Donn F. Draeger - The Martial Arts of Indonesia: A Guide to Pencak Silat, Kuntao and Traditional Weapons

COLOR INSERTS IMAGES

Images are taken from Wikimedia Commons unless otherwise noted. Images not released into public domain by their creators or holding museums, or through expiration of copyright, are licensed under the following Creative Commons licenses: CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication (Pencak silat match, May 5, 1948 (1), Pencak silat match, May 5, 1948 (2), Pencak silat match, March 13, 1948, Kris, 16th19th century, Kris, 18th19th century, Detail of a kris blade, Karambit, Golok, Badik, Rudus, Rencong, Sewar, Klewang, Kris, 16th20th century, Wedung); Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License (The Kris of Knaud); Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License (Sukuh temple relief, Two fighters tumble, Kudi, Pisau, Luwuk); Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License (Borobudur temple relief, Padepokan Pencak Silat arena, Pencak silat Women, A kris worn by a guard, Tjabang, Sharpened bamboo spear, Mandau); Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5, 2.0 and 1.0 Generic Licenses (Pencak silat Betawi match, Pencak silat Betawi practitioner).

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Foreword

A Maverick in Asia

Regarded as a pioneering figure in the popularization of Asian martial cultures in the Western world, Donn F. Draeger was an American adventurer and warriorscholar of high merit. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran of World War II in Japan and of the Korean War, he served as a military hand-to-hand combat expert and Judo instructor, leveraging his highly-calibrated fighting skillset and resolute force of will. Before the rise of Western fascination with Japanese Samurai films, Toshiro Mifune, Bruce Lee, and Hong Kong Kungfu cinema, Draeger immersed himself in a broad spectrum of Asian fighting arts and traditional weapons as a disciplined participant, instructor, and chronicler.

For most of his post-military career from 1956 on, Draeger resided, studied, and taught in Japan. He was accepted as a member of the prestigious Nihon Kobudo Shinkokai, the oldest Japanese cultural organization for the study and preservation of classical martial arts. He was also the first non-Japanese practitioner of Tenshin Shden Katori Shint-ry, achieving instructor status (kyoshi menkyo) in this system. Draeger held high certifications in Shindo Muso-ryu Jodo, Kendo, Karate, and Aikido, among many other martial arts. He was honored in Japan for his refined abilities in swordsmanship and stick fighting, as well as for his contributions to the contemporary Japanese combat sport of Judo. Across disciplines, he was rumored to have been awarded more than two hundred black belts in his lifetime.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Draeger left Japan to embark on numerous extended research expeditions through Mongolia, China, Korea, Malaysia, and Indonesia, composing over twenty books and many articles about his vivid experiences within Asias distinctive combat cultures. His lifes work reveals a fanatical interest in hands-on, pragmatic fighting techniques, supported by detailed investigations of martial history and behavior. Although he promoted the strengths of Judo and other combat sports, the central focus of Draegers research was fixed firmly upon martial arts of a lawless variety, exploring purer expressions of deadly force and the self-preservation impulse.

In the present day, Draeger remains an almost mythic figure for his hardearned, exalted expertise in Asian martial culture with an emphasis on classical Japanese fighting arts and his revelatory writings.

The Pen and the Sword

In the period that followed World War II, Asian martial arts had yet to become a topic of serious academic inquiry. Written from the perspective of a dedicated practitioner, Draegers prolific body of work was devoted to remedying this perceived oversight to great effect.

The first edition of the current work, The Martial Arts of Indonesia, was originally published in 1972 under the title The Weapons and Fighting Arts of the Indonesian Archipelago. Draeger portrays a formative period in Indonesian martial arts history, which preceded heightened organizational consolidation and subsequent Indonesian government sponsorship of pencak silat, legitimizing the art form as a national sport. Composed from research carried out over a five year span this book recounts his interfaces with an extraordinary kaleidoscope of peoples, places, and practices he encountered across the archipelago, including pencak silat virtuosos, kuntao masters, and hardened warriors from isolated islands.

Indonesian martial arts are known collectively by the Malay terms silat or pencak silat a complex, diverse, and plastic body of forms, practices, techniques, and beliefs. On the one hand, silat is concerned with transforming the body into a durable, lethal weapon, but also deeply intertwined with various types of ilmu or traditional knowledge throughout Indonesia and the Malay-speaking world. While it can be argued that silat is fundamentally a ritually-empowered practice of violent mayhem a prominent silat guru once referred to it as the art of killing and maiming it should be noted that these arts are also actively employed in healing practices, in play and sports, and in traditional dance and ceremonial supplications to divine and supernatural forces.

According to traditional beliefs held throughout this region, the science of silat contains keys that can be used to unlock gates to other dimensions of transcendental experience and to open channels of energy within the body. As with other Asian martial arts disciplines, Indonesian combative techniques are commonly passed down orally and gesturally within a tradition of guru-to-disciple mimetic transmission. The demands of the times deeply conditioned these practices, and it is thus very difficult, as Draeger was aware, to discern which aspects of martial culture have remained constant through time and which have been subject to adaptation, acculturation, deformation or innovation.

Richly illustrated with Draegers own black and white field photography, this book showcases a broad constellation of rugged fighters on both central and remote islands, endemic warfare traditions, and the diverse sub-cultures from which they originate. At the time, combatants with detailed memory of local warfare, headhunting raids, ceremonial weaponry, and paraphernalia were still present to be interviewed and documented.

Living Dangerously

Donn F. Draegers expansive inquiry into Indonesian martial culture commenced in 1966, widely known as The Year of Living Dangerously, which witnessed the close of the Sukarno era and the birth of the Suharto military dictatorship. During that time, mass executions of Indonesian communists under military supervision were taking place nationwide, resulting in the slaughter of as many as a million souls. Aside from oblique references to security situations precluding or endangering his expeditions, Draegers study makes no reference to the primacy of the Indonesian armed forces or the bloodshed that was taking place around him. The guiding forces behind his decision to initiate a research expedition during this season of unbridled political violence remain unknown. If Draeger was not, in fact, a covert agent of the U.S. government, it should be noted that he surely possessed the portfolio and expertise where one might suspect as much. The timely inauguration of his Indonesian research is enough to raise such questions, as was his collaboration on another book,