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Hoplology is the science that deals with how human beings fight both with and without weapons. (For illustrative purposes, Tony Diaz is shown.)PHOTO BY THOMAS SANDERS

HoplologyMartial Arts Weapons and How Humans Fight

by Dave Lowry

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DISCLAIMERBLACK BELT COMMUNICATIONS, an Active Interest Media Publication, as publisher, does not endorse and makes no representation, warranty or guarantee concerning the safety or effectiveness of either the products and services advertised in this magazine or the martial arts or other techniques discussed or illustrated in this document. The publisher expressly disclaims any and all liability relating to the manufacture, sale or use of such products and services and the application of the techniques discussed or illustrated in this document. The purchase or use of some of the products, services or techniques advertised or discussed in this document may be illegal in some areas of the United States or other countries. Therefore, you should check federal, state, and local laws prior to your purchase or use of these products, services or techniques. The publisher makes no representation or warranty concerning the legality of the purchase or use of these products, services and techniques in the United States or elsewhere. Because of the nature of some of the products, services and techniques advertised or discussed in this document, you should consult a physician before using these products or services or applying these techniques. Specific self-defense responses illustrated in this document may not be justified in any particular situation in view of all of the circumstances or under applicable federal, state or local law. Neither Black Belt Communications nor the author makes any representation or warranty regarding the legality or appropriateness of any technique mentioned or depicted in this document. You may be injured if you apply or train in the techniques illustrated in this document and neither Black Belt Communications nor the author is responsible for any such injury that may result. It is essential that you consult a physician regarding whether or not to attempt any technique described in this document.

al Hoplology Society) he founded continues to inves-tigate and classify fighting arts, systems and weapons. It’s regrettable that their efforts haven’t received more attention in the scholastic world.

***

Academics studying cultures rarely focus on the combative methods of those cultures. For example, it’s unusual to find a professor devoted to the history and culture of Japanese civilization who has anything more than a cursory knowledge of the classical fight-ing arts of that country. Once I was sitting in a lecture given by a Ph.D. in Japanese history who was discuss-ing scroll paintings that illustrate some battles from Japan’s Muromachi era (1333-1467). He pointed to a specimen and noted the “samurai taking the head of his victim.” I was seated next to a well-trained hoplolo-gist, who snorted and said quietly, “They weren’t vic-tims; they were enemies.”

Obviously, the Ph.D. didn’t understand the context of the warfare of that period. The combatants were both professional warriors. In a battle between such men, “victims” is linguistically and historically inap-propriate. A hoplologist knows this and understands why. Such knowledge can be vital in seeking an un-

These three scenarios may seem connected only remotely. All involve “fighting arts,” true, but they

seem radically different. One person who would be in-terested in all of them — and who could draw mean-ingful conclusions from each one — is the hoplologist.

Hoplology is the behavioral science that examines how people fight. The weapons they use, the strate-gies they develop, the mental and emotional energies they bring to the conflict — all are matters of concern and study for the hoplologist.

Hoplology is a term first used by the explorer/ad-venturer/researcher Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890). A world traveler, Burton was fascinated by the various fighting systems he encountered in his jour-neys. A natural scholar, he began cataloging combat-ive systems and noting patterns that connect them in various ways. After his death, hoplology was largely ignored in academic circles.

In the late 1960s, Donn F. Draeger (1922-1982) re-vived it. Draeger was, in some ways, a modern itera-tion of Burton. Widely traveled and intensely interest-ed in the fighting arts of the world, Draeger, a Marine during World War II, spent the last decades of his life in a scholarly (and practical) investigation of them. The International Hoplology Center (now Internation-

In an escrima training session in the courtyard of a Manila, Philippines, mansion, young men wield the art’s rattan sticks, whirling them in patterns that often connect with stinging force. At the end of the intense practice, participants sport some seri-ous welts and bruises.

In a Tokyo karate dojo, practitioners polish the skills of disarming a knife-wielding opponent. One partner, holding a knife, pulls it back, cocked at his hip, then lunges so his counterpart can block it, seize his wrist and apply an arm lock.

In Los Angeles, an exponent of the mixed martial arts celebrates his victory by go-ing to a tattoo parlor, where he has applied to his biceps a long, writhing dragon clutching a human skull in its jaws.

