The Warrior's Path: Wisdom from Contemporary Martial Arts Masters

Book Overview

" Budo is religion. It's not something you dilly-dally with, practice, and go home. It's part of your life. All martial arts should become that way, part of your life."--Pat Yoshitsugu Murosako, from... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590300742
• ISBN13: 9781590300749
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Shambhala
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 1.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A poignant look into the hearts of modern warriors

The interviewees in this short book take a nostalgic walk down philosophical lane. Many of the insights were thought provoking and intriguing, sans the one individual who damns everyone for talking him into moving to Brazil to pursue teaching his chosen budo art. I always enjoy reading about modern budo (post WWII) and the Japanese take on the "brutal training" of days past. While I don't doubt the severity of some of the training, as with our own parents "everything was tougher back then." Still, the feeling that traditional budo may be fading into the past is a concern for each of these modern masters. Many tell of their wants and needs to train individuals steeped in the koryu of their respective art. This has been a concern for many of the post WWII era budoka, but the traditional arts manage to cling to life, and seem to share a growing cyclical resurgance of popularity. This book is definately worth a read, as it will make many budoka nod their heads in agreement, and hopefully re-energize the slow modern budo perpetuation.

Outstanding collection of views from modern budo teachers

The Warriors's Path is a really extraordinary collection of interviews of practitioners of the modern "Martial Ways" ( Gendai budo )who have filled their lives with training, are nearing the end of their lives and are able to ruminate on the significance that training has held from a perspective that few practitioners can. It is, I think, a perspective of great value to those young and not so young practitioners of modern budo today. The text deals exclusively with Japanese budo teachers living in Japan or abroad. The similarity in world views of the teachers interviewed here and the consistancy of their answers regarding the deeper meanings of budo practise is still very surprising even in such a homogeneous group. Proof positive that regardless of whether one is practising Atarashii Naginata or Shorinji Kenpo the path is one and the same. Strangely the cover displayed on this page of a Shorinji Kenpo practitioner is different from the "Karate-ka" cover I have. I found the pictures sometimes to be a bit TOO abstract at times. I found myself wishing to see the practitioners in action at times. Also barring this book from receiving a 5 star rating was the fact that mine came with several pages of text missing. I'm sure that this can't be a problem with all the copies, though. In terms of content I would say that this is one of the more important books on budo I've read in the last 10 years.

The Warrior's Path

This is a treasure... a book that has captured the personalities of living masters of many different styles of martial arts from around the world. Great stories and very nice photo work.. anyone studying the martial arts should count this book as part of their library and on going research into their discipline.