There is not much information out there on this special set of 88 cards. I bought darn near every pack I could get my hands on and only have about 55 of the set. While the majority of the cards deals with Japanese martial arts, it is a world wide series of martial arts. While I may eventually do a post of all of the non-Japanese ones, this blog will for now just concentrate on the Japanese martial arts.
The ones I have done prior to to this: Sumo and Kyu-jitsu (also known as Kyudo or Japanese archery, a sport I played whilst living in Japan); are like the one above, merely one-offs. Other disciplines have five or six or more cards describing the sport - like Judo and Karate. I always wanted to do karate, but instead did three years of judo here in Toronto as a kid growing up. Yes... I am a very dangerous man, having also done Kendo and Tae kwon do. I also am a nerd, writer, and music teacher to go along with some descent soccer skills (as a kid) and baseball (as an adult). My god... I am a friggin' enigma. Why am I just discovering that? Just kidding, I always knew I was 'different'. Back to the card...
The card, as you can see from the backing below, is written in English first, French and then German on the bottom. The front features line drawn art.
I will present the writing on the back of the card here, in case your browser will not allow you to read it clearly:
Jiu Jitsu
Japanese martial arts
Set of techniques of unarmed combat, which includes throws, holds, "atemis", (blows) or simple pressure on vital or neuralgic points of the human anatomy. In the illustration, we show an ancient engraving of the "Kodokan".
Now in the writing above, the bracketed word 'blows' need not have the coma before it. The grammar bitch is now done.
I had great difficulty in finding out just what the heck "Kodokan" meant, as it appears to be a form of Judo!
However, I did eventually discover that Kodokan ju jitsu (note the spelling of jiu versus ju - which is what I know: Ju jitsu) is a Japanese martial art dedicated to teaching the public ways in which to defend themselves when they are out on the street. Hence the woman defending herself against the bigger man in the drawing who was accosting her.
Man... Ju jitsu sounds like a very interesting discipline. Maybe...
For fun, here's a patch I found alongside the description of Kodokan that was at THIS Facebook page:
Cool, huh? Just think... of the billions of people in the world, you are all a very small percentage of people who have any knowledge of these trading cards. Should you have any information on the cards - please share with me.
by Andrew Joseph
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