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derstanding of another culture. The hoplological evi-dence we have about old Japan or any other culture is just as significant and worthy of study as, say, the na-tion’s ceramics or literature. Without it, there are huge gaps in our understanding of other civilizations.

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Hoplology is also concerned with the reasons hu-man beings fight. That may seem obvious — people fight to protect themselves or those around them. Or they’re motivated to fight for financial reward. Or, if they have psychological problems, they fight because they’re rewarded with the sense of power or the sat-isfaction that comes from causing harm to others. They’re all valid reasons in deter-mining the motivations for pursuing conflict, but the hoplologist looks deeper.

Sometimes fighting is ritualis-tic. Some early cultures engaged in bloody, brutal warfare in which entire tribes were wiped out. Others decid-ed battles by capturing enemies or humiliating them rather than killing them. Sometimes fighting changes because technological advances in-troduce unintended consequences. Napoleonic tactics with smoothbore muskets produced limited casualties in Europe in the 17th century. One hundred years later in the American Civil War, the same tactics produced incredible carnage because soldiers were equipped with rifles. A look at Hawaiian shark-toothed clubs is enough to make one shudder. Were they used regularly, or was their ap-pearance enough to intimidate an enemy? Such questions and the im-plications of their answers are the concern of the hoplologist.

It’s pertinent to note that I’m not a hoplologist, not even an amateur one. I’ve been fortunate enough to have spent time around those

trained and experienced in the field, however. That said, and given what we know about hoplology, let’s take another, closer look at those three scenarios with which we began.

Escrima includes extensive practice with either a single stick or a pair. The first step the hoplologist would probably take in examining escrima would be to analyze those weapons. Most escrima sticks are made of rattan, a light, durable wood. The hoplolo-gist would want to know why rattan is used. Are there other woods in the Philippines that might be more ef-fective as weapons? If so, why aren’t they used? Next, he would note their construction: simple, largely un-adorned, with nothing distinguishing one end from

It’s unfair to call the knife-defense techniques of the Japanese martial arts unrealistic because they aren’t as intricate as those of the Southeast Asian martial arts, hoplolo-gists would say, since the knife attacks that evolved in Japan were vastly different from those of Southeast Asia. (For illustrative purposes, Kelly Worden is shown.)

PHOTO BY RICK HUSTEAD

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the other. From this observation alone, he could be-gin to make conjectures. The lack of a defined “han-dle” might indicate that either end of the stick can be used. The relative simplicity of the stick might be a clue as to the social status of those who originally practiced the art. A well-trained hoplologist can look at a weapon in a museum case and make reliable and often remarkably accurate observations about the fighting art and the culture in which it was used, even if he’s never seen the art being practiced.

Once the hoplologist saw escrima training, he’d be-gin to amass more evidence, some of which would be obvious. For instance, who is practicing? Is it mostly young men? Are women training? If not, why? Are there cultural proscriptions against it? Is there a clear-ly defined teacher? If so, how does he teach? Does

he provide an example, then have the students practice it, or does he interact with them, serving as a partner? The hoplologist could also refer back to his original investigations about the weap-ons: Is rattan employed as a safer sub-stitute for a heavier wood meant to be used in combat?

My question about escrima, the first time I saw it, was this: Why do students exhibit bruises and welts? There’s a lot of hard hitting in the training sessions. I compared it to Japanese kendo, an art I knew something about. Kendo, a mod-ern sportive application of more an-cient forms of swordsmanship, evolved both armor and a flexible weapon that permitted training without those kinds of injuries. That’s not to say that kendo-ka don’t get their share of bruises and welts, for they do. But some thought and technology have obviously gone into providing at least some protection in kendo, efforts that haven’t gone into making escrima less painful.

A would-be hoplologist like me can often go astray at this point, jumping to the wrong conclusions. I might sur-mise that escrima went through a rapid

evolution fairly recently and hasn’t had the time to develop protective gear. That’s one possibility. There could be, however, numerous other explanations that require a more complex understanding of the art and culture in which it developed. Here’s one: The Philip-pines has been heavily influenced, historically speak-ing, by the Spanish and other Latin cultures since Spanish explorers first came there more than three centuries ago. It’s also an island chain where identity has been closely linked to small, often isolated tribes and groups. Within these tribes are rituals and behav-iors aimed at reinforcing the solidarity of the group.

