An understated but often enlightening journey into the Okinawan beginnings of karate.
A guide introduces readers to the original form of karate.
Karate is one of the world’s most popular martial arts, practiced by millions of people in America and beyond. But how close is the karate taught at commercial dojos across the United States to the original martial art? With this book, Bayer takes a look at the practice that arose in Okinawa 500 years ago—well before the popularization of karate in mainland Japan in the early 20th century. “Japanese karatedo,” he explains, “with its more than ninety years of existence, is a relatively new development with a different form, purpose, and philosophical superstructure, and it altered traditional Okinawan karate so significantly that it formed a new alternative system and a new approach of its own.” After this “Japanization,” karate underwent further Americanization and commercialization to reach its current popular form. The author charts the evolution of not only the movements within karate, but also the philosophy behind them. At the same time, he argues for the value of preserving and studying the original Okinawan version of the martial art. Presented as a work of research, the book offers historical evidence and analysis that track the development of karate over time. Bayer includes charts, photographs (by the author and others), and diagrams to illustrate his arguments. The manual is not aimed at general readers, and as such Bayer’s prose is rather dry and specialized: “Such accepted feasible kata modifications are based on shuhari, allowing karateka some liberty, within narrow limitations, to develop their own way of executing techniques determined by their physical stature and their individual personality, but always based on correctly copying their instructor’s techniques.” Much of the research comes from the author’s own experiences studying the form, particularly with Okinawan masters of the older techniques. The book’s presentation and organization leave a bit to be desired—the layout is unintuitive and not terribly pleasing to the eye—and despite the glossary, many terms are underexplained. Nevertheless, fans and practitioners of the form will likely be captivated by this exploration of its origins and development, both by what has changed over time and what has remained the same.
An understated but often enlightening journey into the Okinawan beginnings of karate.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59-439843-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: YMAA Publication Center
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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