I recently purchased this book on Amazon, and it arrived in good order when I was in the Hudson Valley in the United States. I am now back in Hong Kong and have had a chance to review the book in greater detail. While somewhat expensive (list price US$60) the book runs to 682 pages with hundreds of entries on various terminology and Japanese schools.
Reading through the text and various reviews on Amazon and other sites, my opinion falls between the two extremes, I don't love this book, it is more like a dictionary than an encyclopedia, with over 4,000 short entries on numerous terms (ranging from the well known to obscure) so that one is often left with a desire for additional information. But one cannot fail to be impressed by the level of its erudition, and the labour of love that went into the work. I also love the fact that the Japanese kanji is provided against the entry with corresponding indicies in Chinese and Sanskrit as well.
What was valuable to me was the select bibliography at the back, with 19 pages of Western sources and 14 pages of Japanese sources, although there were many books that I recognized or already own there were a lot of new leads, as well as numerous journal articles that I had not come across before.
The quality is the usual you would expect of Kodansha, excellent with quality gloss acid proof paper. This book will last a lifetime. However, in the age of the internet, I wonder how often I would use it. The 229 photos are nice but rather few compared to the number of entries and rather arbitrary in their selection, so not a coffee table book that I would flip through to look a the pretty pictures. So in summary a book for the serious academic, I am really not sure whether the average martial artist would use it, or attempt to read it from cover to cover.
In summary kudos to David A. Hall though, and this book will have a pride of place on my Japanese martial arts bookshelf, but I will have to remind myself to wipe down the dust from time to time.
Dr. David A. Hall trained in Japanese martial arts for over 45 years. In addition to his martial arts experience, he draws on his academic and religious expertise to explore aspects of Japanese combative culture inaccessible to most people. He is the recipient of various academic awards, including a Rotary International scholarship and a Fullbright Scholarship.
Ordained as a Tendai Buddhist Priest in 1978, Hall integrated his religious training with Graduate research at U.C. Berkeley, earning a doctorate in Buddhist studies with a related field in Military History in 1990. He collaborated in directing a research organization of combative behavior, the International Hoplology Society from 1983 to 1993.
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