So we have a sense of machismo combined with an often fierce sense of tribal identity. Further, we have a fighting art that seems to be practiced mostly by young men looking to establish themselves within

After studying escrima, a hoplologist might conclude that the bruises that accompany training in the Philippines are a rite of passage there, the au-thor says. (For illustrative purposes, Julius Melegrito is shown.)

PHOTO BY RICK HUSTEAD

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the community. It’s easy to conjecture, knowing all this, that the bangs and bumps of escrima aren’t inci-dental. They may well be part of the bonding experi-ence of young men, a badge of honor, a visible display of one’s willingness to accept pain. Escrima may not have developed armor or safer methods of practice because, hoplologically speaking, enduring the pain may be an essential part of the art.

Anyone who’s spent much time in a karate or aikido dojo knows that knife defense is, shall we say, elemen-tary. Attacks tend to be unidirectional ice-pick stabs or thrusts. Compared to the knife-fighting techniques of escrima or several other Southeast Asian systems, the knife work in karate and aikido is rudimentary and bears little resemblance to the realistic use of the weapon in other cultures. The hoplologist would ex-amine this with interest.

There are numerous factors in play that might ac-

count for the lack of sophistication in knife attacks in these budo forms. In a country where swords of all sizes were common, knives weren’t considered a pri-mary weapon. Daggers and shorter blades were most often used in battle against an armored warrior. While the slashing patterns of a knife-wielding escrima ad-ept can wreak serious injury almost instantly on an opponent in street clothes, you could attack a samurai in armor with such techniques all day without inflict-ing damage. So daggers and short swords were more commonly used in a thrusting motion, penetrating armor or stabbing into places unprotected by it. The knife attacks in the typical karate dojo look simplistic perhaps because Japanese society never developed a strategic need for more sophisticated (or at least mul-tidirectional) knife attacks.

“So karate’s no good against a knife?” If you’ve posed this question, you’re missing the point. The

In the Japanese sword arts, practitioners created flexible weapons and armor to protect themselves from injury during training. Parallel development didn’t take place in the Phil-ippines, the author says. (For illustrative purposes, Dana Abbott is shown.)

PHOTO BY RICK HUSTEAD

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point is that no fighting art can be expected to deal perfectly with strategies, weapons or situations out-side the bounds of the culture in which it developed. “The ultimate fighting art” and “handle any attack” make engaging advertising copy, but they ignore a basic premise of hoplology and human experience. We and our combative arts are all limited by histori-cal and cultural boundaries. We can adapt, but no fighting system can adapt sufficiently to address all or even most human fighting behavior. If we tried, we would eventually lose the basic principles that distin-guish the art and give it structure.

It’s attractive to talk about “formlessness” and “flu-idity,” and the strategic flexibility the words imply is important. Certainly some combative systems are more successful at this than others. However, if an art maintains its structural integrity and identity, it must have some form, some unifying characteristics that limit its scope. There are, for instance, some extremely sophisticated grappling arts, both old and new. No matter how good the grappler, though, he would have little chance against a competent spearman who could run him through from 10 feet away. Insisting

that your art is “complete” shows an ignorance of the spectrum of combative behavior. Criticizing an art because it’s too narrow is an-other kind of ignorance — in this case, about the purpose of the art.

***

The mixed martial arts are a fascinating field for hoplologists. One advantage they have in their research is that MMA has evolved in only a few decades. Further, getting access to it doesn’t require travel to some distant jungle in which the style developed. They can get hours of study material by going online and observing video-taped fights and training sessions.

What might the researcher conclude after a study of MMA? The system demonstrates, as we

noted, a remarkably rapid evolution. Techniques that were winning MMA tournaments only a decade ago are now obsolescent. One possible hoplological con-clusion regarding this might be that when a discipline has a clearly defined goal, evolutionary change is rap-id and vigorous. Compare MMA with the full-contact karate of a few decades ago. The latter struggled to identify itself, to some degree because its aims were vague. Were participants trying to score points as in the noncontact forms of karate? Or were they trying to inflict a knockout or actual damage? No one really knew, and the rules were confusing and amorphous. The aim of MMA, in contrast, is clear: to win by the submission or incapacitation of an opponent. In this arena, participants have a wide latitude in determin-ing what works and in abandoning techniques or strategies that don’t.

