I Invented Karate!

The other day I was teaching a class of beginners at a local private elementary school. It was composed of kindergarten through 4^th grade students. The school has a high percentage of students of Indian and Chinese ancestry, many actually born in India or China.

I told them karate was believed to be over 2,000 years old. Then, I asked them if they knew who invented karate?

“You!”, one of the young girls blurted out.

I told them I was old but not that old.

So I asked them again. Most thought it came from Japan but a few offered China as its point of origin. I explained that they were all right. It had traveled to Japan from Okinawa. But before that, it had traveled to Okinawa from China. Everyone seemed satisfied with that.

“But do you know where it came from before China?” I asked.

They all shook their heads.

“India”, I told them, wanting our Indian boys and girls to take pride too in its evolution. I explained about Bodidharma and the Shaolin Temple.

I asked if any of them knew who Alexander the Great was. Several did. So I told them about the theory that it traveled to India via Alexander the Great, making my single Greek student smile.

I think even we in the arts forget our lineage and our debt to those who contributed to the body of knowledge we now take for granted. As with our genetic makeup, our arts and styles draw from all of our predecessors to be what they are today. There are great men and women in pretty much all arts and styles. We should treat each other with due respect as we are all brothers and sisters of the same lineage.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks for reading my humble ramblings.

Great Books - Seven

I'm re-reading a great book by Thomas Cleary, The Japanese Art of War: Understanding the Culture of Strategy. In it, Cleary presents a very insightful and revealing discussion of Zen, unusual in its assessment of what is real and what is pseudo Zen. He discusses what Zen is and what it isn’t and how it applies to the martial arts, as seen through the eyes, minds, and writings of a major Zen Roshi – Takuan – and three major samurai – duelists Musashi and Yagyu and warrior Shosan, who fought in many major, pre-peace battles. He discusses Japanese fighting history and how the samurai used Zen in light of Buddhism's complete opposition to the taking of life. The chapters include A Martial History of Japan, Zen in Japanese History, Bushido and Martial Arts, The Way of the Zen Warrior, Schemes of the Samurai, etc. Cleary came to my dojo many years ago and spoke with my seniors. He’s a brilliant guy who has translated many major Asian religious and martial arts works – including Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Musashi’s Book of Five Rings (which he calls Book of Five Spheres).

First Living Martial Arts Treasure Recipient

I was asked to discuss our USNKA Living Martial Arts Treasure Award recipients and why they were selected. I'll occasionally post stories about each, starting here with our first.

Soke Tak Kubota (right) and student, actor James Caan (left)

Soke Takayuki Kubota, 10^th Dan, was the first to receive our award. I first met Soke at Ed Parker’s 1965 International Karate Championships in Long Beach. A few months later, I hosted the United States Karate Winter-National Championships in San Jose. He drove up with John Gelhsen and demonstrated (along with Bruce Lee), as he had at Parker’s. I soon began training with him at his LA IKA dojo (flying down on my one day off and returning that night). I consider myself his student to this day. He is one of our greatest fighting tacticians, has a great sense of humor, and is very down to earth.

Raised in Kyushu, the southern-most of the old Japanese islands (not counting Okinawa) during World War II, he began training at just four to defend his homeland. He said they didn’t train for form or physical fitness. They trained only to fight for their lives barehanded on the beaches – as there were no weapons or ammunition left at this point in the war. He describes the training as being “real kill karate”. So at this young age, he and the others trained with deadly seriousness each day, including punching the makiwara 500 times per day and kicking a bag filled with sand an equal number.

Japan was devastated from the constant bombings. So when an American bomber crash landed, the local people rushed out to vent their anger on the American crew, intending to lynch them. But Soke’s father, Denjiro, intervened. He made his neighbors take the crew to his small factory, where he locked them in a storage room. Three times each day, Soke would take the crew food prepared by his mother, Semo. After the war ended, the crew returned to thank his family for saving their lives and caring for them. They would return on occasion and bring Soke gum and candy and tell him about life in America.

