1932 An El Paso saddler named Sam Myres produces the first com-
mercial quick-draw holsters, with a design following the ideas
of an Oklahoma lawman named Tom Threepersons. Custom
quick-draw rigs had been available for several years. See, for
instance, William D. Frazier’s 1929 book, American Pistol
Shooting,and J. Henry Fitzgerald’s 1930 book, Shooting.
1934 Ôtsuka Hironori of the All-Japan Collegiate Karate Association
publishes rules for yakusoku kumite(noncontact free sparring).
1934 Twenty-seven-year-old Charles Kenn of Honolulu organizes a
theatrical event featuring ancient Hawaiian games and sports,
with the goal of replicating a mahahikifestival, including repli-
cating Luaand other combative sports virtually extinct since
the arrival of missionaries and smallpox during the 1840s.
1935 Kawaishi Mikonosuke introduces Butokukai Jûdô to Paris. (Al-
though a separate licensing body, the Butokukai’s jûdô differed
from Kôdôkan Jûdô mostly because the former put more em-
phasis on groundwork than the latter.) At the front of
Kawaishi’s school was a blackboard. On this board, Kawaishi
wrote the names of his techniques. In front of each name was a
number:
Ashi-waza(Leg technique)- Osoto-gari (“Major Outer Reaping Throw”)
- De-ashi-barai (“Advanced Foot Sweep”)
- Hiza-guruma (“Knee Wheel”)
Kawaishi would then say, “I will teach you the first move-
ment,” and the students would follow along. As the numbers
were in French, the students thus “learned by the numbers”
(personal communication with Henry Plee, October 8, 1995).
Kawaishi’s inspiration was probably American self-defense in-
struction, as by 1935, New York wrestling instructor Will Bing-
ham had been teaching women “to dispose of a masher with
neatness and dispatch [using] grip No. 7 followed by hold No.
9” for at least twenty years (New York World,January 30,
1916, Sunday Magazine,3).
1940 The Hon Hsing Athletic Club is established in Vancouver,
British Columbia, and its quanfa(fist law) classes are (proba-
bly) the first organized Chinese martial art classes in Canada.
There were, however, no non-Chinese students allowed until
the 1960s. “It used to be that the Chinese instructors wouldn’t
teach Westerners,” Raymond Leung told Ramona Mar in 1986.
“But it’s wrong to think that if we teach them, they’ll use it to
beat us. With every new student, I think we make one new
friend” (Yee 1988, 148).
1940 In Montreal, 19-year-old Joe Weider publishes the first issue of
Your Physique,the first magazine to seriously tout bodybuild-
ing. In 1947 Weider started the International Federation of
Body Builders. The chief difference between bodybuilding and
weight lifting is that the former is semierotic muscular theater
while the latter is nationalistic athletic competition.
1941 Bob Hoffman of York Barbell introduces the idea of women’s
weight lifting and bodybuilding to the United States.
1942 The Japanese replace the Dutch colonial government of Indone-
826 Chronological History of the Martial Arts