Budo is perhaps the most significant of all the Japanese cultural exports.  Literally millions of people practice Japanese Budo around the world, such as Karate, Judo, Aikido, Kendo and so on.  Despite the remarkable post war international proliferation of Budo, surprisingly little interaction has been conducted at an academic level between Japanese and non Japanese experts in this field.  Furthermore, there are few academic publications which consider the various Budo from different historical, cultural, philosophical and regional perspectives in Japanese, let alone English.  This publication is the result of an International symposium called The Direction of Japanese Budo in the 21st Century.  Past, present and future discussions were conducted at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies in November 2003.  The objective of the symposium and this book is to stimulate interest.