Post by kensei on Jul 16, 2011 15:56:25 GMT
I simply do not know were to start on this book. To be honest I bought the book because I had some spare cash and wanted a book to read in the biffy! I found myself educated (reminded) and also questioning the author of this book and his approach to writing historical events and then taking that and running with it to use them to some how proves his theories of what may have happened and what was not written…what he does not say in his book is that pretty much everything that he wrote about that was not out of a history text is a wild leap and guess on his part that he tries to justify with other theories and truths that may or may not be tied together in reality.
Then there is his applications of the Heian Katas…based on his assumptions and theories that to me…don’t hold a lot of water! He also takes a lot of liberties that a mainstream book would never be allowed to. The mixing of more modern Kata with what he thought were requirements of Itosu and older instructors in their day to day jobs is a huge part of this book and he tries to “write it all off” as historical fact when it is actually just his guesses, theories and hyperbole that looks great in writing and captures the minds and imagination of the reader.
I found myself in the same state of mind as when I go to see a movie, I am forced to disconnect from reality and just “go with it” a lot so that I can enjoy myself, which I have to say..for the most part I did! Clayton paints a very nice picture and could find himself in danger of a new job as a movie writer or fiction novelist if he is not careful. His ability to paint a picture is very good and you often just want to go with it and take the smattering of history and the large amount of guess work as a story line in a movie (anyone want to produce a killer hit you got one on your hands here). But the meat and potatoes of the book is not the historical facts, it’s the applications of the Katas….ones that I found myself unable to look at and take seriously.
Clayton starts off with some suggestion that the Heian Katas were built by Itosu, not to introduce basics to school children and to make Karate more mainstream…as pretty much everyone…including Funakoshi and Mabuki suggest, but as a way to recall and drill into his students the basics of how to be a official royal body guard. Or perhaps they were skills he was introducing from his days as a official royal body guard as that is what his Karate was. Suggestions that pretty much everyone shoots down when I ask high level instructors.
The true problem with this book is that it is about as much guess work and questionable conclusions as the rest of the Karate world has. Its not answer after answer like some other books have come up with. It does not kill some common stories that are false and everyone is just to scared to answer like Shotokan Myths does, It actually creates some questionable myths from his guess work and conclusions that he has jumped to!
The book was also frustrating for me because the first part of the book, the Karate history debunking makes so much damn sense that you just kind of go with it. Even the points that you think may be a stretch he presents in such a way that you think “yah, could have been that way easily”. But then he goes into the Kata applications and I almost put it down and walked away. The whole thing about transitioning from a form of body guard work to sword disarming and use to gun defence kind of left me thinking “if Itosu wanted to teach these skills, would he not have introduced them to adults and not put them in Kata that was geared towards teaching children…or would he not have used different Kata to teach kicking and punching to children and left the Heian Kata to adults”.
Now no one can know with out a shadow of a doubt what Itosu was thinking, or Funakoshi or for that matter Nakyama when they all transitioned the style they were training in to what they were teaching, but that is both Claytons defence and answer to those that question him…and his down fall as he bases a lot of his application and conclusions on things that even he could not know. He offers little defence other than “Well its obvious” and “if you look at it, you will guess the same thing”….I did not and I can not!
And just when I get to the point of frustration with him and his guess work he ends the book with some solid-ish “lessons learned” stuff that helps you organize your thinking a bit and look at a few things differently or more clearly. It’s a solid bit of writing that most instructors can benefit from…but the whole middle part of the book is so horrible and jumps so far out of the realm of plausible that I tended to look at the whole book as a work of fiction!
Clayton is a good writer, he presents things in a very entertaining way, but once you get off the beaten path with his book you enter a realm that you have to suspend years of training and common sense and just go with it, weather the storm to get to the last bit. He offers up some interesting, all be it far off the mark, insights that may challenge people in more ways than they wish to be challenged….much like we may be asked to believe that in a far off land Luke Skywalker exists and his father is Darth Vader! The book is a thinly written history book with a thick amount of injected guess work and way out their conclusions that don’t seem to hold up unless you disengage the part of your brain that has the job of common sense and self questioning.
So, is his book worth buying? If you are a book hound like myself then go for it! His book is actually a lot more fun that I make it out to be and his illustration of Perry is very good. He comes across a bit anti –Japanese, but I think it is more that he is trying to present the Okinawan side of things so strongly! However, if you are looking for a book that will dispel some of those myths our instructors pass on, I would search out a different book. My next book is going to be Shotokan Myths because I have been promised that none of it is guess work or conclusionairy writing that Clayton used.
After all that I have to say, that after rereading the first and last part I enjoyed the book, far more than others have. I just suggest that when you look at the applications portion of the book (which I have in the expanded edition but don’t know if its in the original version) you skim and skip a lot. It is only applications based on and used to support his ideas of what the Kata were meant to be. He also does not go into a great amount of detail about other Katas or other aspects of Karate, which leads me to conclude….on my own…that he studied the history of Karate only thru these Kata…and did not go into great detail about Karate history in general.
Not a horrible bit of writing, but not my favourite to date. We discussed it a lot in the club and also I have had a lot of chats on line about the works and everyone that I have spoken with basically says the same thing….. If you have access to Shotokan Myths or Shotokan History and traditions I would suggest them before this book!
