Month: March 2014

Categories
Phillosoph

Ninja Should Be Grey

Decades ago, when I was first on the internet I wrote a piece of conjecture called “Ninja Should Be Grey”. I may have referred to it before on this blog. That article and the website it was on have long since vanished. A friend of mine and regular reader of this blog has often expressed the wish that he could have read that article. Since the article could be considered as covering urban self-defence and survival I am going to recreate that article and include couple of updated ideas.
Ninja Should Be Grey.
Many historians of ninjitsu have claimed that what we now call a “ninja outfit” is actually derived from the costumes of Japanese stage hands. By convention the hooded and dark-clad stage hands were treated as being “invisible” by the audience. When ninja and other invisible characters began to appear in plays they were given costumes similar to the stage hands to convey that other characters in the play could not see them.
Real ninja would often wear disguises that allowed them to move about the country without arousing suspicion. Often they would be disguised as wandering priests, monks, entertainers or pedlars. If they did need to wear low-visibility clothing it probably would not be pure black. One reason for this was with the dyes available at that time creating a deep black was difficult. Another reason was that even on a dark night a pure black object would tend to stand out. Night gear was more commonly a dark shade of blue, green, red or grey. Interestingly Special Forces in Vietnam would dye their uniforms black knowing that after a few washes it would fade to a more useful charcoal-grey colour. Back in my youth I dyed a green M65 jacket black and it turned a very useful dark drab-green.
Grey itself is a quite interesting colour. The pedantic will claim that it is not a colour at all! Grey is a neutral shade and as such combines well with a variety of colours and backgrounds. We all know that the World War Two German Army wore grey uniforms. Originally “Feldgrau” seems to have had a greenish tinge or been a green-grey. As the war progressed greyer cloths became more common and some historians class some items as actually being “mouse grey”. Many animals are grey and as many of us can attest, this can often make them hard to see. The England football team once wore a grey away-strip and claimed that their poor performance was that the strip made it difficult for players to see each other. That this should also make them harder for the opposing team to see was not mentioned!
Let us think about a “modern ninja”. By “ninja” we mean someone who for any number of reasons wants to avoid attention. Dressing in black pyjamas and a hood with a sword across his back is not going to do this. Nor, for that matter, is dressing him in grey pyjamas!

Suppose instead we give our “ninja” some street clothes consisting of a grey jacket and faded blue jeans. Faded denim is effectively a light grey with a hint of blue. Our ninja looks rather dull and unremarkable. There are probably a thousand other men walking the streets in similar outfits. And this is the point entirely. Not only is he grey in colouration, but also in aspect.
Against the greys and browns of a typical city the dull greys and blues of the ninja make him fade into the background, be it night or day. People that see him tend to overlook him. Many security cameras are low resolution and often only see in black and white. Our grey ninja is also sometimes overlooked by such cameras. There is little distinctive detail about him to recall.
Let us refine this outfit a little more. A hat of some kind helps conceal the colour and the style of his hair. If the cap has a peak it is at the front, helping conceal his features from cameras and keeping the sun out of his eyes. A knitted hat may be warmer and less likely to be lost under certain conditions. Such a hat may actually be a ski-mask. If the ninja is wearing a hoodie he can wear the hood up to help conceal his hair and features. Be aware, however, that hoods can reduce your situational awareness and can be grabbed during a fight. Wearing your hoodie with hood up can also draw attention to you in some situations, so is counter-productive. A scarf or neck gaiter is a useful addition to the outfit since it can be used to conceal the features when necessary. Such an item should be of a shade/ colour that does not contrast with your skin tone so that at a distance it will not be obvious you are masked. Footwear must be something functional such as sneakers. Like the rest of the clothing items these must be unremarkable rather than distinctive. Logos, graphics and brand names on clothing are best avoided. If this cannot be achieved they should be as unremarkable and as generic as possible for the area. A “Yankees” cap will be noticed more in LA than in NY. Clothing needs to fit well while allowing freedom of movement. Excessively tight or baggy clothing will draw attention and is not desirable, despite what the fashion industry tells you. You do not want jeans hung so low and loose that they slip around your ankles as soon as you have to move fast.
There are a few more tricks our modern ninja might employ. Streetwear is often worn in layers, such as a bomber jacket over a hoodie. Swapping these over can produce a quick change of appearance. If you are wearing a baseball cap and have a watch cap or bandanna in your pocket changing headgear can also change your appearance. Reversible garments are a staple of old spy movies but this is a practical option for some hats and jackets.
Context is important in “being grey”. If you are in Hawaii an obnoxiously loud shirt may be your best camouflage. Anyone seeing you will just regard you as “just another jerk-off tourist” and immediately overlook you and forget you. If you are in an office building the streetwear described above will make you stick out like a sore thumb. In such an environment “grey” would mean an unremarkable suit and a boring tie. Something that is neither poorly fitting nor snappy.
Categories
Phillosoph

