JIU-JITSU IN THE HOME

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIV, Issue 3241, 11 December 1930, Page 7

JIU-JITSU IN THE HOME

TERRORS FOR HUSBANDS. MODERN GIRLS’ GRIP OF IRON. Men, bewareThe modern girl is taking up jiujitsu, ostensibly to improve her figure, but actually, one suspects to reduce mere man to a final state of submission. At a gymnasium near Victoria, London, recently, were slender girls hurling hefty men to the ground and holding them down with* grips of iron until they yelled for mercy. “How on earth do they manage it?” said the Daily Express representative to Mr. Koizumi, the Japanese responsible for teaching women how to put their husbands on the carpet. Mi'. Koizumi smiled.

“Jiu-jitsu,” he said, “is good sport. Physical culture; use all muscles, all brain; like chess and wrestling combined. You try.”

I was handed over to a genial instructor, he continues, who led me on to a thickly-padded mat. After we had made the formal obeisance, touching the mat with our foreheads, the instructor gripped my coat lapel with one hand and my sleeve with the other, and bade me grab him in the same way. Then, barefooted, we waltzed slowly round together.

“Let your mind and body relax,” he said, “ready to receive new impressions.” I relaxed. In a moment I received a new impression—the impression that I had fallen on my back with a mighty wallop. I had. The instructor’s face was wreathed in smiles. “Good, eh?” he said, as he helped me'to my feet. “Now, you do it to me.” He demonstrated, in slow motion, the correct way to throw him, explaining the importance of balance and proper co-ordination of mind and muscles to anticipate an opponent’s move almost by instinct, and act accordingly. After a little practice I managed to throw him. “Now try it on one of my clients,” he said, as he introduced me to a slip of a girl, not more than five feet high. “But I say, really—” I protested. “Come on!” cried the girl. Before I realised it I was again sprawling on the mat. I leaped to my feet and made a grab at her wrist. “I’ll show you who .... ouch!” I said. “That’s the hand and arm lock,” explained the girl sweetly, holding me with a gentle grip which was perfectly painless—until I tried to move, when it felt as though my arm would snap.

“I gave in. But as soon as I was free my cave-man complex urged me to show her that I was no weakling. So I made a grab at her waist and hoisted her off her feet. The next think I knew was that she was kneeling on my chest.

“I decided it was time to go.

“Mr. Koizumi,” I said, as I rose from the mat, “don’t you think that a woman’s power over men is sufficient already without jiu-jitsu? What are we husbands to do about it?” Mr. Koizumi beamed.

“You must learn jiu-jitsu, too,” he replied, as he turned to the younger woman, threw her over his shoulder and sent her sprawling on the mat. “Good, eh?” I said.