Boxing Canon

During the 16th Century, the southern coast of the Chinese mainland was repeatedly ravaged by outlaw bands of Japanese, Chinese and European nationals who found that time and politics had caused the Chinese army to degrade into an impotent shell of what it had once been. Early successes at ransoming coastal cities increasingly emboldened these outlaws resulting in ever-deeper incursions inland by larger and larger forces. What had begun as simple smuggling had reached to height and tempo that had begun to threaten the government. 

 Among the individuals recruited to address this menace was the son of a career soldier who demonstrated an aptitude for leadership. General QI Ji-guang (1526 – 1587) quickly assessed that poor training, lack of unit cohesion, corruption and inferior tactics had conspired to reduce the Ming Chinese army to a force easily overcome by units of outlaws much smaller than itself.  In response the general began a program of systematic training which included weapons, small-unit tactics and communication. Harsh discipline rewarded heroic performance and severely punished entire units for the failings of a few. The manual General Qi wrote, JI XIAO SHIN SHU (lit:”New Treatise on Disciplined Service”; 1560) included tactics, weapons, order-of-battle, punishments, and even cooking instructions and hygiene. Towards the end of his manual, General Qi included a chapter on unarmed combat.  The unarmed fighting methods -- 32 in all—were taken from various fighting systems of the times, and though 29 of the 32 methods are traceable back to TAIZU CHANG CHUAN (lit: "Emperor Taizu's Long Fist Boxing") most scholars agree that there was considerable overlap among fighting systems of the time. For his part the general reported he found little to recommend such training for on the battlefield as each soldier was responsible for using his assigned weapon in his individual role in the unit tactics. However, its effectiveness in conditioning the men to better use their weapons and the spirit and confidence it engendered were undeniable. 

As was the literary style of his time, General Qi wrote what has come to be known as "the Boxing Canon" in poetic stanzas, each of which attempts to capture the nature of each Boxing method. The actual application of each method to produce a viable combat technique was left to the knowledge and skills of the drill instructors. 

The Korean adopted many of these methods for use in training their own military and came to have a very similar attitude regarding the material as had General Qi. Though never intended as a substitution for the use of one’s assigned weapon, unarmed combat methods, commonly identified as “KWON BEOP”, served to build spirit, condition the Korean troops and to provide self-defense options should a person in combat find themselves without a weapon. 

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