By HELEN COMPSON

Last updated 10:39, Friday, 14 November 2008

AT first it’s hard to believe Harry Cook (59) is a martial arts expert.

From the name to the appearance, he’s more bank manager than Bruce Lee.

Fist of Fury and Touch of Death are typical of his DVD collection, but he looks anything other than threatening, sitting in his well-worn armchair in his unassuming terraced home.

A short trip up his garden path sharp changes that impression, though.

For when he opens up what looks like a large shed, you get a glimpse of another world.

The innate power of Harry Cook, 7th dan master of two separate forms of the Eastern art, stands in the middle of his dojo – his purpose-built, fighting arena – and firmly ties a black belt around his waist.

Respectful, quietly spoken and controlled, suddenly he’s someone you wouldn’t want to take on in a fight.

Luckily, Harry walks this world in peace. Karate, he says, is about self-defence and self improvement – he practises the art in its purest form.

Not for him the commercialism and vulgarity of an Olympic sport.

While the rest of the country gears up for 2012, he counts his lucky stars that karate hasn’t yet been sucked into the world’s biggest sporting spectacle.

The Olympic flame has burned karate’s near cousin, tae-kwondo, which is now divided into two very distinct camps – the traditionalists and those who chase gold.

“The pursuit of sport distorts values, beliefs and traditions – it becomes about winning at all costs and commercialism takes over,” said Harry.

“Look at football. It’s a group of men kicking a ball up and down a field, and it can lead to the most ludicrous situations – you can get beaten up for wearing the wrong scarf.”

Just for good measure, he adds that, while he “likes” sport, he detests its triviality and tribalism.

Karate, on the other hand, has been widely misunderstood in the Western world, and Harry is doing his level best to undo the damage.

An exponent of two forms of karate, Shotokan and Goju-Ryu, he is currently putting the finishing touches to the second edition of what is now regarded as the definitive history of the art.

It has to be said Shotokan Karate: A Precise History didn’t exactly fly off the shelves to begin with.

At £50 a copy, it was just too damned expensive, he was told.

That was until his fellow aficionados dipped into the story of karate’s journey from its birthplace on the Japanese island of Okinawa to the west.

Karate only emerged out of the shadows of Oriental mysticism in the early 1920s.

Less than 100 years later, it is the bottom line in self-defence – and street cred – the world over.

Suddenly people wanted a copy of Harry’s book, and they were prepared to pay through the nose.

By the time Shotokan clubs in Britain caught on, the original 2,000 copies published at the turn of the new millennium seemed as rare as hens’ teeth.

They now change hands on the Internet for $400 and $500 a time.

The second edition will be out soon. Containing 400-plus pages, it is 120 pages longer than the original, thanks largely, to the trust he has earned among his Japanese and Chinese peers.

Recognising the academic value of the book, many a son and grandchild has sent him treasured old photographs of the founding fathers of Shotokan and Gojo-Ryu in action.

“My reputation is established now, so Oriental people who were reticent in the past have begun sending me a lot of photographs and recollections,” he said.

“This is a way of archiving and publishing material that might otherwise have been lost.”

Karate was quite literally brought to Britain in 1957 by one Vernon Bell.

A judo black belt, he went to Paris that year to join a series of training sessions organised by French judo expert Henri Plée.

A decade earlier, Plée had spotted a photograph in Life Magazine of two Japanese karate black belts fighting.

No-one had seen that form of martial arts in the Western world before, and he was fascinated.

He went on to teach himself karate after getting hold of some Japanese books, that he had to have translated.

In 1957, he brought two karate teachers across from Japan and invited a handful of his contacts, including Vernon Bell, to join them.

That same year, Bell established the British Karate Federation, and satellite clubs began to open up all over the UK.

Harry Cook, a teenager at the time living in his home town of South Shields, joined his closest club, in Sunderland.

He was among the first generation during the late 1960s to train with martial arts legend Enoeda Keinosuke.

“I had never experienced anything like that before – it was like being in a room with a tiger,” said Harry.

“During training, he was immensely powerful and potentially dangerous, but when he took his karate suit off, he was this affable man with a real sense of humour.

“That contrast really interested me.”

Absorbed by all things Oriental, Harry went on to study Chinese at Durham University.

While there, he set up a karate club which in 1973 and 1974 won the British university championships. It was the first university club to win two years in succession.

Harry was doubly proud the day his own daughter, Katie, (21), who had followed in his footsteps to Durham, became captain of the club.

Both Katie and his son, Robert, (25), are black belts.

Harry and his wife, Sheila, spent three years in Japan teaching, firstly in Tokyo and later in Kyoto.

By the time they returned, Harry had added Goju-Ryu to his list of accomplishments.

Later, Harry formed his own Seijinkai Karate-Do association, fusing the traditional styles of Shotokan and Goju-Ryu to create his own unique method of teaching.

Today, the association has branches across Britain, Ireland, Norway and the US, boasts around 600 members, and is part of the Traditional Martial Arts Association.

However, while Harry has become something of a jetsetter, travelling the globe to give master classes, he calls Haltwhistle home and Hexham the home of his karate kingdom.

He runs classes in the Trinity Methodist Church hall, Hexham, three days a week, bringing the next generation of karate experts up through the ranks.