makes muskets more accurate, and concludes that demons
guide the spinning balls; the result is bans against the manufac-
ture and possession of rifles in most Roman Catholic countries.
1549 Burmese soldiers besieging the Thai capital at Ayuthia stage a
series of sword dances. These appear to have been used mostly
to keep the troops amused while their superiors interpreted
cloud omens and other astrological signs.
About 1550 Japanese pirates (waka)use harquebuses during their raids into
China and Korea. While the pirates’ successes owed more to
disciplined small-unit infantry tactics than firearms, the new
weapons still caused the Koreans to create new military bu-
reaucracies. The Chinese, on the other hand, started hiring ac-
robats and boxers to teach their peasants how to fight. How-
ever, tales of flying swordsmen do not become a staple of
Chinese fiction until the late nineteenth century.
About 1550 The training of Ottoman Janissaries is described as including
archery, musketry, javelin throwing, and fencing. There was no
pike training, though, since the Janissaries believed that pikes
were useful only for men trained to fight like machines.
About 1560 Japanese schools of swordsmanship introduce kata designed to
teach batto-jutsu(quick-draw techniques). Pioneers included
Tamiya Heibei Narimasa, a sword instructor for the first three
Tokugawa shôgun who was a student of Hayashizaki Jinsuke,
the mid-sixteenth-century samurai who reportedly developed
these techniques after meditating for 100 days at a Shintô
shrine in Yamagata. In 1932, the Japanese systematized some
of these quick-draw techniques and then turned them into a
new martial art called iaidô(the way of sword-drawing). A pio-
neer in the latter process was Nakayama Hakudo of the Musô
Jikiden Eishin-ryû.
1560 Construction begins on the massive Da Er Monastery in the Nan
Shan mountains of western China. Since it was an important
and popular Yellow Hat Buddhist temple, an additional “De-
fender of Buddhism” hall was added in 1631. Bronze mirrors
lined the walls of this latter hall. Beside its doors stood rows of
spears and swords. The monks used these weapons to exorcise
demons and entertain crowds during quarterly temple fairs.
1562 A Ming-dynasty general named Qi Jiguang starts work on a
book of military theory called Jixiao Xinshu(New Text of
Practical Tactics). Although most of Qi’s book was devoted to
battlefield maneuver and armed techniques, this was also the
first Ming-dynasty text to provide realistic descriptions of
Shaolin quanfa(fist law).
1563 Because so many duelists are dying from blood poisoning or in-
fection, the Council of Trent threatens duelists, seconds, and the
civil authorities who are failing to suppress them with excom-
munication; rarely enforced in practice, these bans are used
mainly for preventing duels between aristocrats and commoners.
About 1565 The Flemings start putting handle bindings on longbows, thus giv-
ing them both a top and a bottom. (Although bow makers rou-
tinely stamped bows at their centers to help archers line up their
shots, bows without handles could be spanned either end up.)
Chronological History of the Martial Arts 807