Budo; the martial arts ways of Japan; are perhaps the most significant of all the Japanese cultural exports. Literally millions of people practice Japanese Budo around the world; such as karate; judo; aikido; kendo and more. Despite the remarkable post-war international proliferation of Budo; surprisingly little interaction has been conducted at an academic level between Japanese and non-Japanese experts in the field.

Furthermore there are few academic publications that consider the various Budo from different historical; cultural; philosophical and regional perspectives in Japanese; let alone English. This publication is the result of an international symposium; The Direction of Japanese Budo in the 21st Century: Past; Present and future; were conducted at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in November 2003. The objective of that symposium and this book was to stimulate academic discussion and research.