“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
If you can’t get to Japan to do your training, buy this book and read it. It’s the next best thing to being there! Honestly, this is the book I wish I could have written. Dave Lowry has managed to accurately capture in exquisite detail the Japan martial arts experience.
Persimmon Wind tells the story of Lowry’s visit to his Japanese teacher in Japan some twenty years after his teacher had returned to his native country. Describing his journey to his sensei’s home (by way of Tokyo and Suwa), he interweaves musings on his daily encounters–with the old ryokan-keeper who owned a precious bokken, with a typhoon, and even perhaps a ghost or two–with reflections on local history that are sure to both entertain and educate.
We’re fortunate to be able to present here at Koryu.com an illustrated excerpt from a couple of my favorite chapters, “Yagyu Village” and “Obligations.”