Introduction

This chapter presents Japanese martial arts as a relevant topic of study from a historical sociology approach. After a brief discussion on the relationship between terminology and social processes, the chapter introduces the main tenets from Norbert Elias’s process-sociology and proposes a research strategy for the whole book. The structure of the volume is divided into three parts (warriors, retainers, martial artists) that make explicit reference to different stages in the development of martial arts within the specific Japanese civilising process.