Asian Fighting Arts

 

Way, way back, long before the internet, there was a book that explained many Asian fighting traditions. Asian Fighting Arts by Donn Draeger and Robert Smith.

Later to be reprinted as Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts.

A standard review found many places on the internet follows:
Fighting arts are as old as man himself and as varied as his languages. In Asia they developed to a degree of effectiveness probably unsurpassed elsewhere in the world.

This book explains the relationships between fighting arts,
assesses their strengths and weaknesses, and presents new material about hitherto unknown fighting methods. Written by two of the best-known and most widely published authorities in the field, it covers fighting methods and techniques found in eleven Asian countries—fighting techniques that range from the artful Chinese t’ai-chi and Burmese bando to Japanese jūjutsu and the lethal pentjak-silat of Indonesia.

Documentation of these has been supplemented with a wealth of fascinating anecdotes. The reader learns of the daring exploits of the Japanese ninja, of Gama, perhaps the greatest of the great Indian wrestlers, of the Indonesian “trance” fighters—and hundreds of other tales that serve to illustrate some of the most deadly fighting systems that the world has known.

The volume is illustrated with over two hundred photographs and drawings, many of them depicting combat styles and techniques that have never been seen in the West.

But it was so much more than that. I fired the imagination that so many different arts existed. And showed so many different possibilities. Now days places like YouTube can show almost everything, from the fantastic to the flight of fancy, But at the time the few cents this book cost (and it was noe expensive) it was truly priceless.

Here is one of my blog posts that came from something in that book.

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2014/12/atemi.html