MMA training centers now are the locus of intense studies on fighting within the structure of MMA rules. Little time is spent learning to defend against a katana, for instance, because the goals of MMA don’t encom-pass that. In other words, saying, “Yeah, those guys are good, but how would they do against a 15th-century

The tattoos that mixed martial artists display are designed in part to intimidate opponents, hoplologists believe. Ancient Polynesian warriors wore tattoos for a similar purpose: to frighten enemies in battle.

PHOTO BY RICK HUSTEAD

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samurai?” is silly from a hoplological perspective. MMA wasn’t designed to be used on a feudal battlefield.

Hoplologically, it’s also interesting to note how MMA has consciously rejected nearly all the trap-pings of the Asian fighting arts. There’s no bowing, no ritual, no specific concern for the inculcation of social or spiritual values. Instead, the MMA paradigm is to some degree an admixture of Western boxing and professional wrestling. These two fighting sports weigh heavily on what the hoplologist might call “dis-play.” The term refers to noncombative behavior that seeks to intimidate or otherwise affect the reaction of an opponent or others. The “trash talking” of the box-ing weigh-in and the scripted threats and posturing that precede the professional wrestling bout are in-tegral to those sports. They appear to some degree in MMA, although they’re usually a bit more muted — possibly a remnant of the Confucian values inherent in the Japanese and Chinese fighting arts.

Nevertheless, posturing displays — shirtless mus-cle flexing, adopting fierce grimaces — are an impor-tant aspect of MMA, one that’s supposed to present an air of intimidation or power. In this context, elab-orate tattoos play a role, adding to the image. MMA participants are not the first to have adopted this, of course. Polynesian tattooing was a vital part of ritual and warfare centuries ago; indeed, many of the de-signs sported by MMA combatants are taken directly from those patterns. Some people may find such adornment distasteful. The hoplologist, though, sees them as another piece of evidence in understanding MMA as a fighting system.

***

There’s a temptation to conclude that by using hoplological methods of observation, one can deter-mine which art or system is “best.” That’s not the pur-pose of hoplology, however. The hoplologist might de-termine, using his research and analytical skills, which discipline best suits his individual needs. It’s crucial to understand, though, that combative systems can be judged and evaluated only within the context for which they were developed and are intended. Watch-ing an expert swordsman draw and cut with a katana in a fraction of a second, it’s easy to decide that iaido

is a deadly art. But to assume that learning such tech-niques will polish one’s combat skills against a mug-ger on a subway is ridiculous.

Those without an understanding of hoplology often engage in arguments about effectiveness. In some in-stances, they’re merely immature, believing in some car-toon fantasy of an all-powerful art that will render them invincible. In other cases, though, they fail to understand the nature of a fighting art because they don’t under-stand the basics of hoplology. Fighting systems have specific applications. Their applicability is the standard by which they’re hoplologically evaluated. If I say my art will protect a practitioner against a gun-wielding assail-ant, I should be able to demonstrate that. If I say my art is for the purpose of developing a beautiful form, I should be able to demonstrate that. When a hoplologist sees an art that says one thing and does another, he’s suspicious and wants to know why there’s a disconnect. It’s not that the art is or isn’t “effective.” It’s that it doesn’t do what it purports to do. For instance, an art might claim to be 400 years old and generated on the battlefields of old Japan. The expert in it demonstrates a disarm of an opponent with a handgun. The disarming might be effective, but it’s at odds with the claim of an ancient ancestry that predates the introduction of the handgun in Japan.

***

An appreciation of hoplology, even from the per-spective of the amateur, reveals the remarkable com-plexity and profundity of the fighting arts. Too many enthusiasts ignore this aspect of the combative disci-plines. Human beings have always engaged in fight-ing. Various cultures have developed arts intended for this purpose, some sophisticated and some simple. Cultures have attached moral or philosophical ele-ments to their arts. Some are surrounded with esoter-ic teachings; others have evolved into sporting forms. Some demand membership in an ethnic or religious group, while others insist on certain codes of behav-ior. The person who views all of them as just “fighting arts” is looking at this major enterprise of humanity in a limited way. Hoplology reveals just how deep and profound our species’ combative arts are. It’s a study that can, like the fighting arts themselves, occupy one for a lifetime.

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