Many Japanese were literally starving to death at the time. So, at thirteen, Soke made the difficult decision to move to Tokyo to find work and ease financial pressure on his family. But Tokyo was filled with people with the same goal. He was forced to eat out of garbage cans and sleep in the park until a police sergeant took him in, in return for him teaching the sergeant taiho jitsu, police defensive and restraining techniques. (Soke’s father had been a high ranking expert in the art and teacher to the Kumamoto police department.) In Tokyo, he trained directly under Gichin Funakoshi, and then 10^th Dan Kanken Toyama, direct student of legendary grandmasters Itosu and Higashionna. An article appeared in Black Belt Magazine about Soke’s work as a bodyguard for the American Ambassador to Japan. It also documented an event that occurred while he was working with the Tokyo police, in which he broke up a prison riot single handedly. I once asked him how he was able to stop so many people by himself. He basically said he had messed up the first guy so badly that no one wanted to be number two.

Like me, karateka Harvey Eubanks, training lieutenant for Los Angeles Police Department, read the article and arranged for Soke to come to the United States in 1965 to train their training personnel. They also helped get him the necessary papers to remain here. So, while training LAPD and the FBI, Soke opened a dojo here and taught his Gosoku (Hard and Fast) Ryu style of karate. Since then, he has trained some of this country’s top competitors. Tonny Tulleners and John Gehlsen were selected to represent the United States at the first WUKO World Karate Championships, held in Tokyo in 1970. There were no weight or belt divisions. Tulleners placed third in kumite, while Gehlsen received the Tamashii Award. Tulleners, Gehlsen, and George Byrd were selected to the U.S. team for the 2^nd championships, held in Paris in 1972. Val Mijailovic and Boban Petkovic have represented the U.S. very admirably in many championships over the years. (Chuck Norris also trained with Soke to learn hand techniques. Another big-name American martial artist wanted to train with him too but had such a bad attitude Soke refused him.)

I was fortunate to be allowed to study with many of the world's top martial artists over the years. But had I not, Soke Kubota would have been far more than enough.

Great Books - Six

One of my favorite novels of all time is James Clavell’s Shogun. It is the story of John Blackthorne, an English ship pilot who’s shipwrecked in feudal Japan in the 1600s, not long before the famous battle of Sekigahara. As Blackthorne struggles to survive in a very hostile, completely alien land, while picking up enough Japanese language and knowledge of their customs and etiquette to save himself and his crew, we also gain greater insights into Japan during this critical period in its history.

Clavell masterfully handles all of this, drawing us into the battles facing would-be shogun Toranaga in his attempt to unify Japan and become shogun. (Toranaga is fashioned after a real life shogun, Iyeasu Tokugawa.) The story is based on a true event, when William Adams, became the first Englishman to land in Japan and be named a samurai - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Adams_(sailor). The movie, The Last Samurai, borrowed heavily from it, but didn’t (in my estimation) achieve anywhere near the book’s drama and insights.

Once you get into the story, you won’t be able to put it down. I’ve read it three times over several years and enjoyed it each time. The first time, I was intimidated by its length, almost 1200 pages. But by the time I reached the end, I wished it was twice as long.

Again, clicking on the book name, Shogun, will take you to Amazon’s order page. I think all Japanese/Okinawan martial artists should read this book to better understand the culture from which our arts arose.

How would you answer this question?

How has your life changed for the better as a result of training in the martial arts?

I think it's an important question to ask yourself, as it often reveals far more benefits than you may have imagined.

This is also an important question to ask your students – and the parents of your young students – as it enables them to more clearly see the value of your program.

Give it a fair amount of consideration. Perhaps write all of the many benefits you've hopefully gained, as I have. It would be interesting to see what you guys come up with.

Back in the Land of the Morning Calm

As I mentioned before, trying to remember distant incidences and events often causes others to pop up out of nowhere. At other times, a recent event will trigger a flood of old memories.

I saw an article a couple of days ago about the possible stationing of American troops in Australia to assist in checking what some (apparently everyone but the Chinese) see as Chinese expansionism in that region. Newscasters were commenting on problems that have arisen in similar situations in the past, reminding me of a few more events from my time in Korea.

I’ve tried to stay more closely focused on just martial arts related events. This one gets into several that are not. Please let me know if you’d prefer I stick to just my martial arts experiences.

Also, writing these events down as I remember them is very helpful for me. If I don’t, they may well slip back beneath that dark water and never surface again.

