Monday, March 2, 2009

What I'm Reading 3-2-09

I just finished Karate-Do Nyumon: The Master Introductory Text by Gichin Funakoshi.
Am I glad I read it? Yes.

Will I read it again? I will refer to it again, especially as I try to learn the tennokata omote.

Reflections? Much of the material was repeated verbatim from Funakoshi's "My Way of Life" autobiography, so I was able to skim a lot. Some descriptions of techniques are unclear, some are just plain incorrect. The pictures also sometimes conflict with the written instruction.

Recommended? Overall, yes.

2 comments:

Rick said...

Doesn't he have another book as well? Karate Do Kyohan? What's the difference between them?

Todd said...

Yes, he also wrote Karate-Do Kyohan, which I also have, but I haven't started on that yet. Nyumon is subtitled "The Master Introductory Text" while Kyohan is subtitled simply "The Master Text".

Upon flipping through Kyohan, it seems to me that it has a more objective (as opposed to anecdotal) history of Karate-Do. Also, the lion's share of Kyohan is devoted to step-by-step descriptions of kata (173 out of 252 pages, or almost 69%). Kyohan also seems (at a glance) to contain more conceptual discussions than Nyumon.