Of Punching and Power Lines

When I started my exercise program a few years back, I was amazed at how quickly I began to see results.
If I had known how easily I could have improved my muscle tone for relatively little effort, I would have started years ago.
If I had known in my teens what I know now my life would have been very, very different and considerably better I suspect.
A friend of mine is in his teens, and very like I was back then, so I have encouraged him to try my exercise routine and see what results he gets.
He started a couple of days back, lifting heavy books and on his own initiative, hitting a punchbag.
Today’s blog post is dedicated to Gabriel and wishes him success and perseverance in his endeavours.
In the movie “Little Big Man”, there is a scene where a young Indian boy attempts to manhandle the young protagonist. The youth defends himself and punches his assailant, bloodying his nose. This amazes all the young Indians and the narration tells us that fist fighting was unknown to Indians.
My recent reading of the Pellucidar novels reminded me of this scene.
In these books, several of the protagonists are familiar with “outer crust” fighting styles such as boxing and jiu-jitsu, and they use them to good effect against the violet but less sophisticated attacks of cavemen.
I don’t know how much truth there was in the movie’s statement that Indians did not know boxing, nor if there are any cultures that this is true of.
When I was writing my book, it became apparent to me how deeply ingrained into our culture the idea of punching with a closed fist is.
I had to consciously stop myself using the term “punch” for hand strikes and any alternate term I did use did not look right.
If you hit someone, you were punching, and punching seemed to imply a closed fist.
A correctly applied punch can be devastating. On the other hand, (pun intended) striking with the fist requires conditioning, practice and good technique.
Hands are sensitive and their bones are small.
Mike Tyson is by no means the only experienced boxer to break a hand punching someone without a glove.
One of the books I recommend to my readers is Jack Dempsey’s “Championship Fighting”, which can be found at various locations on the internet.
In one section the famous boxer talks about “The Power Line”. In his own words:
THE POWER LINE RUNS FROM EITHER SHOULDER-STRAIGHT DOWN THE LENGTH OF THE ARM TO THE FIST KNUCKLE OF THE LITTLE FINGER, when the fist is doubled. Remember: The power line ends in the fist knuckle of the little finger on either hand. Gaze upon your "pinky" with new respect. You might call that pinky knuckle the exit of your power line- the muzzle of your cannon…. …..Unfortunately, however, the hand-bone behind the little knuckle is the most fragile of the five backbones. It can be broken the most easily. You must not attempt to land first with the little knuckle. Instead you must try to land first with the knuckle next to your pinky (the ring finger). We'll call that the 2nd knuckle. Aiming with the 2nd knuckle usually brings about a three-knuckle landing. Those three-knuckles are: middle, second (ring) and pinky. If you aim with the second knuckle, those three knuckles usually will land together because the average fist slopes slightly from the middle knuckle to the pinky. Such a three-knuckle landing not only prevents the hand-bone behind any one knuckle from bearing all the punch-shock, but it also permits punching almost exactly along the power line. Rarely will one of those knuckles make a solo landing. But if you aim with the little knuckle, you risk a dangerous solo landing on forehead or blocking elbow.”
An oddity is that Dempsey considers the little finger as the “first finger” when many of us would consider the first finger to be the index finger.
What Dempsey is telling us is that if you hit with the lower knuckles, the force of impact will pass in a direct line to the larger bones of the arm.
Interestingly, we see the same knowledge in other martial arts too. Many Chinese styles such as wing chun and tai chi hit with the lower knuckles of a vertical closed fist.
Those of you that are more familiar with karate or tae kwon do may now be objecting that you have been trained to strike with the first two knuckles!
Turn your fist from vertical to horizontal and you will see the alignment of the hand bones changes.
The little finger knuckle is no longer on a line with the larger bones, the index and middle finger knuckles are.
Experiment with this and you will find this changes for different hand positions and punching techniques.
Hooks, Shovel Hooks and Uppercuts tend to line up the last two knuckles.
The quick advice I usually offer for punching with the closed fist is to save it for the soft parts.
Use closed fist punching for targets below the lower ribs. The solar plexus, the kidney region and the genitals.
For most other targets, you must untrain yourself from punching with the closed fist and learn to use palm heel and knife-hand strikes.
Knife-hand (aka “Karate Chop!”) has defensive applications too. Parrying attacks with the edge of the hand or the edge of the forearm can numb or injure an opponent’s attacking limb and a swinging strike with the edge of the hand is sometimes quicker to execute than a punch.
For a more in depth discussion of this topic and related issues please purchase my book
Categories
Phillosoph

