progress. Therefore the China Wushu Association was created,
under the aegis of the All-China Athletic Federation, and
tasked with removing all “feudal comprador fascist thought”
from the Chinese martial arts.
1953 Arvo Ojala introduces metal-lined, forward-raked pistol hol-
sters to Hollywood; Ojala’s rigs appear in most subsequent cin-
ematic gunfights and contribute to the establishment of quick-
draw pistol competitions in 1956.
1953 Tôhei Kôichi introduces aikidô to Hawaii; on Maui, a police-
man named Shunichi Suzuki helps him arrange demonstrations,
and due to Tôhei’s good work (and returning to Hawaii during
1955–1956 and 1957–1958), aikidô soon becomes popular
with U.S. policemen.
1959 With the publication of Goldfinger,British novelist Ian Fleming
introduces European and North American readers to karate.
1959 Bruce Lee starts teaching yongchun (wing chun)in the covered
parking lot of a Blue Cross clinic in Seattle, Washington.
1961 After a woman named Rusty Glickman defeats a male oppo-
nent during an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU)–sanctioned jûdô
meet in New York City, the AAU bans women from participat-
ing in jûdô tournaments. (The reason was not that the male-
dominated AAU leadership believed that women couldn’twres-
tle, but that women shouldn’twrestle.) Under pressure from
women’s groups (including one led by the by-then Rusty Glick-
man Kanokogi) the AAU finally relented in 1971 and allowed
women to compete against women using special “women’s
rules.” The women kept pushing for equality, and women were
allowed to compete using standard rules in 1973.
1963 The massive muscle bulk of the Soviet national jûdô team
causes the French national jûdô team to start demanding
weight divisions.
1964 Angel Cabales of Stockton, California, opens the first commer-
cial school to teach Filipino martial arts to non-Filipinos.
1966 History students at the University of California–Berkeley estab-
lish the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. The original
purpose of the SCA was to re-create life in medieval times.
Many members liked sword-and-buckler play. Early weapons
and armor were crude and tended to build a high tolerance for
pain.
1966 Bruce Lee appears on a short-lived American television series
called The Green Hornet.Because some influential producers
refused to believe that North American audiences would ever
like an Asian hero, Lee could not get starring roles. Outraged,
he returned to Hong Kong, where he met Raymond Chow of
Golden Harvest, who was starting to use hand-to-hand fights
in his action films instead of swordplay. The result was a series
of low-budget chop-socky flicks, including The Big Bossand
Way of the Dragon.Even though the fighting shown in these
movies was more spectacular than practical, the scripts’ antiau-
thoritarian themes appealed to working-class audiences every-
where, and the result was incredible box-office success.
1970 While watching full-contact karate star Joe Lewis defeat a San828 Chronological History of the Martial Arts
1952
cont.