Pan Gai Noon

i like

As a long time student of Pan Gai Noon, Okinawa Te martial arts and the warrior code of Bubishi, I found the material in the Pan Gai Noon book by Al Case basically informative on the Sanchin and Seizan forms. The computerized figures lack realistic description of each step of the forms, If I had to re do this book, I would prefer actual human photographs or figures drawn by an artist rather than computer graphics.

The advent of easy self-publishing has been both a boon and a curse to the martial arts community: a boon in that it is easier now than ever to get information on little-known traditions; a curse in that the quality of self-published books can be very poor. This is a very poorly assembled book, in almost every respect: the typography is amateurish and inconsistent, the illustrations bizarre, the content not well organized, and the writing appears not to have been seriously edited. With the sophisticated word processors available today, there is really no excuse for this kind of poor workmanship. The cover art is appropriate and the binding is sound.That said, some of the author's points are really excellent. Mr. Case has studied the martial arts for a long time, and he has made some really excellent discoveries. He has some very good pointers in here about the proper development of stances and internal energy. I am not sure, however, if I would have perceived these pointers if I had not known what to look for. Like I said above, the book's content is not well organized, and the best points don't emerge with the clarity or emphasis that they might. There is some good stuff here for the intermediate to advanced practitioner.Although this book purports to be about Pangainoon, it is really about the development of martial skill in general, with illustrations drawn from Uechi-ryu. (For those who do not know, Pangainoon evolved into Uechi-ryu, and whatever the original form of Pangainoon might have been, it has been lost to history.) I have no objection to calling this Pangainoon, but the potential buyer should understand that this is not really an introduction to the style. It appears rather to be a somewhat repetitive collection of discourses on various aspects of Uechi-ryu. It covers only two of Pangainoon's forms, and those are significantly reinterpreted from what is taught by Uechi-ryu instructors. Anyone looking to learn Uechi-ryu/Pangainoon should absolutely not do it from this book, though I think that the book might be profitably consulted by those who already know the style and have been practicing for a few years. The chapters do not correspond to any traditional--or frankly, sensible--way of dividing up the Uechi-ryu tradition. So this book should not be taken as a systematic overview of Uechi-ryu, but rather as some reflections stimulated by practice of Uechi-ryu's two most basic forms and a lot of other martial arts.Mr. Case claims to have invented a "science" of matrixing, and the book's cover suggests that what is in the book is the result of applying the science of matrixing to Pangainoon. Having read the book, I still have no idea what matrixing might be, but I do not see any special insight into anything specifically Pangainoon here. The good insights are good insights into martial arts in general, not into Pangainoon particularly. Nor is it clear how the good insights might have resulted from any special process other than practice and reflection upon practice.This review has turned out to be more negative than I had originally intended, but there is really quite a bit of discrepancy between (1) what a book ought to be and what this book is, and (2) how the book is advertised and its actual content. For the record, my own experience of Uechi-ryu consisted of three years' training under Sensei James Thompson, some ten years of independent practice, wide reading of every book on Uechi-ryu or Pangainoon (and most videos). I have since moved on from Uechi-ryu to Shaolin gongfu, but I still practice the three Pangainoon forms now and again. I have never met Mr. Case, and I hope this review is not unfair, but I invite anyone to compare Mr. Case's book to any of the other books on Uechi-Ryu (especially George Mattson's definitive works, or the scrupulous work of Ihor Rymaruk) and to decide for themselves. In the end I think anyone who wants to charge for a book owes the reader better than this.