Enzan: The Far Mountain (27 page)

About the Author

John Donohue has been banging around dojo for more than 30 years. He’s an expert on the study of the martial arts.

Fascinated with the themes of human action and potential he uncovered in his research, John began thinking about the fictional possibilities inherent in the world of the martial arts. He began working in earnest on
Sensei
, the first Burke/Yamashita thriller, released in 2003. The sequel,
Deshi
, was published in 2005. The third “burkebook,”
Tengu
, was published in Fall 2008. The fourth book in the series,
Kage
, was released in 2011.

John has always been fascinated with other cultures and was attracted to the Asian martial disciplines because of their blend of philosophy and action. He began studying Shotokan Karatedo in college. He joined practical training with more formal education, completing a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His doctoral dissertation on the cultural aspects of the Japanese martial arts formed the basis for his first book,
The Forge of the Spirit
(1991).

John has worked in the hospitality, advertising, and publishing industries, but for the bulk of his non-writing career he has been a higher education professional, working as both a teacher and senior level manager at a number of colleges—strapped, as he says, to the wheel of administrative karma.

During that time he continued to think about and do martial arts. He wrote
Warrior Dreams: The Martial Arts and the American Imagination
(1994) as a companion piece to
The Forge of the Spirit
. Always interested in the spiritual dimension of martial training, he wrote
Herding the Ox: The Martial Arts as Moral Metaphor
(1998). Fascinated with the process of learning the modern Way of the Sword (kendo), he wrote
Complete Kendo
(1999). He also edited a book of martial arts readings,
The Overlook Martial Arts Reader
, Vol. 2., published in 2004. John is also the author of many articles on the martial arts. Fusing the way of the pen and the way of the sword, while writing John has trained in the martial disciplines of aikido, iaido, judo, karatedo, kendo, and taiji. He has dan (black belt) ranks in both karatedo and kendo.