Kensei ~ Kyan Chōtoku: The Man and his Art Paperback – 7 Oct. 2023

This book is important. It contains articles and translations that are historically important for Karate practitioners, and rare pictures to inspire our immersion in the martial arts.Patrick McCarthy has translated some wonderful works in the past, and this book contains not only his work, but also articles from some of my other favourite martial artists. While facebook posts and blogs have their place, it's heartening to have the information collected into print, sitting there on the shelf to remind me, inspire me, and act as a library that can be returned to when the need arises.Kensei - Fist Saint - concerns the life and work of Kyan Chotoki, also called Chan Migwa. His martial arts exploits are explored, and the slurs on his character are not shied away from. The inclusion of the Kyan view of kumite which is not often seen (if it was ever published at all) is a brilliant bonus.Thank you, Hanshi McCarthy, for continuing to educate us and preserve these historical documents where we can access them. I look forward to Volume 2, and any other projects which might arise from your stable.

This book is yet another great work by Patrick McCarthy Hanshi. Thank you for your hard work and for providing this to the Karate community.

This book is full of useful information about Kyan, however, It's not well written, poor grammar and typo's spoil a good book...just needs editing

What you always get from Hanshi McCarthy is a lot of obscure information that you would not be able to find elsewhere. Before reading this, I knew almost nothing about Kyan Chotoku. I feel that I now know a reasonable amount about where he fits in with the history of karate, and what his approach was. If you want to know more than just Itosu -> Funakoshi -> JKA, you need to read about people like Kyan and Motobu.BUT.... (sorry!!)This book needed more care and attention, particularly in chapter 1. This chapter includes two essays by Graham Noble, which cover a lot of the same ground. I kept wondering if I'd read it before, and realised it was genuine repetition. Perhaps consolidation of the material, or selection of only one of the essays, would be more appropriate.Then I get to the essay by Charles Goodin, taken from a three-part series in a magazine from many years ago. I was initially surprised, then horrified, then finally amused by some of the typos ("excepted to be a stupid" instead of "accepted to be a student"!!) which are present throughout this section. I eventually came to speculate that this could be a product of someone having read the original works out loud into voice-to-text software, and then not edited fully. There is a "hey Siri" on page 173 which pretty much confirmed this for me.So, I don't regret buying this book, but for the price, I really would have liked to see a better job of proof-reading. I absolutely respect the work Hanshi McCarthy has done here, but this is a product and we are paying for it.