HIS Karate-Do

Wow, it’ll be Christmas in a couple of days, with New Years to follow next week. Soon we enter 2010…the beginning of a new month, the beginning of a new year, the start of a new decade. To paraphrase my dad, “So much can happen in [ten] years.” The past decade seems to have just flown by. Ten years ago, in Dec 1999, I was the team lead for IBM service techs in the Pacific Area and we were all anxiously waiting to greet the new year…and new millenium, but for reasons beyond just holiday cheer. It was really a worrisome time for those of us in the computer business. I remember having to reluctantly cancel most everyone’s leave for a three month period: Nov through Jan, just to ensure that we were fully manned in the event that something went wrong during the transition to the new era – especially for computer systems. For months, I attended weekly regional conference calls to discuss the issues and prepare. It was the eve of Y2K and we were unsure as to how the changeover from 19XX would affect accounting systems and databases across the countless bytes of storage and computing that [...]

Wow, it’s October already (and sol hot/humid tonight!) so I suppose it’s time for another monthly note. I just read about Coach Shoji and his Wahine Volleyball team passing the 1,000 victory mark last week. It’s a testament to his coaching and recruiting abilities and his players, both current and past, praise his focus, consistency and life lessons they learned playing for him. I was also thinking that 1,000 wins is a testament to his ability to go through this process year after year, ever since he started way back in 1976 – such tenacity and longevity! There is only one other NCAA women’s volleyball coach who has reached this rare milestone; and I’m sure he shares many of the same abilities – not the least of which is, he has been coaching even longer than Coach Shoji. Folks sometimes think that longevity is a given…you do something, and voila, after so many years, you achieve longevity. Actually, depending upon the activity or task – like NCAA coaching – it can be a long haul. Longevity is so valued that they give out awards for it. I was let go from IBM Corp just six months short of making it [...]

Well it’s September, and the beginning of a new school year for kids. That and a couple of other things got me to thinking about certain themes that seem to run with the practice of Shotokan Karate-Do. One thing that seemed to distinguish the Shotokan senseis that I read about and got to practice under throughout the years was in the area of higher education. Perhaps it’s a minor thing, but the founder of our style, Master Funakoshi Gichin was not only a master of karate-do, he was also a….schoolmaster. Yes, he spent most of his days as a school teacher, practicing and teaching his beloved karate at night. In fact, one of the stories I’ve heard is that he gave up an opportunity to become a school principal to travel over to Japan proper at age 54, to answer a calling to spread the art to others. Whether that’s true or not, he certainly was the pebble that has created great ripples across the ocean. Today, there are millions of Shotokan practitioners around the globe today. His successor in spreading the art world-wide and guiding the JKA during its first thirty years was Master Nakayama Masatoshi. Interestingly, Master Nakayama [...]