KUNG FU - Honourable Master Leong Fu.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Chinese Kung-Fu Karato (Atado)... First editions, a complete set of Kung-Fu Karato (Atado) training cards by the school's founder Leong Fu, a 1950s wrestler who pivoted toward selling his brand of fighting to capitalise on growing Western interest in martial arts.The early life of Edward Leong Lee Fu (1932-1991) is somewhat enigmatic, but it is believed that he learnt Ju Jitsu as a teenager in Malaysia from Japanese officers stationed there following the invasion. By the 1950s, he was a professional wrestler, touring Britain for three months and then travelling to Singapore in 1957 for a much-anticipated showdown with Emile Czaja, better known as "King Kong", with the match ending in a no contest.Shortly after the Singapore bout, Leong Fu released this set of training cards for his patented Karato style to tap into a growing Western fascination with Asian martial arts - a trend reflected in sports but also in cinema and literature. In the United Kingdom, the British Judo Association was founded in 1948, with the British Karate Association following in 1964. Several years later, Hollywood's "Kung fu wave" began to gather momentum with the films of Bruce Lee. For Leong Fu, the West represented an expansive market. His adverts appear in the 1960s in a wide range of American and British periodicals, such as Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and, more unusually, British Homing World, the official magazine of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association. These adverts, signed "Asia's Grea

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.