I tell people that your hair sucks the gray matter out of your brain as you get older. And, as my hair is now almost completely white, I likely don’t have a lot of gray matter remaining inside my head; it’s all moved to the outside. So I need to write these things down as I remember them. Did I say that already?

“Koreans are tough little bastards who don’t like anyone who’s not Korean. I’m not even sure they like each other all that much.” Newsweek Magazine

The above quote was from an article that appeared in the national publication, Newsweek, around the time of the Seoul Olympics. But although I too found Koreans to be a tough, hearty people, I also found most of them to be very kind and hospitable. They were tough because they had to be. Life there, when I was in Korea in the early 60s, was difficult.

Once, while qualifying on the rifle range, which was located far out in the countryside, we had just moved back to fire from a more distant point when something caught my eye as I was about to fire. What I saw amazed me. Several people were crawling across the firing range, between us and our targets, as bullets whizzed over their heads. They were collecting our brass (spent bullet casings) to resell as scrap metal.

Several women and old men worked in a field beside the range. As we prepared to leave, a distraught, spindly-legged old man struggled past us with a very pregnant woman on his back. We asked one of the Korean soldiers what was going on. He told us the old man was carrying the woman to a midwife, as she had gone into labor. Apparently, it was common for poor women to work in the fields until their babies were coming before seeking medical assistance. One of our drivers drove her into town.

So life was very tough for many Koreans.

They had been dominated militarily several times over the centuries by people who didn’t treat them very well. When I was there, there were still huge gouges in the earth throughout the country from WWII and Korean Conflict bombs. And its dramatic mountain ranges were barren of trees. The Japanese had reportedly cut down all the beautiful Korean pine trees near the end of the war to extract pine oil to fuel their planes, ships, tanks, and trucks.

The weather in Korea ran from one extreme to the other. It was bitterly cold in the winter – 30 below zero with a 30 mph wind at morning formation. In the summer, it was very hot, well over 100 degrees, and humid.

Then the monsoon hit and the days of pouring rain washed everything unsecured – including the contents of thousands of outhouses – down the steep main street of town and into the army base. We woke up the first morning to find our foot lockers floating in two feet of foul water.

Many Koreans went well out of their way to be kind to me. Once, I was taking the train back to camp. For some forgotten reason, I caught the small electric train at a station farther from the center of Seoul. Apparently, they saw far less non-Koreans there as a crowd gathered around me while I waited for the train. They were not threatening, just curious and growing in number. The station master hurried out of the control room and escorted me inside so I wouldn’t be bothered.

Another time, though, people gathered around me and a friend in a not so friendly or curious fashion. PFC Mills and I were on our way back to base from somewhere in town. He had been in the Army for several years but was still very low in rank because he kept getting into fights. He had been told that if he got into another one, he would be spending time in 8^th Army prison, which was why I was with him – to try to keep him out of trouble.

As we walked down the hill towards the main gate, he accidently knocked over a bicycle that was leaning against the front of a small weight lifting gym. Two stocky bodybuilders rushed out to see what had happened to the bike.

Very few people had cars back then. Almost everyone rode a bike. This bike, as with many of them, was homemade out of heavy metal tubes and clearly the larger of the two men’s pride and joy.

He snatched the bike up and lifted the heavy bike into the air a couple of time with one arm to impress us, then switched arms and did the same with it. He set the bike down and gestured for Mills to see if he could lift it.

Mills grabbed the bike, pressed it into the air easily, switched arms and started to lift it… then said, “Screw this” and threw it down. It hit the sidewalk, flipped over, and landed in the street.

The big guy went berserk. He head butted Mills in the face, grabbed his ankles, and knocked Mills to the sidewalk. Then, he quickly sat on Mills’ legs, locked his own in place, and hung on as Mills tried unsuccessfully to buck him off.

Although Mills couldn’t get up, he could sit up, which he did… and slugged the guy in the face with all of his considerable might.

The guy scoffed at him and said in broken English, “You can’t hurt me, I’m Korean”. Mills hit him again, harder this time. The guy repeated that he couldn’t be hurt as he was Korean. This went on a few more times, with the guy repeating the same thing each time he was punched. Pretty soon I began to believe him – and think even Mills was becoming a convert.

