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Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

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1952<br />

cont.<br />

progress. <strong>The</strong>refore the China Wushu Association was created,<br />

under the aegis of the All-China Athletic Federation, and<br />

tasked with removing all “feudal comprador fascist thought”<br />

from the Chinese martial arts.<br />

1953 Arvo Ojala introduces metal-lined, forward-raked pistol holsters<br />

to Hollywood; Ojala’s rigs appear in most subsequent cinematic<br />

gunfights and contribute to the establishment of quickdraw<br />

pistol competitions in 1956.<br />

1953 Tôhei Kôichi introduces aikidô to Hawaii; on Maui, a policeman<br />

named Shunichi Suzuki helps him arrange demonstrations,<br />

and due to Tôhei’s good work (and returning to Hawaii during<br />

1955–1956 and 1957–1958), aikidô soon becomes popular<br />

with U.S. policemen.<br />

1959 With the publication of Goldfinger, British novelist Ian Fleming<br />

introduces European and North American readers to karate.<br />

1959 Bruce Lee starts teaching yongchun (wing chun) in the covered<br />

parking lot of a Blue Cross clinic in Seattle, Washington.<br />

1961 After a woman named Rusty Glickman defeats a male opponent<br />

during an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU)–sanctioned jûdô<br />

meet in New York City, the AAU bans women from participating<br />

in jûdô tournaments. (<strong>The</strong> reason was not that the maledominated<br />

AAU leadership believed that women couldn’t wrestle,<br />

but that women shouldn’t wrestle.) Under pressure from<br />

women’s groups (including one led by the by-then Rusty Glickman<br />

Kanokogi) the AAU finally relented in 1971 and allowed<br />

women to compete against women using special “women’s<br />

rules.” <strong>The</strong> women kept pushing for equality, and women were<br />

allowed to compete using standard rules in 1973.<br />

1963 <strong>The</strong> massive muscle bulk of the Soviet national jûdô team<br />

causes the French national jûdô team to start demanding<br />

weight divisions.<br />

1964 Angel Cabales of Stockton, California, opens the first commercial<br />

school to teach Filipino martial arts to non-Filipinos.<br />

1966 History students at the University of California–Berkeley establish<br />

the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. <strong>The</strong> original<br />

purpose of the SCA was to re-create life in medieval times.<br />

Many members liked sword-and-buckler play. Early weapons<br />

and armor were crude and tended to build a high tolerance for<br />

pain.<br />

1966 Bruce Lee appears on a short-lived American television series<br />

called <strong>The</strong> Green Hornet. Because some influential producers<br />

refused to believe that North American audiences would ever<br />

like an Asian hero, Lee could not get starring roles. Outraged,<br />

he returned to Hong Kong, where he met Raymond Chow of<br />

Golden Harvest, who was starting to use hand-to-hand fights<br />

in his action films instead of swordplay. <strong>The</strong> result was a series<br />

of low-budget chop-socky flicks, including <strong>The</strong> Big Boss and<br />

Way of the Dragon. Even though the fighting shown in these<br />

movies was more spectacular than practical, the scripts’ antiauthoritarian<br />

themes appealed to working-class audiences everywhere,<br />

and the result was incredible box-office success.<br />

1970 While watching full-contact karate star Joe Lewis defeat a San<br />

828 Chronological History of the <strong>Martial</strong> <strong>Arts</strong>

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