The Little Black Book of Violence

Glossary

Romaji (Romanization) note—we have primarily used the Hebon- Shiki (Hepburn) method of translating Japanese writing into the English alphabet and determining how best to spell the words (though accent marks have been excluded), as it is generally considered the most useful insofar as pronunciation is concerned. We have italicized foreign terms such that they can be readily differentiated from their English counterparts (for example, dan meaning black belt rank versus Dan, the male familiar name for Daniel). As the Japanese and Chinese languages do not use capitalization, we have only capitalized those words that would be used as proper nouns in English.

Japanese is a challenging language for many English speakers to pronounce correctly. A few hints—for the most part, short vowels sound just like their English counterparts (for example, a as in father, e as in pen). Long vowels are essentially double-length (for example, o as in oil, in the word oyo). The u is nearly silent, except where it is an initial syllable (for example, uke). Vowel combination e + i sounds like day (for example, bugeisha); a + i sounds like alive (for example, bunkai); o + u sounds like float (for example, tou); and a + e sounds like lie (kamae). The consonant r is pronounced with the tip of the tongue, midway between l and r (for example, daruma). Consonant combination ts is pronounced like cats, almost a z (for example, tsuki).

Although there are a few words here from other languages, the majority of words listed in this glossary comes from Japanese.

APPENDIX A How Far Am I Willing to Go?

You need to seriously think about what you’re willing to do, what you are not willing to do, and what you are willing to have done to you far before violence occurs. Such decisions cannot rationally be made during a tense, dangerous encounter. The following table lists a variety of scenarios that you might encounter. Spend some time thinking about each one and determine where your values lie. You can undoubtedly add to this list on your own as well (there are spaces at the bottom where you can do so).

There is always a cost in terms of physical and/or emotional well-being to both taking action as well as to not taking action. There is no right or wrong answer. The important thing is to evaluate realistically where you stand.

At minimum, this questionnaire should be completed before and after you read this book. Use a pencil or make a photocopy so that you can do it twice. It is a good idea to reevaluate periodically where you stand as time progresses too.

Check the appropriate boxes in each column.

APPENDIX B Words You Can Use

Anyone who stumbles across a fight in progress won’t know who’s who unless you make it clear. Consequently, it’s good to shout something that points out who the bad guy is while you counterattack. It’s easy to yell but extraordinarily hard to articulate under extreme stress in combat, so it’s important to practice. Select a few phrases that are natural and easy for you to use in a variety of situations and incorporate them into your training regimen. You can come up with something on your own, or if you’re having problems thinking of something good, choose from the following list.

APPENDIX C The Will to Kill by Marc “Animal” MacYoung

Murder is easy. Dealing with someone who’s coming at you just as hard, ain’t.

When discussing the subject of self-defense, there is one subject that always comes up sooner or later: the “will” to kill. While most of the talk is rather poetic (if not posturing, posing, and woofing), the will to kill isn’t as simple as many people make it out to be. In fact, most are leaving out a critical component:

You gotta be willing to die.

More importantly, you gotta be willing to risk being permanently maimed. Dying would be easy in comparison to living a crippled lifestyle. And while we are on the subject, you gotta be willing to do that and still fail.

Desmond Morris says in his book Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior, as the opening of the “Fighting Behavior” chapter (page 156), the following:

Fighting represents the failure of threat display. If intimidation signals cannot settle a dispute, then extreme measures may be called for, and conflict may develop into full-scale bodily assault. This is extremely rare in human societies, which are remarkably non-violent, despite popular statements to the contrary, and there is a sound biological reason for this. Every time one individual launches a physical attack on the body of another, there is a risk that both may suffer injury. No matter how dominant the attacker may be, he has no guarantee of escaping unscathed. His opponent, even if weaker, may be driven into a desperate frenzy of wild defensive actions, any one of which could inflict lasting damage.

For the record, this is why most bullying is psychological. It is the looming and constant threat of violence, rather than actual act of violence, that makes up an overwhelming majority of the bully’s behavior. If you actually look at the time spent intimidating and posing (and include the amount of obsession the victim pours into the threat), you will see that actual violence is microscopic. So way more time is spent threatening violence than actually doing it. Still, I’ve seen timid people reach a snapping point and eat the bullies’ lunches. And this is almost