By Maya Palit
Self-defence classes don’t just surface for Women’s Day commemorations every year. They’re now also the go-to for women’s groups, state police forces and municipal corporations trying to be proactive about women’s safety (that is, when people aren’t recommending that women carry knives or revolvers to take on molestation).
Now, a new translation of an old martial arts book gives you some more history to this phenomenon. According to an article in Live Science, the book’s title translates as “Self Defence for Women”. It was written by a Japanese woman, Nobatake Yaeko, under the pen name Nohata Showa. She was apparently part of a self-defence league formed by a few women in response to increasing violence against women, and wrote that the book was part of a response to the fact that “A resolute solution to men’s debauchery continues to elude us.”
Published in 1914, it has a collection of various moves women can use to take on attackers, and details about ‘kyusho‘ or a discipline based on knowing the pressure points on bodies. The idea is that when they’re struck there, attackers can be incapacitated. The book was recently republished and translated into English by the translator Eric Shahan, who speculates that its author was a women’s historian who might have run a dojo where she taught women martial arts techniques.
You can go through the other moves outlined in the book — including kicks where ‘the thigh meets the hip’, and how to break an attacker’s arm into two — here.