Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23164 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 329 pages

Synopsis
This is the first book to dissect the lore and reveal the origins and purpose of the art of shotokan. It describes how karate was invented by the world's only unarmed bodyguards to protect the world's only unarmed king against Americans. In 1853, before the American Civil War, the king of Okinawa was caught in a confrontation between the shogun's implacable samurai and an invading force of U.S. Marines. Trapped between katana and bayonets, the king's unarmed guards faced impossible odds and narrowly avoided a costly bloodbath.

Customer Reviews

EXCELLANT THEORY, VERY FLAWED WRITING
IN 3 PARTS. 1st part: covers the theory of the development of "hard style" karate. References are quoted, but the writing is unnecessarily emotional. In some places conclusions are drawn without any evidence to support them and possible alternative reasons/circumstances are not explored. 2nd part: covers the bunkai - the application of the katas, very interesting. 3rd part: covers the relevance of hard style karate today and what we should be teaching students, as a coach I have considered this - a useful discussion. But the author's suggestion that females need separate training to males offended me. Senior males students have learned to respect our females' abilities the hard way!

i must read
a very good book and a must read for any shotokan person who is interested in bunki .if you are open minded you could learn alot , i would make it a must read for anyone taking there 1st dan or above to make then think about were there arts came from one of the best book i have read in a long time.

Fascinating
The historical content of this book is not only carefully researched but it paints a fascinating picture of the history of Shotokan karate. Now, you have to be careful with this book as with any karate history book. Clayton provides a mixed bag of historical fact, hearsay and pure speculation. Determining what is fact and what is quite likely fiction takes a bit of thinking. Nonetheless the story the Clayton tells is more believable than any competing theories and it does all make god sense. And anyway, the idea that the first karate masters were Royal bodyguards is just too cool to ignore.

This book also includes a section on karate self-defence applications. These are interesting, inventive and apply to some situations that people don't often consider. For example, Clayton suggests that Tekki Shodan can be used to incapacitate a bad-guy then use him as a human shield. How cool is that? As with many karate applications they often seem to be hard to get to actually work in practice, especially with an uncooperative opponent (and reaslistically, is there anything but an uncooperative opponent?)

Overall worth reading, even if just for the Royal bodyguards and the human shield stuff.