Bows in North America and Pellucidar

Reading through my file collection the other day I came across an old (1930’s?) article on how the North American Indians made their bows. I have some knowledge of English and Asian bows but this was a field I was less familiar with. One of the reasons that this article so interested me was that I am currently reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar series. Many of the characters in these books use bows and there are frequent references to them constructing new weapons after escaping from capture. The Indians tended to favour flatbow designs and I have heard it suggested that such a bow is easier to construct under field conditions than the D-section English Longbow.
I will not bother to reproduce the entire article since there are some excellent websites on the topic available on the internet. Some interesting points from the original article were:
    • The best time to cut wood to make bows was February since the sap had not yet risen into the wood. This was defined in the article as “when the geese return”.
    • The wood of choice was Osage Orange. Where this was not available a number of other woods were used including ash, hickory and yew.
    • Like the English Longbow, the bowstave needed a considerable period of seasoning before any carving could be done. Bowstaves were hung high up in the tepee above the fire to gently season in the heat. Arrowshafts and other items were seasoned in the same way. The bark side of the stave was used for the "back" of the bow: the part that faces away from you.
    • Bow length varied with tribe, intended use and probably the individual. Bows of six foot or longer were known, as were bows of only a few feet. A suggested measure for a bow was the distance from the left hip to the right hand when the hand was held out horizontally to the side. This is about four feet. Some readers will recognize this as illustrated in Lofty Wiseman’s “The SAS Survival Guide” and doubtless this book and the article drew from a similar source. The bow illustrated in that publication is a flatbow.
    • Arrows were often marked with three lightning bolt carvings. Practical purpose of these may have been to reduce the tendency of the arrow to warp. It was also suggested in the article that the grooves might have encouraged blood loss.
    • Arrowheads were bound into the end of the arrowshaft. Some war arrowheads were constructed so that impact with the target would cut the bindings, leaving the head in the target even if the shaft was pulled out.
    • Hard sinew (from the neck of a buffalo) was sometimes used as an arrowhead. The stated advantage of this was that such heads had a tendency to deflect from the ribs of an animal and slip between them while flint or iron heads would stick, shatter or bend.
ERB does not give us any description of the type of bows his characters use, although David Innes in “Land of Terror” does tell us:
“A species of the genus Taxus is more or less widely distributed throughout Pellucidar; and I had discovered that its wood made the best bows. For arrows I used a straight, hollow reed that becomes very hard when dry. The tips which I inserted in the end of the reeds were of wood, fire-hardened.
A modern archer of the civilized outer world would doubtless laugh at the crude bow I made then at the edge of the Valley of the Jukans. If he uses a yew bow, the wood for it was allowed to season for three years before it was made into a bow, and then the bow was probably not used for two more years; but I could not wait five years before eating; and so I hacked the limb I had selected from the tree with my stone knife and took the bark from it and tapered it crudely from the center toward each end. I prefer a six foot, eighty pound bow for a three-foot arrow, because of the great size and formidability of some of the beasts one meets here; but of course my bow did not attain this strength immediately. Every time we had a fire, I would dry it out a little more, so that it gradually attained its full efficiency. The strings for my bows I can make from several long-fibered plants; but even the best of them do not last long, and I am constantly having to renew them.”

In “Return to Pellucidar” in the anthology book “Savage Pellucidar”:
“Fruit and nuts grew in abundance on the trees and shrubs of the little canyon; but fighting men require meat; and one must have weapons to have meat. These two had not even a stone knife between them, but the first men had no weapons originally. They had to make them.
Innes and Hodon went into the little stream and hunted around until they found a large mussel. They pried it open with a sharp stone, and each took a half shell. With these they cut two pieces of bamboo-like arborescent grass to form the hafts of two spears. Searching again they collected a number of stones: soft stones, hard stones, flat stones, stones with sharp edges; and with some of these they chipped and scraped at others until they had fashioned two spear heads and a couple of crude knives. While Hodon was finding the toughest fibers with which to bind the spear heads to the hafts, Innes made a bow and some arrows, for this was one of his favorite weapons.”
Since Pellucidar was constantly under an unmoving noon-day sun it presumably had no seasons and the trees would have always been filled with sap. Perhaps that was why the bow was so rare on Pellucidar!
The Boy Scout Handbook (1911) has a nice section on archery.