The UK Kung Fu Boom Part 2.

In this second part I will try to unpick the media and cultural implications of the boom and try to come to some kind of tentative conclusion.

The cinema.

What many of us had to feed off was in the cinema. In towns and cities across the UK some cinemas realised that there was money to be made screening badly dubbed Chinese Kung Fu movies. Sure, people went for the choreographed action scenes, but also this taste of Far Eastern culture, such that it was. And then the ‘Kung Fu’ TV series arrived from the States, but despite the Shaolin Temple flashback scenes we all thought it was a Western; I don’t think anyone took it that seriously. Even at that time we were vaguely aware of the ‘whiteface’ issue with David Carradine playing the hero Kwai Chang Caine, it just didn’t feel right.

But the Kung Fu cinema in the UK generated an awareness of Hong Kong action stars. It wasn’t just Bruce Lee, I remember seeing movies starring Jimmy Wang Yu (‘The Man from Hong Kong’) and obviously, stars like Jackie Chan, whose career really began in 1976, and many others. We spoke about these movies in much the same way that the original ‘hipsters’ talked about French New Wave cinema; instead of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Francois Truffaut, we spoke of Sammo Hung and the Shaw Brothers.

In the media.

Eventually the media tapped into what was going on. In the UK we had ‘Hai-Karate’ aftershave with ridiculously overblown and silly adverts on TV about how the fragrance makes men irresistible, the box contained instructions on how to ‘fend off women’. No wonder the second wave of feminism had to happen.

Also, fans of the ‘Pink Panther’ movie series will remember Inspector Clouseau’s manservant Kato (always launching surprise attacks on Clouseau to ‘test him’), played by Bert Kwouk. Actually, Kato first appeared as early as 1962, but his fame grew when the Kung Fu boom erupted. In 1962 the script writers could get away with Clouseau referring to his manservant as “my little yellow friend”. Racism was never raised as an issue.

Racism.

For me, at the time, the most noticeable racism was directed at the Japanese by people of the previous generation, who had memories of WWII and the so-called ‘forgotten war’. I understood where they were coming from. But unfortunately, it’s still hanging around – very recently on a martial arts forum I found myself wincing when someone used the phrase ‘the Japs’; clearly a hangover from a second-hand story about the jungles of Burma or maybe a John Wayne movie they once saw? It is now universally agreed to be a racial slur.

It was also noticeable how often the Japanese were the bad guys in Chinese movies.

Back in the 1970’s I am certain that everyone assumed that all Chinese waiters were Kung Fu experts; certainly, with all the aggro they were liable to get from late night drunks there was something in keeping that myth alive. It is a pity that this is a story seldom told from the other side.

In music.

Oh God how I despised Carl Douglas for that awful song ‘Kung-Fu Fighting’. It was released at the very beginning of the boom, 1974. Originally intended to be a B side it ended up selling eleven million copies worldwide and some credited it as the beginning of the Disco explosion. I would cringe when I heard the intro to the song, ‘Ooh ho ho Hooo…’ and what is described as ‘that distinctive oriental riff’, “those cats were fast as lightning…” etc, for me the definition of kitsch.

‘Turning Japanese’ by the UK band The Vapours, again, with another ‘distinctly oriental riff’, (and lots of swords being waved around) what were they getting at? Google suggests that this was some kind of smutty code, but The Vapours are never going to own up to that. This was 1980, so we were still in full ‘boom’ mode.

A little late to the party but, in 1986 a band called ‘The Firm’ released a music video for their song ‘All the Kings Horses’. Suzuki Sensei of Wado Ryu took the part of the villainous vengeful husband in this black and white homage to Japanese movies of an earlier age,

I am not sure why he did it, it puzzles me to this day.

Numbers.

I wish there were some statistics available on how many people were training at the height of the boom. All I can go on are my own memories. For example, in my area karate kyu gradings were huge. An early one I remember in Lincoln had four examiners; Dave Allsop, Sakagami Sensei, Maeda Sensei and Mel Parry, each one with their own area. We had to have numbers written on our hands to keep track of who was supposed to be up when; I remember my number was well into three figures and the gradings went on from mid-morning till well into the evening.

