New German Book on Shotokan History and Teachings

[Gibukai]

Hello,

Maybe some readers here are fluent in German and interested to know. A new book written by me just came out containing a lot of directly translated early texts written by karate’s pioneers as well as some chapters on the Shaolin legend in the eyes of the karate pioneers, the stick (bō/kon) in Ryūkyū fighting arts and within the Shōtōkan line, problems concerning kata and kumite. A chapter on T. Shimizu, an early student of G. Funakoshi, was written by Heiko Bittmann.

More information including the table of contests can be found here:

http://www.gibukai.de/aktuelles-buch/

Regards,

Henning Wittwer

[Geoff]

Wish I could read German. I'd be very interested in your research on the stick in Shotokan.

[Gibukai]

Hello,

Thank you for your interest! As for the stick, you can find a short English version of the German chapter in Classical Fighting Arts No. 20 „The Shōtōkan Staff – Considerations Concerning its History, Transmission, and Teachings”. However, please understand that my English is far from satisfying, which is why a lot of editing took place for this English version. One of my main points, for example, is to present readers literal translations from Japanese sources (as close as possible), and not the more free interpretations which are available everywhere. So for the English version I had to accept compromises …

Regards,

Henning Wittwer