The guy’s face was a mess. And an unhappy crowd of people started closing in on us. I figured we had to get out of there quickly or it could turn ugly. So with a big smile on my face so as not to antagonize anyone, I moved in behind the guy and used a soft choke to get him off.

Mills got up and we started down the hill towards the gate… but not alone. The big guy picked up a big rock, lifted it over his head, and ran after us.

We ran hard for the base entrance, with the guy hot on our tails.

We flashed our passes as we sprinted through the pedestrian entrance. The guy kept running at full speed, obviously intending to follow us into camp.

As he reached the guard shack door, the MP stepped out and stuck a cocked .45 in his face. He stopped.

The next day Mills and I got summoned to the main gate. The guy, his face swollen and stitched up, was there with his attorney. Also there was the camp commander, Colonel Bowie.

The attorney presented the Colonel with a bill for the guy’s medical treatment and “pain and suffering”. Mills scoffed at the amount. He told the guy he would give him a chance to go Double or Nothing. The Colonel wasn’t amused. He asked me what had happened. After I explained the details, the Colonel told Mills to pay the guy some amount far less than the guy wanted but far more than Mills considered right… but he paid it. More importantly for Mills, he hadn’t started the fight – although he could have done more to prevent it – so the Army didn’t incarcerate him.

After teaching my English Conversation class one night, a student wanted to talk. By the time I got to the front doors to the large, two storied brick provincial high school, they had already been locked and chained. So I had to go out the back.

This meant I had to walk up a long, steep, very narrow, and poorly lit alley that ran between one of the school’s outer walls and the office building next door.

As I got about half way up it, a man on a bicycle turned and headed down the alleyway. His eyes quickly locked on me and, instead of stopping or slowing down so I would be able to pass safely, he peddled harder. And heading downhill, he quickly picked up a good deal of speed.

I was trapped.

We had practiced a jump side kick at Sensei Brown’s dojo. I had never seen much use for it…until then. I took my left leg back and waited in horse stance.

As he was about to hit me, I jumped up and kicked, knocking him off the back of his bike. I landed on top of the fallen bike and twisted my ankle but got into a stance to fight in case he pushed the matter.

He grabbed his bike and scampered down the alleyway. And I limped back to base.

In order to keep U.S. currency from getting into Communist hands, the military issued paper money known as “script”. No one was allowed to carry greenbacks or even possess them. All transactions on base were done in script. All transactions in town were supposed to be done in Korean won, their currency, which we were required to buy on base.

But because it could be counterfeited for easily than greenbacks, the military changed the script every now and then. This happened once while I was there. They blew the base alert whistle, calling all military personnel back to base, where everyone had to report to their individual units and be accounted for. At the same time, all of the relatively large number of Korean civilians were escorted off base. Then, we exchanged all of our old script for script of a different color, making old script worthless.

Usually the locals knew about what was going to happen long before we did. The working girls in Seoul, who dated high ranking U.S. military officers, would hear about it and pass it down the line. But this caught everyone by surprise.

Korean money lenders and those running businesses in town who illegally accepted script ran to the base fence. They threw bushel baskets of old script over the fence, asking anyone they could see to exchange it for them and they’d pay them handsomely. But no one was allowed near the fence. So many in town lost huge amounts of money.

Not long after that, another event occurred at the fence, one that still makes me laugh.

The Vietnam War was just getting started. As soldiers were drowning there as they tried to cross its many rivers and streams, the army passed a regulation to combat this problem, one that utilized our rain gear (ponchos) as flotation devices. We were instructed to strip down to our white army boxer shorts and wrap our weapons and clothing in our ponchos. Then, soldiers who could swim were paired with those who couldn’t. The strong swimmer would then pull their gear and partner across.

The day came for us to be tested at our base swimming pool. As the pool was located next to the fence and the local red light district, all the women who worked in that trade came out to see what was going on.

The flamboyant and boisterous group of ladies who lined the fence would yell and wave at any customers they recognized. And it got worse – and funnier.

