Muye Dobo Tongji: Complete Illustrated Manual of Martial Arts Paperback – July 8, 2010

Wow! What an awesome book! I have always, as far as I can remember since beginning my martial arts training 15 years ago, wanted to know how martial arts were REALLY practiced back when they were really used in warfare. This book is a complete answer to the question. Now, many of you, if you live in the Western world, are probably most familiar with Japanese arts like Judo, Aikido, Kendo and Karate (originally meant "Chinese-hand", and came from the Ryukyu islands). This book, of course, is Korean, but that should in no way diminish its interest for you. Korea was a unified kingdom ever since about 700 AD. Japan arguably never truly was until the Meiji restoration in the 19th Century. So, the Koreans produced a textbook for their military whereas the Japanese kept their techniques secret from each other, and there are few traditions today in Japan that keep them alive (Kendo, Judo and the rest are modern creations meant for modern times). This is also, naturally, the case in Korea as well, BUT there is this book that has preserved the ancient techniques as they were back then for us today. The book describes in detail many series of techniques performed with the whole gamut of weapons, from fists to two-sword techniques on horseback. It even describes contests and games that can be used to sharpen skill and these include things, interestingly enough, like soccer and polo among others. I think in most cases it would not be possible to simply pick up the book and recreate whole forms in the backyard, but you can certainly learn and practice alot of individual techniques with the book in hand or conveniently placed nearby. In this way you can learn many of the techniques used by the ancient soldiers of Korea in their battles against Chinese, Yalu tribesmen, Japanese pirates and invading Mongols. I found the section on the Yedo (the so-called "short sword" which is what the Japanese call the Katana) to be particularly useful due to its detailed explanations of dozens of postures and attack/defense techniques. Generally, the Korean arts have received much less attention than the Japanese and Chinese, and this is probably due to the fact that the Japanese came up with popular sporting versions of their arts earlier than the Koreans and that Chinese culture is so strong worldwide through the cinema etc. The fact of the matter is that the Koreans beat off both the Chinese and the Japanese repeatedly throughout history, having been conquered only once before the 20th Century, and that was by the Mongols, whose victorious cavalry techniques they later adopted. During the Japanese invasions of the late 16th Century, the Koreans were first caught off guard, but soon rallied and through guerilla action on land by warrior monks and soldiers, and through armoured naval technology and tactics at sea defeated the Japanese in spite of the fact that they had the advantage of being equipped with the modern Portuguese-style arquebus and cannon. Another thing I really like about the book is that it speaks well of Chinese and Japanese techniques, many of which are adopted by the authors for instruction to the Korean troops. Rather than be held up by silly pettiness and pride, the scholars of this book make full use of other nations' techniques wherever they are useful. "Know thy enemy, know thyself" as Sun Tzu wrote. Foreign weapons are also displayed and described, and the history of each weapon is given as exhaustively as possible from available sources. If you are the sort of person who always wondered how Korean halberds, swords, spears, shields, staves, and so on were used, and you want to learn how to use them yourself, this is THE BOOK.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Korean martial arts or Korean history. It caught my attention after watching the Korean historical dramas "Yi San" and "Warrior Baek Dong-soo" both of which mentioned why and how the original book was directed by the Jeosun King to be created by his top generals and security force. Having it translated into English is excellent for anyone who is not a native Korean speaker, and Amazon having this edition in paperback for $18.21 is great since I've seen people asking upwards of $400 for a hardback edition on ebay.

The description is hard to understand, but I loved it as the words are exact translation without any input from the translator. It was really nice that there was a section where all of the moves were strung together to show which direction and where to spin. The major problem I had was that the images goes right to left and pages read left to right. It really needs to stick to one way or another, but then again I suppose that might have been because original pictures where ordered right to left.

This is a really neat piece of literature. I will enjoy reading it and will just enjoy having it in my library as a piece of history.

I love that they kept the original drawings, and made a faithful translation. Its a really cool book, with a lot of exciting weapons shown. However, none of the drawings are actually labeled. Of the many many poses that are named, few are explained. Since there are may more lines describing action than there are drawings, its functionally impossible to tell if the picture is of one named pose or another. The chapters are not labeled, so referencing the book is a pain. The form diagrams are also not given in a translated diagram, which makes them very time consuming to digest because you basically have to finish the job the translators left incomplete of matching and referencing. Some of the pictures are also very small and low resolution.I recognize that some level of this is sort of the norm for historical eastern martial arts study, but this certainly more rough around the edges than others of its kind, to the point where it's basically unusable without a considerable amount of additional effort actively adding translations for the moves and forms. Which you'd think would be sort of included in the original point of translating the book to begin with.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who studies any of the Korean Martial Arts. It is a very educational book. I enjoyed reading it, and plan to use it as an instructional guide as well.

Good addition to my library. Particularly enjoy the nice little treatisie at the end on the Su Bak, as it is part of my art's ancestral roots...

Great reference material.

Good book, the entire book with a cheap price. It solves my problems of finding some chapters of the book separetely by a higher price each one than this book

A really good edition, not to be intended as a manual to learn techniques, but a piece of history, connecting the ancient Korean martial arts and war techniques with their Chinese ancestors.For the martial art's history lovers.

Useless as a 'teach yourself' book but as a resource for someone training in Gojeon Muye (Classical Korean martial arts) it is highly valuable. As I train in South Korea, I'm used to consulting the original text, much of which I don't understand not just because my hangeul is poor but because the original hangeul is archaic. You also need a good knowledge of hanja (Chinese characters used by Koreans - of which there are about 1800 characters).The book is a decent size and robust and contains the entire text used in my dojang - except the book is a quarter of the weight and half the price of the Korean version with which I am familiar. My only criticism is that the transliteration used is not explained or identified. Considering the book was first published in 2000, the same year Korea adopted the Revised Romanisation System (replacing the Reischauer-McCune system), it would have been prudent to have updated. As it is, any student who uses Korean in the dojang will find the transliteration confusing and to some extent, without knowledge of hangeul or transliteration methods - useless. Worse, I can already hear some of the horrible pronunciations - like 'gum-do'. ('gum' as in 'chewing gum).Part of the study of the MYDBTJ requires scholalrly study, it is an historical document written in both hangeul and hanja and its forms and methods need interpreting. This is very different from other martial arts. In Korea, masters are usually very diligent to improve their students abilities at hanja. The lack of hanja and hangeul downplay the importance of interpretation and the 'scholarly' side of gojeon muye.

Auf dieses Buch habe ich mich gefreut und wurde nicht enttäuscht. Wenn man vergleichbare Werke aus China und Japan besitzt, kann man den koreanischen Klassiker besser würdigen. Aber das ist nur meine persönliche Meinung.Jedenfalls bin ich sowohl vom reichhaltigen Inhalt, als auch von der Aufmachung sehr angetan. Dieses Werk gibt einen guten Einblick in die Kampftechniken Ostasiens und zwar nicht nur eines Landes und nicht nur einer Epoche. Es wurde zwar im 18. Jh. kompiliert, doch viele Techniken wurden bereits Hunderte Jahre zuvor angewandt. Diese Arbeit stellt somit eine wahre Fundgrube dar, sowohl für Kampfkünstler, als auch für historisch Interessierte.

Alles bestens.