“To enlighten and evolve through the art of Kenpo”
| Volume 13 |
April 2008 |
Issue 1 |
Recommended Reading
Recommended Reading
"Angry
White Pyjamas: A Scrawny Oxford Poet Takes Lessons from the Tokyo Riot Police”
by Robert Twigger
Adrift in Tokyo, translating obscene rap lyrics for giggling Japanese high school girls, “thirtynothing” Robert Twigger comes to a revelation about himself: He has never been fit nor brave. Guided by his roommates, Fat Frank and Chris, he sets out to cleanse his body and mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow, the author is drawn into the world of Japanese martial arts, joining the Tokyo Riot Police on their yearlong, brutally demanding course of budo training, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against bloodstained “white pyjamas” and fractured collarbones. In Angry White Pyjamas, Twigger blends the ancient with the modern – the ultratraditionalism, ritual, and violence of the dojo with the shopping malls, nightclubs, and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the 1990s – to provide a brilliant, bizarre glimpse of life in contemporary Japan.