Martial Musings: A Portrayal of Martial Arts in the 20th Century

Robert Smith has a delightfull writing style. He doesnt suffer fools gladly and is more than willing to put down others he sees as inferior or fraudulent. Sadly this is the case as the martial arts in the USA has become a great big joke. Fortunately the current spate of full contact contests (pancrase,ufc,k-1) as well as renewed interest in muay thai, savate and judo are helping to change that. Smiths background is IMPECABLE-a masters degree and CIA analyst who trained in Japan and Taiwain. His contemporaries were Draeger, Bluming and Geesink. Anyone who knows who these folks were knows that he was in mighty good company.

This is a martial art memoir, written by a worldly man of vast experience and a knack for writing about it. Smith has studied a variety of martial arts, but primarily Judo and more recently Wushu. He has met a variety of martial notables. He expresses his strong opinions about them, and whatever else happens to strike his fancy, and from that standpoint, this is a wonderfully personal book with asides and comments about this and that. Parts of the book are more like a pleasant conversation. But, at the martial arts level, he has a very low opinion of some well-known martial artists, for instance, and lets you know why in his educated, experienced, analytical way. He has seen a lot of good martial arts and artists, and any number of charlatans. Although he thinks highly of Wushu, he speaks openly of the charlatans in that art as well. Since he has known or met almost everybody, he offers revealing anecdotes about some of the outstanding individuals who have been genuinely devoted to martial arts in the past century. Overall, this is not a book to study, but to read and enjoy. A travelogue through a very interesting life that witnessed and experienced much of the modern history and development of martial arts.

With the exception of politics, few human pursuits are filled with as much egotism, chicanery, and sheer nonsense as the martial arts. And like politics, few human pursuits are as capable of cultivating the highest levels of the human spirit. Robert W. Smith captures this human drama in this book. Part autobiography and part historiography, Martial Musings will appeal to all who prefer delicacy to raw meat in the martial arts. Students of the martial arts will immediately recognize Mr. Smith's name. In addition to nine articles appearing in the Journal of Asian Martial Arts, he has published numerous articles and fifteen books devoted to taijiquan, xingyi, bagua, Shaolin Temple boxing, judo, wrestling, and Western boxing, as well as overviews of the fighting arts and those who practice them. His range of scholarship and practice is extraordinary. As much as anyone, he has been responsible for popularizing authentic versions of judo and Chinese martial arts in the United States. Martial Musings provides the capstone to his career. In it he describes the story of his life interspersed with reports of his encounters with high-level martial artists throughout the world. He employs prose that sings on the page, scatting like Ella Fitzgerald when improvising on the martial melody with literary asides and opinions pungent as Szechuan chili peppers. Only Faust enjoyed such a range of talent and opportunities, but to far greater disadvantage.Born in 1926 on a small Iowa farm, he grew up in an orphanage in Galesburg, Illinois. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, leaving high school after his second year. Upon completion of his military service in 1946 he began to work for a railroad and started to promote wrestling and boxing matches in the Midwest. He went on to receive a high school equivalency certificate, an undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois and a graduate degree in Far Eastern Studies from the University of Washington. His martial arts education began in Chicago. Upon entering the Chicago Judo Club in 1947 and exaggerating the judo prowess he gained in the Marines, he learned quickly how to make friends with the mat. Hik Nagao, a third degree black belt made the introduction, and study with Minoru "Johnny" Osako deepened the friendship. It was while working out in the Chicago Judo Club that Mr. Smith first met Donn Draeger, one of the foremost Western martial artists of the twentieth century. Their partnership led to publication of Asian Fighting Arts, in 1969, and reprinted in 1980 as Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts, five years before Mr. Draeger's death in Hawaii. Mr. Smith's involvement with Judo lasted thirty years. He was instrumental in popularizing judo in the U. S. through teaching, promotion of tournaments and publishing his "Complete Guide to Judo" in 1958.In 1953, Mr. Smith gave a speech at the first U.S. Judo Championships. The topic-retaining Jigoro Kano's ethics while improv

Almost anyone interested in the history and development of the Asian martial arts in Europe and North America during the twentieth century should find this book a peach; the exceptions will be those who dislike writers who state their opinions bluntly. The photo selection is first-rate, the factual content is sound, and the text reads like a series of letters from Bob Smith. (Not Mr. Smith, the martial arts instructor, but Bob, the guy who helps site shelters for bluebirds.) The sections on judo -- easily a third of the book -- burn with the gem-hard flame of "A Complete Guide to Judo" (1958). The chapters describing Mr. Smith's many notable friends -- E.J. Harrison, Donn Draeger, Jon Bluming, Bill Paul, Zheng Manqing, Ben Lo, Rose Li, and others -- sparkle with insight. And if you read between the lines, then you should find a wealth of how-to, including how to spend life breathing free rather than on your knees and truckling.Major themes include:* Love (Agape rather than Eros, mind you) is a key to happiness. What blocks most of us from understanding that is ego, which in the martial arts is frequently manifested by the desire to be a master rather than be true to ourselves.* Internal strength is true strength. Why? Because internal strength is both faster in action and more restful in practice. Relax, breathe, and move from the center; misdirect and avoid rather than confront directly; and seek always for maximum efficiency and mutual welfare. These are keys to success in life as well as the martial arts, says Mr. Smith. * If you practice your martial arts only in class, for awhile you'll get trophies and become better at your forms but in the end all you'll get is old. But if you pack your love into both fists and carry it with you everywhere you go, then by the time you become as ragged as the velveteen rabbit perhaps you will sometimes catch occasional glimpses of something more. This isn't faith or magic. It just is. One recommendation, though: if you observe significant differences between what you say in church or in class and what you do the rest of the time, then pay special attention to the chapters you probably skipped, namely the ones on books, music, and poetry.* We all need humor in our lives, if only to keep us from taking ourselves entirely too seriously. Put another way, life is too short to spend infusing everything we do with pseudo-samurai determination. If this includes your practice, then perhaps it is time to take up shag dancing instead. To summarize, this book represents Mr. Smith's best published writing in years and may be his best book ever. And, while its sometimes controversial statements may offend some readers, that is irrelevant because this book is autobiography rather than dissertation. I cannot recommend it enough.

One of the great delights of being a magazine publisher is getting books like this for review. I've been a fan of R.W. Smith's writings for years, from his academic works like "Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts" with Donn Draeger, to his inspired lunacy as John Gilbey. For years now I've been calling for a good biography of Smith and his contemporaries, who through their writings, opened up the Asian martial arts to me and my generation of occidentals as a serious study.This book is what I've been asking for.I can't begin to describe how many "names" from the arts acquire "faces" through Smith's distinctive prose (think Philip Marlow in a judo-gi). If there's someone of influence in the post-war western movement of the Japanese or Chinese arts that Smith hasn't met, fought or drunk with I'd like to know who. For all those who pretend to know something about the history of the Asian martial arts in the West, this book had better be in your library.Kim Taylor Editor, Journal of Japanese Sword Arts, and Publisher, Electronic Journals of Martial Arts and Sciences.