Angry White Pyjamas

Adrift in Tokyo, teaching giggling Japanese high school girls how to pronounce Tennyson correctly, Robert Twigger came to a revelation about himself: he'd never been fit. In a bid to escape the cockroach infestation and sweaty squalor of a cramped apartment in Fuji Heights, Twigger, guided by his flatmates Fat Frank and Chris, sets out to cleanse his body and his mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow the author is sucked into the world of Japanese martial arts, and the brutally demanding course of budo training taken by the Tokyo Riot Police, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against blood-stained dogis and fractured collarbones. In Angry White Pyjamas Robert Twigger skilfully blends the ancient with the modern - the ultra-traditionalism, ritual and violence of the dojo (training academy) with the shopping malls, nightclubs and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the nineties - to provide an entertaining and captivating glimpse of contemporary Japan.

Winner of Somerset Maugham Award 1998
Winner of William Hill Sports Book of the Year 1998

“Wonderfully oddball ... Here is a cult book all right, which could do for Japan and the martial arts what Hornby did for Highbury and the football terraces”

A frantic, very funny, urban quest. - Mail on Sunday - Simon Garfield

A book of unexpected brilliance. It is subtle, funny, stimulating and original - a rites-of-passage story, an explanation of an alien culture, and an inspiring work of philosophy - Patrick French

His fine eye for eccentricities makes this an entertaining travelogue - The Observer

A rattling good yarn and very funny into the bargain - Independent on Sunday - Tim Hulse

This is a splendidly written adventure, something sane at last on the craziness of martial arts - Independent on Sunday

His explanation of how to come to terms with intense pain should be read to every footballer who has ever writhed about in agony after a kick on the shin... It is a clever, enthralling book - Daily Mail - Ian Wooldridge

Brilliant ... everyone should read it - Late Review - Tony Parsons

- Guardian - Frank Keating

Robert Twigger won the Somerset Maugham and William Hill Sports Book of the Year awards for Angry White Pyjamas.

Adrift in Tokyo, teaching giggling Japanese high school girls how to pronounce Tennyson correctly, Robert Twigger came to a revelation about himself: he'd never been fit. In a bid to escape the cockroach infestation and sweaty squalor of a cramped apartment in Fuji Heights, Twigger, guided by his flatmates Fat Frank and Chris, sets out to cleanse his body and his mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow the author is sucked into the world of Japanese martial arts, and the brutally demanding course of budo training taken by the Tokyo Riot Police, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against blood-stained dogis and fractured collarbones. In Angry White Pyjamas Robert Twigger skilfully blends the ancient with the modern - the ultra-traditionalism, ritual and violence of the dojo (training academy) with the shopping malls, nightclubs and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the nineties - to provide an entertaining and captivating glimpse of contemporary Japan.

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