Today I solved the mystery of Bojutsu 棒術.
I was thinking about how “Bojutsu” is listed as the official fighting style of Street Fighter’s character “Eagle”, and how that makes no sense at all since Eagle doesn’t fight with a bo staff (he uses what appear to be eskrima sticks).
Long story short, his official fighting style is listed as 棒術 which translates literally to something more like “stick fighting” or “art of the stick”. “Bojutsu” is also a correct interpretation, but only if the context is there (which it is not, as he doesn’t use a 6 foot staff).
- First I found the Wikipedia article for Bojutsu.
- Then I copied the kanji from that page 棒術.
- Then I did a google search of the kanji and looked for images that were similar to Eagle’s weapons.
- When I found one, I translated the page and found it translates to “stick fighting”.
- Then I confirmed the translation with a fluent Japanese speaker.
- Then I also checked it in Google Translate.
- Then I also checked each character (棒 and 術) separately [1] [2].
棒 – noun
rod, pole, stick, club術 – noun
art, way, means
That’s how I figured out Eagle’s fighting style is “Stick Fighting”, and was incorrectly translated to “Bojutsu”. Case closed.
I suppose it could also be a bit of a pun or play on words as one translation of stick is “bar” which would make it “Bar Fighting” (Eagle is a bouncer in the story-line). That might be on purpose since Hakan’s translations also contain puns and jokes.
So it’s like the style Sherlock Holmes learned? What was it called again? Baritsu or something?
I had no idea Holmes was a stick fighter. The only dual stick style I’m personally aware of is eskrima, from the fillipino martial arts.
The other stick fighting style I know is Zulu Stick Fighting, but the problem is that one of the sticks you are using is basically a shield. Since Eagle uses both sticks for offense and short when compared to the sticks used in Zulu Stick Fighting which is why I believe Eagle’s style is Eskrima.
I found out what the deal with Sherlock Holmes fighting style is. From his wiki page I have this:
“Martial arts
In “The Adventure of the Empty House”, Holmes recounts to Watson how he used martial arts to overcome Professor Moriarty and fling his adversary to his death down the Reichenbach Falls. He states, “I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me”. The name “baritsu” appears to be a reference to the real-life martial art of Bartitsu, which combined jujitsu with boxing and cane fencing.”
He also uses Singlestick, which as the name implies uses only one stick.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlestick
Also Baritsu seems to be based upon the real Bartitsu martial art.
Just had a interesting video pop up on my newsfeed. It is a jiu-jitsu video related to a Bartitsu club from 1905 and possibly the oldest footage of Japanese martial arts!
https://youtu.be/eALLe1wghSA