falls, '‘dull, sickening thuds,” said- Allan Smith of the American Trading Company, Tokio, the fourth foreigner in history to obtain the Black Belt which distinguishes the must select circle of jiu-jitsu experts- 'The Black Bell istto Judo* the Japanese name for jiu-jitsu, white the world's championship is to the noble art of self-defense, according to Marquis of Quoen.sbery rules, with the difference that while you can only huve^ow? world's champion pugilist,. the Black Belt is conferred on nil who qualify.Up to a few.weeks ngo three foreigners had the right to wear the coveted decoration—a man who formerly edited the American paper here and is now war correspondent at Petrograd, a professor of languages of mixed Japanese-American ancestry, and another whom 1 have not been able to trace.Mr. Allan Smith, who left the land of brown heath and shaggy wood ten years ago to enter the American Trading Company in Japan, is the fourth. He is known in Japanese as a shochu), or one who is now qualified to tench the art of judo and to wear the black licit.It has taken him nine years to reach the required proficiency,i -but of these only the last three have been devoted to earnest study. He has had a room fitted up at .Yokohama, where he*lives and here he has put in three hours a week at steady practice for throe years.Below the Black Belt class are the wearers of the white belt and the brown belt, each divided into three classes. The white belt marks thethree novice classes. At the end ofthe first year Mr. Smith had won his way into the lowest brown class, having* defeated the best in each of the white classes below him. He stayed in the. first brown class for two years. It is here that the real fight for recognition takes place. There are always about .100 young and powerful wrestlers in this class, nil of them in the highest training. Every'year a‘small number graduate into the teacher or black belt class.From the time he enters the judo school a complete record is kept of all the student’s matches, showing what opponents he met, with what result, and the tricks that won him the match. There are hundreds of these tricks, each with its own hi fact, Mr. Smith says that for every catch in cutch-as-ealch-can. or Greece-Roman wrestling, there are,ten in jiu-jitsu.Mr. Smith makes the claim that between the Japanese art of self-defense and western wrestling there is no comparison, either as a spectacle, an exercise or a means of combat. He includes boxing- in the list of aria that arc inferior to jiu-jitsu.“A master of jiu-jitsu could have defeated Jack Johnson in his prime was his confident assertion, and when asked to bring the assertionNpihrtothwSttobtstth01up to date, he declared that Jess ^thin part of the state secure same from this foundry, .P. C. Fleming, the president of the company, is known nil over this part of the state as one of its foremost coal operators. Until ten years ago he was for twenty-two years actively Interested in the con! industry of the state and his wide acquaintance and congenial disposition is largely responsible for the great success ho has enjoyed in the manufacture of mine supplies.J. W. Fleming, the secretary and treasurer, is a son of J. C. Fleming and is a chip off the old block in every souse of the word, lie is a thorough young business man and, like his father, is always found On the right aide of any question affecting the City of Moberly and its people.The Moberly Foundry and Machine Co. employ from fifteen to twenty • people the year around, uh* iiig union men in all departments. They make anything that can be j made in « foundry and Moberly is [proud of such an institution.2 by the Moberly, Mo.Willard would be na easy. Smith’s tutor in judo was asked what he thought would be tfie outcome of a contest between Jack Johnson and himself, and after thinking over the proposition for a moment, ho replied that he would stake his reputation on it, and added that there were thirty or forty young fellows in the class at that moment who could account for the big negro just as easily.A question as to whether the same applied to Gotch or any of the top-notch wrestlers was not ao easily answered. P or .success in jiu-jitsu it appears . that clothes on your opponent are necessary, and the fact that occidental wrestlers are stripp-* ed from the waist up would puzzle ajudo expert. ; •But put clothes on Hiickenschmidt or Zbyazco or any of the rest and they would have to bow to the superior science of the Japanese gyn-tem,according to Smith, Weight would affect the fight, but not de-cisnvcly. Gotch at Ids best weighedabout 200 pounds. The heaviest of the Japanese wrestlers weighs, about 100 pounds and the average is about ISO, (Thin applies to jiu-jitsu expo mm tH, not to the enormous fat men who practice sum ox. If any jiu-jitsu expert were pitted against a boxer of hm own weight it would be all over in a minute. This disposes of Pucky MncFarland, Mike Gibbons and Freddy Welsh, according to Smith,The idea that jiu-jitsu is merely n lot of holds that would be barred in a western wrestling match is said to be all wrong and to be due to the. writings of foreigners who have not studied the art as it jg practised today. Modern jiu-jitsu is simply u very scientific. form of wrestling including a number of throws that cun wrestlers are not acquainted with, ,One of the beauties of Judo is that skill and not beef or brute strength is the whole tiling. A big man may beat you once but by hard practice you will be able to take his measure In the next match. Judo matches are interesting because they consist of clean throws from n standing position. A bout usually means half a dozen clean, hard throws, in which the defeated man falls with a thud/ In spite of this it is one of the safest of. sports, There is no record of a jiu-jitsu wrestler being killed and in some of the big wrestling days ug .many as 000-men may take part without one being Injured.Wearers of the Binek Belt are also divided into three classes, and above the third class (count backwards In this topsy-turvy, country) tiie men arc ranked by seniority, as there is practically no dffferhece fn their skill. Mr. Smith ; Intends • to keep trying; until he in in the finalwalist.01
Newspaper Details
Moberly Daily Index
Moberly, Missouri, US
Sun, Apr 02, 1916
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
CA, USA 07 Mar 2021
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