Karate Clever

Searching for a New Way

By: Scott Langley

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

It was July 2002 and Scott Langley had just graduated from the Japanese Instructors’ Course in Tokyo. He returned to Europe with a mandate to build a strong karate group in the UK and Ireland. In a decade that witnessed the implosion of most groups, he built up one of the largest organizations in Europe: but his success at home set him on a collision course with his seniors back in Japan. Karate Clever chronicles how, through diplomacy and cooperation, he managed to find a new way to steer one of the most successful karate organizations active today. This is the true story of one man’s journey through the highs and lows of the contemporary karate world.

How the Sausage Gets Made

As a long time karate practitioner (off and on, now back on) it was really interesting, fun, and sad to see someone create a large karate organization, the politics and personal dynamics, and the eventual splintering. Heart wrenching!

I’ve always been fascinated on why this happens, but thought it was a one-off phenomenon of something I saw as a kid. Now I see it’s a natural phenomenon.

And, overall, when you have a dominant power a million miles away calling the shots to a group abroad (ie staring to become meddlesome than helpful)…bad things happen. Like revolutions :)

For an AI narrator, I was very surprised at how good and smooth it was. There was a fair degree of emoting, but sometimes not enough. And the AI doesn’t know that “Osu” is a Japanese term and would keep spelling it “o-s-u” which can be jarring as a listener and confusing if you don’t know karate/Japanese. And some of the other Japanese words weren’t pronounced well (but some English speaking human narrators have done worse).

Well written, honest (warts and all), and a great study on organization building, cross country sociology; and a cautionary tale of power and what some do when they fear to lose it.