From the Back Cover
"An engaging, provocative, and long-awaited sequel to
Autumn Lightning... Dave Lowry is a latter-day Lafcadio Hearn with a
bokuto!"--Karl Friday, author of
Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan and co-author of
Legacies of the Sword: The Kashima-Shinryu and Samurai Martial Culture "Like fine wine, good writing only gets better with aging. Likewise, Dave Lowry's Persimmon Wind has garnered a richer, more complex taste over the years since its first publication. And like a good vintner, Diane Skoss has nurtured and reedited this wonderful book for a new generation of serious, dedicated budoka to enjoy. May they find even more textual complexity, sweetness and bittersweet wonder as I did when I first read the book!"--Wayne Muromoto, editor, Furyu: the Budo Magazine
In Persimmon Wind, nature and culture form an unbroken unity. Dave Lowry has managed to bypass the oppressive grey of urban Japan and the glitz of neon and technology. It is as if he found a single meandering thread of purity, and this, alone he followed. Village festivals, tea ceremony, even martial arts are part of a single organic unity, not hobbies used to either pass the time or get one in touch with something lost. It is not all of Japan, by any stretch of the imagination. But it is what makes it Japan."--Ellis Amdur, author of Dueling with O-sensei and Old School: Essays on Japanese Martial Traditions
About the Author
One of America's foremost writers on the Japanese martial arts, Dave Lowry has authored more than one hundred articles on the topic for the most popular English-language magazines, including
Black Belt,
Fighting Arts International,
Furyu: The Budo Journal,
Karate Illustrated, and
Inside Karate. He has also contributed articles on traditional Japanese culture to
Winds, the in-flight magazine of Japan Air Lines. Lowry is the author of nine books on budo, including
Persimmon Wind's prequel,
Autumn Lightning: The Education of an American Samurai. He is the food critic for
St. Louis Magazine and has recently completed work on
The Connoisseur’s Guide to Sushi. Lowry lives, with his wife and son, in front of a bamboo grove near St. Louis, Missouri.
