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Kung Fu Tea

Martial Arts History, Wing Chun and Chinese Martial Studies.

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Japanese Martial Arts

The Book Club: Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan (Chapter 5): Vital States, Sick Nations and the Confucian Body.

    Introduction   This post is the third and final installment of our short series reviewing Denis Gainty’ 2013 book Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan (Routledge). Readers new to this work may want to review... Continue Reading →

The Book Club: Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan (Chapter 3): Capture the Flag – Spectacle and Rhetoric in the Japanese Martial Arts.

“I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of... Continue Reading →

The Book Club: Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan: Introduction – Chapter 2

  Denis Gainty. 2013. Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan. New York: Routledge.   Introduction In this post I have the distinct pleasure of discussing Prof. Gainty’s work on the relationship between the martial arts, embodied identity,... Continue Reading →

Through a Lens Darkly (30): Magic Lanterns and the Asian Martial Arts, 1900 – 1920

    Introduction   When introducing topics like the transnational translation of the martial arts, the construction of popular beliefs about Asian culture through images of violence, or even the reduction of hand combat’s once radical message to yet another... Continue Reading →

The Tao of Tom and Jerry: Krug on the Appropriation of the Asian Martial Arts in Western Culture

The Mouse Always Wins In 1962 American theater audiences were treated to the sight of a mouse named “Jerry” repeatedly besting a cat named “Tom” through his mastery of Japanese Judo. Tom is more of a force of nature than... Continue Reading →

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