Martial Arts Book review site

[marshallbd]

This is something I found on reviews of books relating to the martial arts...the link is below...

"Mitose's In Search of Kenpo" by James Matayoshi Mitose. For some reason this book sells for mucho dinero on e-bay. It is a badly written plagiarized 60 page booklet with large print, bad stories, and unflattering illustrations. The attempt of a convicted felon (murder, conspiracy to commit murder, etc.) to teach morality. To be fair, Mitose's English was said to be none so great, and this book appears to be more of a tribute by his dedicated second generation students--and as such (and being out of print), a collector's item."http://www.bestjudo.com/article13.shtml he also does a review on one of Mr Parkers books which isn't too flattering. What do you think? :asian:

 

[KempoSpirit]

Hi there, How's this for a strange one.
About 5-6 years ago I thought it would be a good idea to try and get ahold of this book as a gift for my teacher. Of course I found out it was out of print. So I started doing some searching through a bunch of different avenues to try to get a copy of it. I went to the publishing company, had major book stores do nationwide searches for it, and had a bunch of 3rd party out of print book dealers start there own searches for it. I even went to all the Martial Art forums I could find and sent a post to each of them to see if anyone new where I might find a copy of this. All to no avail ultimately. After several months of searching I finally got the idea to try my local library. I had them do a nation wide search and guess what! They came up with a library in Nebraska or someplace that had a copy of it on their shelves. I had my library contact them and send it here for my (detailed) personal review/copy. (did I say copy - oops!) Anyway, that's how I got my copy. It's nothing to be proud of by today's standards, but you need to keep in mind the context of the period and the person trying to put their thoughts together from another culture (languag barriers, etc.)
To make this long story short, I was surprised several months later to start getting calls by the out of print vendors saying that they had located copies of this book for me. At that time I could have paid $14.00 for the (originally $7 paperback) and there was even a hard cover copy from someplace I found. Time went on and I continued to get replies both from vendors and vie the forums and the the price kept going up and up! Once people got the idea that this was an out of print text from a master (even though not a great writing) people figured it had eclectic value with it. I watched the price go up to at one point $1400.00 for a copy of it.
It's funny to see how one simple little inquiry can unfold into such a big thing.
Sincerely,
JD-shihan