HIS Karate-Do

Pant, pant, boy I’ll have to think twice the next time I ever say, “I’ll write some short bios about the senseis up the line who helped bring karate down to us”. I’m getting close to finishing this term paper, though. When asked who taught them karate, many practitioners have a tendency to cite the names of various famous senseis that they may have gotten a chance to listen and train with at a particular seminar. The real influence, however, is the first line instructor(s) who they trained with week after week, year after year. As you know, I’ve had the chance to train with a great many senseis over the years. The two who influenced and taught me the most are Shihan Kenneth Funakoshi and Sensei Ed Fujiwara. I was lucky enough to train with Funakoshi for about seven years, beginning in the rough old “special training” classes back in the early seventies. I began training under Sensei Fujiwara for a similar length of years beginning in the early eighties. Both share a lifelong love for the art, and yet, are extremely different, as individuals. Funakoshi is a burly, powerful, naturally athletic, extremely charismastic Farrington HS grad, while Fujiwara [...]

I last wrote about the founder, Funakoshi Gichin, who brought Te from Okinawan to Japan in 1922 and redeemed it into a form of budo. Among his senior students, the one who would emerge as the most dynamic, far-thinking and influential among them was Nakayama Masatoshi. Nakayama was born into a family whose men had a tradition of becoming physicians. He stayed close to the traditions of both his karate sensei and his father, becoming the Chief Instructor of the Japan Karate Assn for thirty years as well as a professor and the head of the Physiology Department at Takushoku University. He took over the reins of the JKA after the death of the founder in 1957, a position he held until his own passing in 1987. During his long tenure, he applied his scientific knowledge of the human body and kinetics to the art, helping shape it into the rational and highly developed system it is today. His book, “Dynamic Karate”, written in 1966 is a classic and viewed by many as the premier single book on the subject. Just as importantly, he was a man of exceptional vision and organizational skills who strategized its spread across the world. [...]

I wanted to share a few thoughts on lineage, as it applies to karate-do. I’ve said many times before that the most important thing is your immediate instructor, his/her abilities as a teacher, knowledge, disposition, etc; coupled with your earnest efforts, which hopefully produce good results. However, one of the reasons I have devoted so many years to Shotokan Karate-Do is that I guess my own inclination is to like a traditional martial art with a history to it. As a result, I have spent quite a bit of time studying the history of our style, its famous instructors, etc. As most of you know, I began training in Shotokan right after I entered college, back in 1969. While I first began teaching in 1974, I also continued to train until about 1995 or so, stopping when I was about 44 years old. During this time, I was fortunate enough to have many excellent instructors, but four of them stand out in my mind: Shihan Kenneth Funakoshi, Sensei Ed Fujiawara, Sensei Ron Taketa, and Sensei Chester Sasaki. I trained under Funakoshi and Fujiwara for a combined period of about 15 years, with Taketa during my formative ikkyu and shodan years, [...]