Zen and the Art of Street Fighting: True Battles of a Modern-Day Warrior [Paperback]

Jack Sabat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2, 1996

In twelve action-packed episodes, Jack Sabat recounts the great fights and lessons learned in nearly thirty years of practicing and teaching karate. Zen and the Art of Street Fighting takes us from training and battling with warriors from Japan and Hong Kong to the Philippines and New South Wales, to his own dojo in Southern California, where he practices with students and teachers from around the world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"While most books on the martial arts concentrate purely upon the physical aspect, Zen and the Art of Street Fighting delves on the equally important spiritual side...This is truly a guide for myself, my students, and the general reader interested in Bushido, the way of the samurai."
-Thomas N. Davies, San-Dan (third degree black belt), Koei Kan Karate-do

About the Author

Jack Sabat began studying martial arts while serving a tour of duty in Viet Nam in 1967. He is the founder and director of Koei-Kan Karate-Do in Santa Barbara, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Frog Books (December 2, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883319455
• ISBN-13: 978-1883319458
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,157,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Little Zen and NO Streetfighting, October 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Zen and the Art of Street Fighting: True Battles of a Modern-Day Warrior (Paperback)

This book was a poorly written, pseudo spiritual, account of Mr. Sabat's experinces in Karate training. There were no streetfights of any kind, only accounts of bouts in various dojos around the world, and very verbose descriptions of his training rituals.

He is disrespectful of other artists that do not follow his style or reflect his views of "enlightenment." I noticed that he made sure the "Wado Ryu boys" were thoroughly tired and winded before he "defended the honor" of his dojo. He is also disrespectful of professional fighters.

He might be a great person, but that is not how he comes accross in the book. I'm sure he trains hard and is a great Sensei, especially if your goal is to heap abuse on yourself.

This was a very distasteful book. Save your money.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Scary Stuff, August 14, 2000

By 

"ajmarshal" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zen and the Art of Street Fighting: True Battles of a Modern-Day Warrior (Paperback)

The book wasn't what I expected. It is of a very poor prespective on martial arts. I thought, I was in a bar hearing macho beer drinking fight stories and not reading about martial arts. It wasn't a good read, nor informative about martial arts or zen. I don't recommend this book at all. It doesn't properly portray karate or zen at all.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Oh, please., April 13, 2001

By 

Big Hominid "bighominid" (Seoul, Korea) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zen and the Art of Street Fighting: True Battles of a Modern-Day Warrior (Paperback)

Mr. Sabat may indeed be as tough and skilled as he claims, but it appears that physical prowess has not translated into mental prowess. The book's prose is unforgivable, and it forced me to commit the unforgivable sin of the bibliophile: I threw the book in the garbage before my eyes had a chance to bleed.

Several reviewers have written about how the book resonated with their own martial arts experiences. Fine. But if one has to make a choice between this masterwork of goofy bloviation or the simpler, more elegant account by Gichin Funakoshi ("Karate-do, My Way of Life"), the prospective reader would be well advised to choose the latter.

Funakoshi's accounts of his own prowess are a far cry from the inarticulate chest-beating of Sabat, who could learn a thing or two about the true budo from the sensei's book. The samurai were not brutes; their ethic was well-rounded to include the intellectual and the esthetic. One detects an undercurrent of humility in Funakoshi that seems almost completely absent in Sabat, who would rather concentrate on a bone-crunching, bad-action-movie narrative.

Find the book in a bookstore, pick it up, read a few awful paragraphs for yourself, place the book back on the shelf, and then ask yourself why this is to be found in the "Asian Philosophy/Religion" section of the store. Then go pick up something by Alan Watts, Shunryu Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh, or Seung Sahn. And if you absolutely must read a westerner on martial arts, try Peter Hyams's modest little tome, "Zen in the Martial Arts."

Of course, if you really want to find that obvious-but-elusive Zen, go enroll in a dojo, kwoon, or dojang. A decent one, mind you.