Ellis Amdur's Blog: Edgework - On the Books of Ellis Amdur - Posts Tagged "samurai"

My new edition of Old School: Essays on Japanese Martial Traditions - Expanded Edition is finally published through www.freelanceacademypress.com It is appr. 1/3 larger than the original version, with five new chapters and a lot of new material within other chapters as well. The project seemed snake-bit at the end, with a last minute error discovered (thankfully, when reviewing final proofs, but not before 100 advance copies had been printed) and all sorts of glitches with the publisher's shopping cart.

The book contains a radical revisioning of Edo period martial culture--rather than 'arts of war,' they were systems of maintaining and enhancing social capital. The vast majority of enrollees in martial systems were not samurai, and joining a school was, in some ways, similar for merchants and rich peasants to joining a prestigious country club (golf) today. I also write on the rise of competitive martial sports, something that happened 100's of years earlier than most people imagine, as well as chapters on the role of esoteric training in classical martial arts.