'One of the year's most entertaining sports books, and the best one to be written about a martial art since Robert Twigger's Angry White Pyjamas. It's lively, it's witty and, above all, so persuasively enthusiastic that by the end you'll find yourself feeling an intense urge to try it for yourself'-James Delingpole, Mail On Sunday

'Anyone can follow a football match and make some plausible remark. But Judo? As Mark Law writes: 'It leaves most people uncomprehending and speechless. It is too fast, too subtle, too foreign.' Approaching his 50th birthday, Law decides to take up the sport and his initial interest becomes an obsession, then a book. The result is a fascinating journey in which he unravels this most opaque of sports with humour, verve and style. Part travelogue, part history, part chronicle of midlife discovery, The Pyjama Game is an illuminating exposition of an enigmatic and marginal sport'-James Corbett, Observer Sport Monthly

'The subtitle barely does this fantastic book justice. Beautifully written and no interest in the martial arts is required to find it absolutely riveting'-Independent

Contents

Acknowledgements
1 Hajime!
2 Beginner's luck
3 To walk the talk
4 The crucible
5 The incredible Dr. Kan
6 Beauty and the beast
7 How the West was won
8 War-When the fighting had to stop
9 The renegade
10 The end of supremacy
11 The club
12 Floored personalities
13 The Soviet menace
14 The Emperor
15 When the gods come down to earth
16 The arms race
17 The likely lad
18 Zen and the art of Uchimata maintenance
19 Hell on a very hot mat
20 The man from the land of the falling rain
21 How the women fought to fight
22 How to build a fighting machine
23 When judo goes into the cage
24 The little empress
25 Devid the Goliath and Inoue the prince
26 White collar worker
27 The tournament
28 What do you think of it so far, Dr. Kano?
Notes
Online information
Index

(4 stars if you're already into judo, otherwise probably a 3) ( )