When the very thin fabric of our boxers hit the water, they essentially became transparent. As each pair of soldiers climbed out of the water, the ladies would let out a hoot of approval or ridicule. The memory of the ladies partying at the fence and hundreds of us standing in our skivvies still makes me chuckle to this day.

Thanks, again, for reading my humble ramblings. I should now be done with my time in Korea, the beautiful Land of the Morning Calm, and ready to move on to my next adventures.

(As I mentioned above, if you’d prefer I stick to just my martial arts related incidences, let me know and I’ll try to do that – and paste the non-martial arts stuff into a separate file for possible use should I ever get around to writing that book.)

How we select those we name USNKA Living MA Treasures

As I mentioned in my last post, I receive many suggestions for our USNKA Living Martial Arts Treasure Award as well as questions about how we select our recipients. Let me go over what I take into consideration when making a selection.

First, they must be someone who has made extraordinary contributions to the martial arts, not just someone who has been a skilled practitioner or high dan. A film director doesn’t receive a life-time achievement award for making a movie. He receives it for making many great movies.

Second, in all past cases, excluding a couple of recent ones, I personally knew or had first-hand knowledge of each recipient’s skill and knowledge. In the cases of those I didn’t personally know, I had recommendations from people I greatly respected and trusted (and personally knew over many years), plus a large amount of confirming documentation was also often available. But I generally place the greatest weight on my own first-hand knowledge, acquired through both public and private encounters with the person.

Third, their contributions have spanned a significant number of years, 50 or more years in many cases. None have been young men. A couple have been middle aged. More have been in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s.

Fourth, in every case, their credentials were impeccable – received from highly respected martial arts masters and organizations which utilize high technical standards and appropriate minimum age and time-in-grade requirements. And the credentials of each reflects continuity from dan grade to dan grade, not switching from instructor to instructor, or organization to organization, in order to pick up each promotion.

Fifth, they were all men of great honor, gentlemen who demonstrated – both publically and privately – the very best qualities of a martial artist, someone our young people could and would be wise to emulate.

Sixth, I also take recommendations from our Living Treasure recipients, and others I respect and have known for many years. As their names will be linked with anyone named, the recommendations of our Living Treasure recipients go a long way.

Seventh, I need to have some level of contact with a proposed recipient. I sent out an email this morning, asking a high ranking sensei if he was in a position to award a certificate to one of our proposed recipients or could supply an email and mailing address. I need communication between myself and the proposed recipient (or a close associate), to make sure the award would be welcomed by them, the name they would prefer appeared on the certificate, appropriate title, etc. I also ask them to supply photos of themselves for the announcement.

And eighth, they have all been deshi of the martial arts. A deshi is one totally devoted to the martial arts, not just a student. They are all martial artists 24/7. They buy every book they can find on the arts, attend every workshop in the early days, seek out and train with the very best, regardless of distance and time necessary to do so, and so on. A student is someone who is a martial artist when they don their uniforms. A deshi is always a martial artist, whether in his or her uniform or not.

I am presently looking to present more Living Treasure awards to deserving martial artists around the world. So far, they have only been presented to those in America, UK, Canada, Japan, and Okinawa. There are many great men and women out there and I’m attempting to identify them. So stayed tuned.

Living Martial Arts Treasures

As most of you know, the United States National Karate Association (USNKA), which I am honored to serve as its President, just recognized legendary karateka Hirokazu Kanazawa with our Living Martial Arts Treasure Award. If you haven’t seen the post, photo of Hanshi Kanazawa with his award, and clip, here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=151512381539463.

In recent months, I’ve announced several Living Martial Arts Treasure Award recipients, with a few more to come. Hanshi Kanazawa joins other extraordinary martial artists Ronnie Colwell, Harry Cook, Patrick McCarthy, and Phillip Koeppel who have received Living Treasure awards during the current period. (This is still secret but the next USNKA Living Martial Arts Treasure Award recipient will be legendary UK karateka and jujitsuka, Hanshi Terry Wingrove. We are merely awaiting the arrival of his certificate to make the announcement.)

