Karate-do: My Way Of Life – Gichin Funakoshi

Chances are, if you’re reading this that you have at least a passing interest in martial arts in one form or another. Maybe you train, maybe you used to train, or maybe you just like to watch the high-kicking, board breaking antics. Regardless of why you’re here and which style you might train in, the name Gichin Funakoshi is an important one, and one you should be aware of.

Funakoshi was the founder of one of the world’s biggest schools of karate, Shōtōkan-ryū, and he was Instrumental in bringing the original Okinawan martial arts to Japan and promoting and spreading the associated benefits to the land of the rising sun, and subsequently the rest of the world. This book is Funakoshi’s story in his own words, and despite being relatively short in terms of an autobiography (144 pages) he still manages to pack a huge amount of information in. Throughout the book his thoughts and experiences are related to the reader in the form of a series of anecdotes and stories from his colourful life, from sneaking through the back streets in the middle of the night as a young man for secretive training (and being mistaken for visiting ‘ladies of the night’!), to the second world war and destruction of the original Shōtōkan dojo, Funakoshi’s life is wonderfully depicted and paints a vivid picture of life in the late 19th/early 20th century in Okinawa and Japan.

If one had to find a fault with the book – and to be honest that’s not an easy job – you’d have to point at its brevity. It won’t take you a long time to read this book, and because of the way it’s written with anecdote following anecdote over the space of a few pages, it’s a real page-turner. It’s perfectly plausible to think that you could sit down one Sunday afternoon to start reading, only to find you’ve finished it before bedtime. Despite this though, it’s a delightfully entertaining and engrossing read, and testimony to the man who not only penned many of the original precepts of martial arts training which we still adhere to, but lived his life by them. Don’t expect in-depth analysis and insights into karate, this isn’t what this book is for and Funakoshi saved this for his master text, the Karate-do Kyohan. Instead enjoy a look back at the life of one of the true Fathers of modern-day martial arts, told in his own inimitable style.