Ramblings from a Ten Foot Square Hut: Reflections After 50 Years in the Martial Arts

What is a "martial art"? Are we practicing an “art,” which by definition is a means of self-expression without the need for any practical application or self-justification? Or are we practicing a “martial” discipline, something that requires effective training in combative technique, that prepares us to defend ourselves, perhaps even to take another person’s life or lose our own in self-defense or in the effort to defend our loved ones or our principles? What relationship does our “modern” “martial art” bear to the old samurai way of life, the way of Bushido, the way of the warrior? What should we expect of our "martial arts"--and of ourselves? Related to this, how did we get from the highly practical original Okinawan “te” to the often stylized, unrealistic, and competitive "karatedo" we practice today? Does our modern karatedo provide realistic methods for confronting the kinds of self-defense and combative situations we face in the 21st century? If not, did something get lost in the transmission from the 17th and 18th century to the 21st? The popularization of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) since the 1990s has reinforced this dilemma for practitioners of such “classical” martial arts as karatedo. Why do our traditional methods not prepare us for grappling or fighting from the floor? Why did classical karate practitioners keep losing to grapplers? Do we need to drop our traditional karatedo and take up MMA to find an effective self-defense or fighting system for the 21st century? These questions bedevil those of us who love and cling to our "traditional" martial arts. This books carefully examines how we arrived at this situation, how various experts have thought about it and attempted to find answers to our dilemma, and provides a sensible, workable set of principles that show that traditional martial arts are not obsolete, that they contain a wide range of effective combative strategies, tactics, and techniques that are just as usable today as they were when they were assembled into "kata", or forms for helping the student remember and practice realistic self-defense and combat while alone. For those wrestling with how to make their karate "work," this is a must-have book. Don't flounder or lose faith. And don't ignore the problem. Buy this book and start to discover your own answers to how to make your karate effective.