FAQ: About the Book

The biggest ever collection of Fudebakudo — over 50 main topics and lots of additional information, history and pearls of martial wisdom. See the book for example illustrations, contents list, and more details.

If you were asking about the quality of what's in the book, then perhaps you should read some reviews.

Although Fudebakudo is an ancient art, the book itself is a Beholder project.

The best place to buy a copy of Fudebakudo is on this website, direct from Exploding Pen (that's the publishing enterprise of Beholder, who wrote the book). You can even have it signed, with a dedication (if you want).

Alternatively, you can buy from a number of other places, both online and in the Real World. See the other ways to get hold of a copy.

Possibly you were a Fudebakudo master in a previous life. You know, like Steven Seagal was (hey, he also says he was a llama, so why not?).

Another more plausible reason is that, although the book was launched in 2003, some of the illustrations had previously been published in the UK newspaper The Cartoonist in 1993.

Now you're thinking "But I never saw a copy of The Cartoonist," and perhaps you're right. But . . . Fudebakudo was on the back page (in the Sports section, of course, even though we all know it is, in fact, a Way of Life), and, because it was a broadsheet paper, it was a b-i-g image . . . ideal for photocopying, in fact. So martial artists started copying it (yes, it's a bit naughty, and if anyone tried such a thing now we'd be onto them with a regiment of unfunny lawyers). We began to hear reports of it turning up on dojo noticeboards all around the UK and then the world — the Hokikoki Kata was spotted in a South African karate dojo, we got letters from the US asking for more, and we even know that the 31-Count Kata made it back to its spiritual home in Iwama, Japan (where Saito sensei — who devised the original 31-count kata — saw it before he died).

In fact, it was the underground popularity of Fudebakudo (and this was before the web kicked in — although it has been online since around 1995, which also helped) that led to the decision to finally produce the book several years later.

Of the 50 main topics in the book (some of which you can see in the gallery), about 16 had been published in The Cartoonist   ten years earlier. Of those, most were changed quite a bit, but one or two are pretty much original — although everything was redrawn for the book in order to fit the new format. But that's why some people think they recognise it (especially the 31-Count Kata, which is well-known in aikido these days) even though they don't know about the book or the newspaper it first appeared in.

We've just answered that, above. Pay attention!

Why, yes we do. Please read our position on copyright, or see all the legal stuff.