The UKKW summer courses at the time were huge, possibly up to 300 students. And I never saw an undersubscribed course, the organisers had to beat people off with a stick. For the National Championships our one club alone had to hire two 45-seater coaches, mostly for competitors. This was just one organisation. The Nationals got so huge and unmanageable that to actually compete there had to be regional play-offs to qualify and squads were set up by regions. It was a good way to filter out those that weren’t up to scratch and my memory of it was that it made for a much higher quality of competition that was a joy to take part in.

Inner city strength.

Despite what I said about the boxing clubs the fighting competitive aspect of the martial arts had a real appeal to semi-dispossessed urban, predominantly male youth. Although it was not one of the majority sports there was status to be gained from climbing that particular hierarchy. As I write this I am thinking of the successful Wolverhampton YMCA Wado team, as well as the Liverpool Red Triangle Shotokan team. Those of us of a certain age hold those fighters in the highest of regards even now.

Walter Mitty’s and other fantasists.

I suppose it was inevitable that the heady mixture of exoticism and power appealed to individuals who thought it was easy to dupe people into believing they were some kind of supreme martial arts master with access to hidden knowledge. In the UK these people sprang up overnight like mushrooms. Too many to name, they tended to be more common in Kung Fu circles, and because there were very few authorities that could call them out, they gained some kind of minor (joke) celebrity status. They did exist in UK karate as well, because, although there was some attempt at regulating karate, it was so weak and flaky that it was easily bypassed or ignored. In fact, the regulatory bodies at the time had little choice but to admit any old Joe Soap and put a rubber stamp on their credentials (at that time, as a kind of exposé, someone managed to get an official Dan grade certificate for their dog!).

I had a memorable experience with one of these Walter Mitty types, but I will save my story about my fight with ‘Eddie the Tattooed Dragon’ for the autobiographical section of my Substack posts.

Would there ever be a resurgence?

An interesting first question would be; why the decline?

I’m not sure I have the answers, but I can speculate:

·       Fragmentation and an overcrowded marketplace left the public confused and the martial arts community did nothing to help itself.

·       With all those organisations and styles, the top of the tree became crowded and the bough it had to break.

·       There were so many other things that people could dedicate their time to, particularly the pre-teen market, and, if you don’t catch them early then they go off and do other things. Now the pre-teen market is where the numbers are but the fall-off rate is huge, and that has never been addressed. Strange as it seems, karate in the 70’s and 80’s hardly ever had kid’s classes, it was just too violent.

·       The image of karate became problematic. Karate never had a high-class aristocratic appeal, it was always blue collar and with the political rise in the UK of ‘Basildon Man’, who was a particular breed of Conservative-voting working-class punter, for whom ‘aspiration’ was not a dirty word and the idea of a ‘class traitor’, so common a phenomenon in the Northern cities, was all but dying out. They were on their way up (or so they’d been told) AND they could buy their own council houses!

And the marketing people got hold of it and made a mockery of it, and we’ve been paying the price ever since; AND we went along with it! Nobody ever put up a counter argument; we were too busy punching each other in the face.

And what about now?

Far too many old-time martial artists are living in a ‘Field of Dreams’ fantasy; “build it and they will come”, no they won’t! It doesn’t work like that in the 21st century, we are not in the 1980’s anymore.

This doesn’t mean that you have to sell your soul to the devil, instead just update your expectations and tap into the zeitgeist. Waving your Dan certificates and your 1990’s trophies at people doesn’t cut it anymore.

There is nothing wrong with the product, it doesn’t have to change, it just falls upon us to explain ourselves more clearly and in a language that can be understood in the 21st century. And I don’t mean dumbing it down, our audience is actually much more sophisticated than we give them credit for and we are the ones who are not up to date.

It’s always about ‘right place, right time’; the times we are going through now are not looking like the period of peace and plenty, in those times decadence and idleness win through and nothing significant gets done. The saying is that ‘geniuses don’t thrive in palaces’. Post financial disaster, post pandemic and everyone is refocussing and questioning what they really want out of life, all aspects of life.

It is unlikely that we will see a spike like the 1970’s, but the optimist in me thinks that we might see an upgrade, and one fuelled by a much better-informed audience. As long as the people in charge of promoting the martial arts don’t slip back to the same old marketing plan, which was really no plan at all.