Radical Bodies and Dangerous Ladies: Martial Arts and Women’s Performance, 1900–1918

Abstract

This article explores women's practice and theatrical presentation of jujutsu and judo in the early years of the twentieth century in the United States, Britain and New Zealand. My discussion treats three figures in particular: Fude Yamashita, who tutored upper-class Washington socialites and performed judo demonstrations on the American stage; the English militant vote-seeker, playwright and jujutsu practitioner Edith Garrud, proponent of jujutsu as a political activist performance and coordinator of the ‘fighting suffragettes’; and New Zealander Florence Le Mar, vaudeville performer and ‘the World's Famous Ju-Jitsu Girl’, who enthralled audiences with her spectacular show designed as an educational enterprise to empower women through transferable self-defence skills. A historical survey of these women's activities contributes to our understanding of the varied ways that women during this period used performance to resist patriarchal institutions and definitions, while offering insights into some of the ways that the Japanese martial arts were reinvented following their introduction to the West.

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