Classical Fighting Arts

Along with "Journal of Asian Martial Arts" (JAMA), this is one of only two historically serious martial arts periodicals that I know of. While JAMA has more of an academic overtone and prints articles on a wide variety of subjects, CFA is more engaged in the dirty work of digging up and reporting primary source material and has a narrower focus. My main criticism of CFA is that it has an overwhelming amount of advertising, but I buy it anyway because it is the only place to get certain information and because I value the work that its contributors do.

Please note that the other 3-star reviewer did not really review this magazine.

As a martial artist practicing kenpo karate, kali and jujutsu, I find the historical reference articles published in this magazine to be superb.

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I read 'Classical Fighting Arts' for years, ever since they first switched from the name 'Dragon Times,' and though there is much to admire in CFA, such as the interviews with Okinawan karatedo masters and articles examining the evolution of karatedo since the early 20th Century, I often find more to disdain in this magazine than to enjoy.

Much of the magazine attempts to look like a scholarly study of the classical and historical Asian martial arts, but with just a little closer of a reading, the shoddiness of much of the scholarship, as well as an overzealous sense of Okinawan nationalism, shows through.

Shortly before CFA began printing its articles on glossy pages, I stopped reading it when the magazine took three of their bi-monthly issues to print a single article that meant to discredit the existence of 'chi' or 'ki,' what many people believe to be a kind of energy found in the body. I make no argument for chi's existence, but though the article outlined many examples to disprove chi in kung fu or ki in aikido, the writer chose not to address acupuncture or any of the other methods of chi used in healing that your insurance company covers, i.e. believes in. In other words, the magazine took three issues to tell the part of the story that would make kung-fu and aikido look bad, leaving the rest of the story untold.

I recently gave the magazine another chance with their Summer 2009 issue, and the shoddy scholarship let me down again. An article on Chinese martial virtue, 'wude,' attempted to dismiss the individualism of Chinese martial arts fiction with the single historical example of the Red Spear Society, a rural militia from the early 20th Century that was steeped in a Confucian concern for the group.

Though the article takes the time to describe the 'Wu Lin' of martial arts fiction and even uses the term 'swordsman,' the writers choose to completely ignore the Chinese term for swordsman: 'xia,' a word used to describe the type of fiction ('wuxia') they use for examples of false wude. Xia was also an actual class of rogue warrior described in 'The Records of the Grand Historian' one of the Four Chinese Classics by Sima Qian (145 or 135-86 BC).

This is basic stuff in Chinese history. To say that individualistic swordsmen never lived in China is to say that gunslingers never lived in the Wild West. There are historical records of both. To discredit the wude of xia with reference to an obscure, rural militia is agenda-driven scholarship, akin to the type of nationalistic propaganda written by Nazis in the 1930s.

I'm not Chinese, nor do I study classical kung-fu. Over the years I have really really tried to like this magazine (that's what the second star is for) but the petty nationalism, and sometimes blatant racism (read anything printed in CFA on Tae Kwon Do) consistently prevents me from liking or recommending this martial arts magazine.

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