I\u2019ve often written about Shihan Kenneth Funakoshi, who taught your HISKF instructors so much of what we know. \u00a0Sensei Peter, Wayne, and I were fortunate to have him personally instruct us for years at both the Special Training classes at the main dojo in the 1970s and, years later, at the Mililani dojo. \u00a0Even Sensei Trisha\u2019s first lessons were under his tutelage. \u00a0Shihan is in his mid-eighties these days and retired from active teaching.<\/p>\n
In our memories however, he is still that young, charismatic karate champion of our youth. \u00a0In his prime, he was a burly, solid, and powerful presence both inside and outside of the dojo. \u00a0As earnest young students, we all tried out best to emulate his movements. \u00a0The magic of YouTube allows you to see how we remember our teacher\u2019s movements in kata. This was filmed back in 1986 at Magic Island. \u00a0Shihan was in his late forties at the time and had been asked by Panther Productions to film a series of videos on Shotokan Karate-Do. \u00a0As I recall, it was a perfect day in the perfect location to feature Shihan performing kata in the natural tropical outdoors. \u00a0In this video, he\u2019s demonstrating Heian Godan. \u00a0That perfect day also meant that it was hot and sunny, with Shihan executing kata after kata (sometimes with multiple takes) with various beachgoers walking by. \u00a0He had great stamina, as we were at the park for several hours that day. \u00a0A group of us black belts were videoed in other portions of the 10 tape series and I can confirm that performing in our gi’s out in the burning sun, on the grass and later, on hot concrete (Sensei Ed continued to perform despite developing blisters on his feet from the concrete!) was harder than in the dojo – but made for great scenic shots.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4lfVD3I_qVs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve often written about Shihan Kenneth Funakoshi, who taught your HISKF instructors so much of what we know. \u00a0Sensei Peter, Wayne, and I were fortunate to have him personally instruct us for years at both the Special Training classes at the main dojo in the 1970s and, years later, at the Mililani dojo. \u00a0Even Sensei Trisha\u2019s first lessons were under his tutelage. \u00a0Shihan is in his mid-eighties these days and retired from active teaching. In our memories however, he is still that young, charismatic karate champion of our youth. \u00a0In his prime, he was a burly, solid, and powerful presence both inside and outside of the dojo. \u00a0As earnest young students, we all tried out best to emulate his movements. \u00a0The magic of YouTube allows you to see how we remember our teacher\u2019s movements in kata. This was filmed back in 1986 at Magic Island. \u00a0Shihan was in his late forties at the time and had been asked by Panther Productions to film a series of videos on Shotokan Karate-Do. \u00a0As I recall, it was a perfect day in the perfect location to feature Shihan performing kata in the natural tropical outdoors. \u00a0In this video, he\u2019s demonstrating Heian Godan. \u00a0That [...]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2931,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930\/revisions\/2931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}