SINOPSIS

Twenty years after Britain''s best selling karate book ''The Beginner''s Guide to Shotokan Karate'' first appeared, the author, John van Weenen, is publishing his amazing autobiography. In Funakoshi''s Footsteps is a unique work and gives an honest, refreshing evaluation and insight into the ''not so idealistic world of Shotokan Karate'', as seen through the eyes of a prominent British teacher. It ''pulls no punches'' and exposes the myths surrounding many Japanese and British instructors, and offers a wealth of invaluable metaphors contained in more than two hundred individual stories. Above all, John''s autobiography is filled with realism. Mistakes, (and there are plenty of those), humour, tragedy, compassion, romance, heartache and encounters and experiences with what resembles a ''Who''s Who'' of Japanese and English instructors since the death of Master Funakoshi....