Sonny Leads: A Japanese Karate Adventure - Softcover

Richard Mosdell; Genshi Kamobayashi; Manga University

Softcover

ISBN 10: 4921205345 ISBN 13: 9784921205348

Publisher: Japanime Co. Ltd., 2014

Synopsis

Karate just got real!

Sonny Leads is a black belt with something to prove to himself, and to the world. He's oozing with talent, but he can't seem to put it together when it matters most. So he takes the advice of a coach and follows his dream to train with the best in Japan.

Before anything can go right, though, everything goes wrong. In the dojo. At his new Japanese home. Even in front of a cute university student named Haruka. Does Sonny have the fighting spirit needed to survive Japan?

He'd better. Because real karate isn't for pretenders.

About this title

About the Author

RICHARD MOSDELL (5th dan JKF Wadokai) started learning karate in the 1980s, and then to broaden his study of it he lived in Japan a total of 11 years over various long-term stays since first arriving in 1993 as a Japanese Studies undergraduate from Canada.

A student of various karate styles and a former sports karate athlete, he has spent over 25 years developing a career as a professional karate instructor, which included being the head coach of the oldest high school karate club in Tokyo (Seiritsu Gakuen) from 2005-2014. During this time Richard was a bilingual author for the famous JKFan Karate Magazine, while he completed a Masters in Global Studies at Sophia University, with his graduation thesis titled The Globalization of Karate. Richard was then accepted into the prestigious Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Peace & Conflict Studies Ph.D. program, and his research is titled, Beyond Sport for Peace; the transformative results of learning karate as a vehicle for instilling human rights in post-conflict societies. In addition to writing his doctoral thesis, Richard is now a co-owner and professional coach of Kenzen Sports Karate, a high-performance karate training center in Victoria, Canada.

GENSHI KAMOBAYASHI (born in 1955 in Miyazaki Prefecture) has been a manga artist and karateka for most of his life. He began his career in the early 1970s as an assistant to the mangaka Sei Narushima, a connection that later afforded Kamobayashi the opportunity to work on several popular series, including Macross, Future Boy Conan and Ultraman. He made his publishing debut in 1976 with Niji ni Mukatte (Toward the Rainbow), followed by The Gorilla, a police-action manga he authored under the pen name Noboru Sakaoka.

More recently, he has focused on sports comics, including Karate no Tamago (literally Egg of Karate), about a young person who dreams of being a star karate athlete. He also draws Magic, a karate-themed manga that appears in each issue of JKFan Karate Magazine. He holds a 3rd dan in Shotokan Karate and a 3rd dan in Ryukyu Kobudo, and is a 4th dan Japan Karate Federation instructor.

Every Friday he puts down his art pens and heads to the local community center, where he teaches karate to elementary and junior high school students.

Edition details

• Publisher: Japanime Co. Ltd.
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 4921205345
• ISBN 13: 9784921205348
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160