Okinawan Karate: Teachers, Styles and Secret Techniques

Beware, Mark Bishop is coming to your dojo to review it !!!Good reference book on karate schools. Some info should be taken with a grain of salt (most of it is, I think, quite accurate), but a very good read non the less. If you have some humor and can take some distance from the subject, this book can be hilarious at times (the English guy coming to give his remarks on a dojo as he was some gourmet review for the Michelin Restaurant Guide).Anyway this is a very good book and it contains some good info about teachers and their lineage, and there is an exhaustive list of kata by shools.The "secret technique" is a bit of a buy bait, but there is few interesting interpretations of obscure or old techniques, that can, be considered "secret" by some.

Sensei Mark Bishop's book is a rare, objective, unbiased look into the unique world of the "Okinawan karates". As a practioner of Goju-ryu and Isshin-ryu, after receiving my !st dan in Tae Kwon Do, I loved his well researched, academic style of writing. His thorough review of the histories of styles, their masters and their uniqueness, is complete and accurate. In a day in age where cd's are the vehicle of martial arts information transference, this "book" is a treasure.

I purchased the original edition many years ago, and last month bought several copies of the 2nd edition from Amazon for myself as well as X'mas gifts to my students.As someone who is interested in the history of Okinawan Karate-Do, I found this book highly useful. This is one of two "must have" English books on the subject, the other being "Karate-Do : History and Philosophy" by Takao Nakaya. Readers will find very similar and complementary information on both book, the difference being more due to difference of the authors' perspective rather than factual error.The majority of the information in the book came from the author's personal interviews with the various Okinawan masters. The coverage of the various Okinawan styles are rather comprehensive. In addition to Karate-Do, the author also included 2 chapters on Kobudo (traditional weapons of Okinawa).However, there are a couple of issues that cost the book a 5-star rating.1] The author can make the book a more scholarly text by dating the interviews. This would be invaluable to future researchers in the history of Karate-Do in Okinawa.[2] The subtitle of the book is "Teachers, styles and secret techniques". The "secret techniques" part is rather thin and anyone who want to discover any thing "secret" from this book will be disappointed.DISCLOSURE : I am a student of Takao Nakaya Shihan, the author of the other book I mentioned above.

This is a great book about Okinawan Karate and it's lineages. It's hard to find this much factual information from one source. While looking for some information for shinobiexchange.com I came across this book and it was interesting to see how Okinawan Karate has ties to Ninjutsu of ancient Japan. Great Book, will look for other titles by this author.

great book

wonderful book!

Good Deal

There is no one book that has the full correct history of the Okinawan Arts, this one attempts to do so. If you study karate , you should definately read it as Mark seems to have painstakenly tried to pry the truth from the living masters, so it's as close as you are going to find from past on tales. The issues witrh it are as folows, especially the beginning this is a tough read. It is edited poorly and the words run into each other. The author is very opinionated especially with the first few masters. The other issue is he himself has contradictory stories, which he admits in the book. The problem being he lists things as fact from whatever he was told. Many of the masters he is interviewing may not remember things correctly or misinterpreted there understanding. A big for instance is the history of Itosu. The author claims he left Shuri for 20 years and developed the Pinan kata after learning Kunsaku(and Chinto) in Tomarei. In reality he is historically documented living in Shuri during this time frame and working with Funakoshi. He also would have learned Kunsaku and Chinto from Soku Matsumura as he was his first master and Matsumura clearly knew these forms. Kunsaku came directly from Master Kunsaku to Sakugawa (who was Matsumura's master) and Chinto was the name of the pirate that developed the kata with Matsumura. More than likely Itosu had a friend in tomerei that he worked the kata with(more than likely under the direction of Matsumura), changed them all (including Passai) and developed the Pinan from there. It's possible this friend also learned Kunsaku 2nd generation as Matsumra did, but highly unlikely he could have known Chinto unless Matsumura taught it to him. Bruce Clayton's book has a better view of Itosu, but also is far from being the complete truth.Any how despite the criticisms noted, the author does make a decent effort and anyone studying a traditional karate style should read.