In preparation for writing the content for our website I am busy on some serious reading and research which started with the early part of Hanshi Richard Salmon’s new book, which focusses on the early days of Karate and Judo in South Africa and the founding of Budokan SA
I then worked through the various Budokan and Budo Ryu documents in my possession to provide more details on our system, Kata, techniques and philosophy.
I have then started to dig into the library in the “Zen Hut” to gather more information and background.
I started with this delightful little book of O’Sensei M Ueshiba the founder of Aikido which short poems, thoughts and beautiful calligraphy, as this true martial arts master clearly had an impact on both Hanshi Richard Salmon and Shihan Ray Ryan.
As we are essentially an organisation based on the Karate systems which came out of Japan after they had moved there from Okinawa, my next book was this one by this Okinawan master who introduced Karate to Japan.
Reading this again clarified a number of issues with regards to “styles” and what I believe Budokan is all about.
The reading, rereading of beloved books and research continues and I do hope to create useful, accurate and insightful content for our website that will be useful to Budokan SA students and martial arts from all styles.
If you have any suggestions for books you feel would be useful or interesting I would be very interested to hear from you, and if you have any stories or anecdotes from your time in the martial arts please share them with me, to include in this work in progress.
