This book is how to remain a Knight & Gentleman and to pursue your Life Mission against all the odds of life.

Dr. Kiyota had a dream since boyhood to educate college students about the Western and Asian cultures & philosophies. He successfully achieved his mission by having been teaching for over 30 years as a professor and as a sensei. I am taking his class, "Kendo: Integration of Martial and Liberal Arts" and I am happy to have finally found my Sensei. There is a lot to learn from him as an open-mind and objective individual!!!

The book is full of documented facts, critical thoughts, and beautiful language. I have invested about 15 hours of concentrated reading with only 3 breaks: to sleep and to eat. In overall, Dr. Kiyota is the person one should meet in life and to shake his hand!!!

When you start reading this book you almost feel like facing a kendoka with a very strong kamae. He reaches you easylly but you cannot, no matter what, reach him. It's not a book about kendo techniques, kata or whatever. It's about everything else that's around kendo. It's roots, it's principles, and yes, as Minoru puts it in the cover, it's philosophy. It's hard too read, specially if you're a westerner kendo student, practicing it as if you were doing aerobics or tae-bo. So, my advice is: wait a year or two until you realize if kendo is really your DO.

First the warning: DO NOT buy this book if you're after a reference book on technique -- you'd be very sadly disappointed, and considering the price of this book, it could be a rather costly mistake. This is not to say that the book is bad - quite to the contrary, on topics that the author covers he does so rather well. My only real complaint is that it is slightly uneven, different themes are not very well related and connected.

The book is broken down to five major chapters:

I. What is Kendo? II. The Impact of Buddhist Thought on the Development of Swordmanship III. The Development of Swordmanship IV. The Development of Bushido, the Code of the Samurai V. The Modern Period

The first chapter is one of the best overviews of fundamental kendo concepts that I have seen anywhere, dealing with issues like mushin, ki-ken-tai-ichi, kiai, zanshin, suki and dojo reigi. The author has explained and evaluated those concepts through a buddhist point of view, which in my opinion proved to be a very good approach.

The second paragraph takes this approach further and deals with general issues of buddhist thought and meditation as a way of achieving mental calm and thus being closely related to japanese sword arts.

The next two chapters dive into history, and take a seriously dedicated reader to work through. And the last chapter attempts to sum it all up, but doesn't quite manage it.

There's a lot of interesting information in there for serious and dedicated reader -- but it's probably not enough to justify the hefty price but to select few. However, if you are really interested in the development of the swordmanship in medieval Japan, it might be just your cup of tea.