Advanced Stick Fighting by Masaaki Hatsumi
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Book Reviews of Advanced Stick Fighting
Book Review: Nearly worthless
Summary: 1 Stars
I've read hundreds of martial arts books over the last 30+ years I've been a practitioner and maintain a library of about 240 of them. It's not often that I come across one that I truly detest but unfortunately this is one of that select group. The truly sad part is that it has much potential. After all, it is written by one of the world's foremost experts on the subject. Okay, here is why I don't think it's worth the paper it is written on:
First off, it is in reality a puff piece, a 20-page book masquerading as a 208 page one. Less than one third of the work actually has any data that you can learn anything from. The rest is superfluous pictures that are only tangentially related to the text, historical illustrations, and a copy of the original text in Japanese (which is neat if you can actually read it I suppose). Most of the photos are intentionally blurred to show movement. One or two like that is kinda cool but in this case it is way, way over done. They are hard to look at and literally gave me a headache by the time I got done. And they have very little to do with explaining what is going on or how to do the techniques. The text is also poorly written (or perhaps merely inelegantly translated) and hard to follow.
If you are looking for an interesting coffee table tome with some artsy pictures go ahead and pick this up. If you want a serious martial arts learning tool get something (nearly anything) else. Hugely disappointing!
Lawrence Kane
Author of Surviving Armed Assaults, The Way of Kata, and Martial Arts Instruction
Book Review: A True Master of Deception
Summary: 1 Stars
Hatsumi does it again. As the quintessential master of smoke and mirrors, Hatsumi once again attempts to sell nothing as something. What else can be expected from the self-procaimed master of kyojitsu tenkan-ho?