Budo Perspectives

Budo, the martial “Ways” of Japan are perhaps the most significant of all Japanese cultural exports. Literally millions of people practice Japanese budo around the world such as karate, judo, aikido, kendo, and so on. Despite the remarkable post-war international proliferation of budo, surprisingly little interaction has been conducted at an academic level between Japanese and non-Japanese experts in the field. Furthermore, there are few academic publications that consider the various budo from different historical, cultural, philosophical, and regional perspectives in Japanese, let alone English.

This publication is the result of an international symposium: The Direction of Japanese Budo in the 21st Century - Past, Present, Future; conducted at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies in November, 2003. The objective of the symposium and this book is to stimulate further meaningful international cooperative research into the field of budo studies.