Karate Dojo by Peter Urban

Author:Peter Urban
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8048-1703-5
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Famous dojo stories

Researching the history of the martial arts is in the final analysis a matter of accumulating, cross-checking, and listening to the varied accounts of the best of the living Oriental scholars and the great practitioners. It cannot realistically be determined when any of these arts began or by whom. It is generally accepted by Karate devotees that Bodhidharma started the original martial arts concept with the propagation of his Zen sect into China and, through Zen Buddhism, into Japan. But no one can state unequivocally that this is a fact, for, although ancient Chinese and Japanese documents regarding the martial arts do exist, they contradict each other. The general practice of martial arts scholars is to accept as most authentic the opinions of the most erudite and intellectually superior individuals only because their guesses are more educated; however, all scholars, no matter how erudite, preface their findings with an apology for their lack of responsibility for historical accuracy.

The following collection of stories represents the history of Karate as I envision it, having gleaned what seems to me to be most feasible from the massive amounts of contradictory material written on the subject. I have found from my brief experience of only fifteen and a half years of formal practice and research that nothing is impossible in the martial arts, and I therefore take the liberty to depict the past as I believe it was or might well have been. I do not choose to argue with the greater Oriental scholars in the event of disputes with my opinions, but will bow to them on the premise that my guesses are based on less experience than theirs.

However, I believe my findings to be more profound than all the tales and myths about Karate that have been handed down to martial arts devotees for generations. I am basing my conclusions on an admixture of intimate experience, creative imagination, free observation, personal reason, and logic. I have written this book in accordance with the view that sometimes it is better to tell the truth in the guise of stories so as to offend the fewest people, and entertain the most readers. Also, I hope to inform the few who do not need academic accreditation and the dictates of others to help them to decide what is true, what is not true, what is good, what is not good.

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