What Is Your KARATE? 01 featuring Ademir Da Costa: English Edition (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798191103792)

What Is Your KARATE?

Tradition or innovation?
Martial art or sport?
Point fighting or full contact?
Kata or kumite?

Karate practitioners may form the same fist and bow with the same respect, yet see entirely different worlds. Karate is known by a single name-but it has never been only one thing.

That is why this question must be asked.

Across nations. Across styles and organizations. Across generations.

A journey through the world of KARATE begins here.

The first voice belongs to Ademir da Costa, a legendary figure in Brazilian karate.

Bullied and isolated as a boy, Ademir turned to karate in search of a way forward. He devoted himself to the art, becoming Brazilian and South American champion before crossing the ocean to compete in Japan.

There, he faced some of the greatest fighters in Kyokushin history: Makoto Nakamura, Shokei Matsui, Kenji Yamaki, Michel Wedel, and Andy Hug.

Ademir speaks openly about life as an uchi-deshi in Japan, the All Japan Championship and World Championships, his conflicts as a competitor, why he retired, his painful departure from Kyokushin, and his new beginning as an instructor.

The Brazilian karate style he helped forge would later be carried forward by fighters such as Francisco Filho and Glaube Feitosa.

Across twelve chapters and more than one hundred pages, Ademir reveals the loneliness, sacrifice, doubt, pride, defeat, and life-changing decisions behind his victories.

How can karate transform a human life?

That is the universal question at the heart of this book.

From Brazil, the journey expands across the world.

Bertrand Kron, a French karate master and doctor exploring martial arts biomechanics. David Gottschalk, a former member of the German Armed Forces who now works as an airport firefighter. Angus Kwong, born in Hong Kong and continuing his exploration of martial arts in Canada.

Shinji Matsuda, who left Japan for the United States as a teenager and devoted his life to teaching karate. Emmanuel Robert, a karateka who embodies the principle of living with strength. And Takuma Koketsu, a Kyokushin Union world champion and leading voice in the global karate community, with more than 120,000 YouTube subscribers.

They come from different styles, organizations, countries, and lives. Yet each is asked the same questions:

Why did you begin karate?
Who shaped your journey, and what did they teach you?
What are your favorite techniques?
Have you ever wanted to walk away from karate?
What is needed to carry karate into the future?

And finally:

What Is Your KARATE?

The more deeply we encounter another person's karate, the more our understanding of our own begins to shift.

This book offers no single correct answer. It offers the KARATE of each individual.

The author, Dr. Takuya Futaesaku, is a Japanese sports doctor and the originator of Fightology-combat sports medicine. His career has crossed styles, organizations, and national borders.

His book Words of Budo reached No. 1 in karate and martial arts categories on Amazon in France, Canada, and Germany.

This series records the words of karate practitioners around the world as testimonies of their time.

This is not a technical manual. Nor is it a heroic tale written simply to celebrate champions.

It is a record of people who have lived through karate-and a book that invites every reader to reconsider their own KARATE.

When you reach the final page, one question will remain:

What Is My KARATE?

Beyond styles.
Beyond nations.
Beyond generations.

To pass the culture of karate on to those who come next.

For everyone who loves karate.

The first volume of a journey without end.