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| A Scribe |
Welcome to a new section on KTJW! On this page I am going to highlight some of the most significant karate magazines, periodicals, and potentially other publications that are related to the martial arts. Some are great, and that means that you should subscribe to them, read them cover to cover, and send the editors and contributors tasty snacks of one variety or another. Others are good, having varied mileage depending on where you are at in your own training. And still some are hopeless, and with whose pages you ought not offend your parakeet by placing it and your beloved bird in the same cage.
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| American Samurai |
Edited and published by Bill Bly, American Samurai is a publication that shows up in your mailbox like a newspaper. The format is huge and full of lots of fun things. Interviews with many of the movers and shakers of karate all over the world, well written histories, bios of some very interesting karate people, and a wide range of features makes American Samurai a worthy read.
The newspaper covers a lot of territory and is accessible from many angles. The interviews are always interesting and there is also a fair bit of good historical documentation as well. People much smarter than yours truly contribute frequently to this fine publication and it is a pleasure to read their stuff.
Bill Bly wisely pulls on the expertise and talents of a lot of different people to put together a great collaboration. That alone is a tremendously impressive feat. This publication also stays very much abreast of the various happenings in karate circles in terms of tournaments and karate camps and is a great source of information.
Lastly, this magazine has a virtual ton of photographs. Bill Bly does nice camera work and it is a pleasure to see the kind of material he puts out in this very classy magazine. Go to the website and get a sense of what is going on with American Samurai at www.americansamurai.com. Reasonably priced, American Samurai, along with its focus on accessibility and quality material gets high scores from me.
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| Shotokan Karate Magazine |
One of the longest running Shotokan magazines around, or so I am told. I only started subscribing this last year, but I am glad that I did. Nice format, beautiful photography, and mostly quality content, this is a good magazine to check out.
One thing that I like about Shotokan Karate Magazine is some of its focus on trying to get as much information possible out of some of the long-lasting karate pioneers of Shotokan. Whereas, on one hand, I certainly sympathize with the sentiment that karate needs to evolve and continue beyond the initial transplantations of karate in the West and move to the next and subsequent generations, I also appreciate the notion of accessing these aging karate masters while they are still around. One day they will be gone and we will be completely on our own, so we had also best see what they have to say about karate, Shotokan, and good training while we can.
Edited meticulously by John Cheetham, Shotokan Karate Magazine, has a tighter focus on things that it puts into print. This is Shotokan karate, all the time, every issue. Not that I am complaining, I like that. I am thrilled to be doing Shotokan karate. I think that comparatively speaking, I lucked out.
One issue that I have with the issues that I have received thus far is that there is quite a bit of advertisements throughout this magazine. And although I certainly understand magazines need to generate revenues through advertisers, I would gladly pay more to have less of that. If the magazine has much more advertising than it does it will start to resemble “Vogue” Karate, complete with fragrant adverts of how your gi may smell after several training sessions with Dave Hooper.
Check out the website and see what they have to offer. Fortunately, for guys like me, I can still access all the issues I missed either through hard copy or have them on disc. Pretty snazzy. Go to www.zee.com/skm/index.shtml and see what I am talking about.