Mugei Mumei No Jitsu

To call Ashida Kim’s Mugei Mumei no Jitsu a “book” is to stretch the concept of what a book is.  This is really a booklet, a pamphlet — a pile of folded paper stapled through the middle.  The outermost sheet is a color photocopy that doubles as both the cover and a Black Belt 1st Degree Equivalency certificate in Mugei Mumei no Jitsu, a term that means — according to Kim — “no name, no art.”  The book also comes with a free Black Dragon Fighting Society membership card.

Having read and understood the book, and if I understand correctly Mr. Kim’s intent, I am now both a Black Belt and a member of the aforementioned Black Dragon Fighting Society.

Cool.

My review is complicated somewhat by Mr. Kim’s incredibly strict copyright prohibitions.  According to the inside “cover” of the book, one may not even quote from the text.  Dire predictions of wrath-incurrence are directed at those “malefactors” who disregard these guidelines (which I don’t believe are even legal according to contemporary copyright law — but I could be wrong).

There is also a mandamus at the front of the book.  (That’s a real word — I checked.)  The mandamus, written in flowery speech evocative of Old World curses, contains a nice little blank line for you to write your name and declare as your property this pile of stapled paper.  All manner of horrific consequences will be visited on anyone who steals the book or perverts its teaching, warns the mandamus.  These include, but are not limited to, the aforementioned wrath-incurrence,  visits by astral spies (whatever those may be), avengings performed by occult guards, the cessation of all peace and prosperity known to or hoped for by the miscreant in question, and the ill will of a variety of people, including Lamas from more than one country.

The instructional portion of the booklet begins with an illustrated technique purportedly reproduced from a 1983 edition of Leung Ting’s Skills of the Vagabonds. Presented as a never-fail, most-effective-ever fighting move, the technique involves — I am not making this up — the mysterious and little-known art of crouching down and grabbing two handfuls of sand to throw in the enemy’s eyes.  Once the sand is successfully deployed, the vagabond practitioner delivers a punch to the attacker’s throat.

I know my throat-punching endeavors have always lacked a certain something, a crucial missing element to make them as effective as they could be.  I believe this crouch-and-throw-sand maneuver may be just the ticket.  The photos — obviously photocopied — show two men  dressed in striped stockings, one of whom sports heavily studded wrist bracers and belt.  These guys look like the illegitimate children of Sonny Chiba and Ronald McDonald.

The booklet contains a section in which Kim elaborates on punching the throat.  There is another portion, crudely illustrated with what could be computer-produced or scanned line drawings, illustrating the Japanese sleeper hold.  Several techniques for resuscitation of unconscious, defeated opponents follow.  This seems perfectly reasonable, as the back of the book proclaims that its contents will impart both the ability to kill and the ability to restore life.  (I think resuscitating the unconscious isn’t quite the same thing as bringing back the dead, but I guess that’s a technicality I’ll have to bring up with my astral lawyers).

A  method of testing one’s awesome powers is also provided in the booklet:  breaking bricks with one’s bare hand, being careful to place the brick flat on a hard surface to avoid resorting to any of the common ploys or tricks used in brick-breaking.  The late John “Count Dante” Keehan is depicted crushing not one, but two bricks laid flat on each other.

There follows an extended section on the philosophy behind Mugei Mumei no Jitsu, which must be read to be appreciated fully.  Quoted sections of the booklet are at times free of the rampant sentence fragments and unnecessarily capitalized words that characterize the rest of the text, but on the whole the quality of the booklet is consistent and uniform for its duration.

The booklet concludes with a message from Kim himself, in which he drops the names of luminaries ranging from Mas Oyama to Black Elk to John Lennon and Paul McCartney.  I’d quote some of it here, but hey, you risk cheesing off lamas and occult guards.  I’m not doing it for you.

The back of my booklet, just before the Black Belt certificate, is a write-up that tells me simply reading the book will arm me with knowledge and power equivalent to a first degree black belt in any conceivable martial art.  Thus it was with pride that I filled out my certificate with a black semi-permanent marker, framed it in a four-dollar plastic and cardboard frame, and mounted it on the wall of my cubicle with a thumbtack.

My coworkers have feared my martial arts abilities ever since.  I’m sure all the snickering they do behind my back is just to relieve the stress of being forced to work in close proximity to such a towering pillar of fighting prowess.