An excerpt from the book:
the samurai were a head hunting cult -- 5/05/17
The sheer ridiculousness of the passage there is astounding... an overly sensationalised, and thoroughly inaccurate description based on a failure to understand the historical realities, the culture, or even the direct sources he's taking his bizarre ideas from, as he is choosing to only follow what suits his own misconceptions, as he does over and over again. The idea of samurai being a "head hunting cult", that "head hunting was one of their core activities" is purely based in his perverse fascination with the act of beheading.... Antony rather infamously did a video of displaying heads with a decapitated pigs head.... a bit gruesome, but with him grinning like he's just been offered a lap dance. The dude's sick. His appearance on the "documentary" Samurai Head Hunters was just as bad, and just as flawed.... frankly, the guy has issues, and those pervade his "work".
I'm waiting to get permission to quote a critique on this exact text (the excerpt, and the book it came from) from Prof. Karl Friday.... who has nothing good to say for Cummins and his offerings... but suffice to say that his take is that it is entirely without merit, and that Antony has no clue what he's doing, as he fails to even understand different times in samurai history, and how that changes things.... making sweeping claims that aren't true across all periods.... and even failing to be accurate for any period at all.
I wouldn't even use it as a firelighter.
I'm also going to link an article from another koryu practitioner who, although he lists himself as very much an amateur historian and researcher, is far beyond Antony's credentials in every relevant regard. This article covers the issues with Antony's claims and methods, and uses the term "fraud" to describe him... due to the rules here, I'm not going to state if I would use the same word... but I do heartily suggest reading the article (as well as the second in the series, if you want to understand his issues on a martial level). The blog article is:
Antony Cummins is a FRAUD
The basic thing is that no-one, not a single soul who come to Antony's work with actual knowledge find value in his offerings... instead, we find them to be, more than anything, a hindrance... as people who are introduced to the topics using his works without fail come away with incorrect knowledge and assumptions.... not too dissimilar to those who rely on Hayes' early works, really....