Several other martial arts greats have been designated as Living Treasures since the award’s initiation in the 90s. These include Soke Takayuki Kubota, Hanshi George Anderson, Professor Sig Kufferath, Hanshi Zenpo Shimabukuro, WUKO/WKF President and Co-Founder Jacques Delcourt, WUKO/WKF Co-Founder Ryoichi Sasakawa, Hanshi Tatsuo Suzuki, Hanshi Shugoro Nakazato, Hanshi Richard Kim, Hanshi Ryuko Tomoyose, and Hanshi Walter Todd.

I’ve been asked how we decide who will receive our Living Treasure Awards. As I work on my next blog installment of my life in karate, I will soon post an outline of the qualities they must possess to be considered. Thanks for following my humble ramblings.

Great Books - Five

I highly recommend Patrick McCarthy’s Bubishi. Until recently, the handful of Okinawan karate greats who possessed copies of the Bubishi guarded them as closely as the military guards its secrets today. Only their uchi deshi were allowed to read them. If they were deemed deserving, these uchi deshi were allowed to hand copy a version of it. In fact, the copy used by Hanshi McCarthy for his translation had been hand copied by none other than Kenwa Mabuni from Anko Itosu’s personal copy.

The following is what one of our greatest martial artists had to say about Hanshi McCarthy’s translation of the Bubishi:

“… the Bubishi is a historically important document whose secrets, until only just recently, have remained closely guarded by karate-do masters in Okinawa.

“In addition to the copious amount of intriguing information contained within the pages of this profound document, the Bubishi also reveals the original application of orthodox kata and the moral precepts that govern the behavior of those who understand these secrets. Disclosing the principles of tuidi and kyusho-jitsu (art of attacking vulnerable points on the human body), the reader will come to understand that which has been kept secret for generations.

“The Bubishi must be considered mandatory reading for all serious enthusiasts of true karate-do and is therefore an essential addition to one’s personal library, a work to be deeply studied by both teacher and student alike. In so doing, the torch of true karate-do will continue to burn long into the future, lighting the arduous path upon which others may follow.” - Shoshin Nagamine, Hanshi, 10^th Dan, World Shorin-ryu Karate-do Federation

Make sure you get Hanshi McCarthy’s latest version, printed in 2008. If you click the book name, Bubishi, you will be taken to Amazon and the correct version.

Kimchee, Whiskey, and the Easter Bunny

I just found some photos from my army days. The first two were taken during my first year, before Korea. They were taken to publicize me being named Soldier of the Year. The second is from an R & R one of my army buddies and I took to Japan (after a few days in Hong Kong). We went on a night life tour, which included a visit to a Geisha House.

A funny story about the friend who took R & R with me. His name was Arthur J. Virgin Jr. His army name tag always read “A. Virgin”, for which he took a lot of ribbing. One day, we were at the NCO club, sitting at the bar, when a soldier came in and sat down next to my friend. Virgin looked over at the guy, then removed his own name tag. He started ribbing the guy about the name on his name tag – Cherry. He eventually got the soldier so angry, he jumped off his stool, ready to fight. Then, Virgin says “You never asked me my name.” The soldier told him he couldn’t care less. Virgin insisted, “Ask me my name?” The frustrated soldier finally asked to shut him up. When Virgin told him his name, they both laughed, bought each other a beer, and got rip roaring drunk.

Soon after arriving at my unit in Korea, I joined a taekwondo club that trained almost daily in the base gym. It was taught by a Korean instructor named Kim (the most common last name in Korea).

Taekwondo was very different back then. Their kihon (basics) were the same as Shotokan form, low solid stances and strong blocks and punches. I had studied Shotokan in the beginning and while at Travis, so I was very familiar with it. Taekwondo practitioners back then moved with lower centers, like punchers, not kickers. They also did the exact same kata. (This was all reportedly due to General Choi, founder of taekwondo, having trained with and received his dan grades from Gichin Funakoshi. I don’t know if this is true or not but the taekwondo that Mr. Kim taught looked an awfully lot like Shotokan.)

A fellow soldier and I volunteered to teach English conversation classes for the local adult education program. I was assigned an assistant, the vice governor of the province, to act as my Korean translator. He was a nice, very well educated man. At the end of the school year, he and the head of the English department for the local schools, Mr. Ho, hosted a party for us at Mr. Ho’s home. We hadn’t met Mr. Ho before so when we shook hands I said “I’m glad to meet you.” He said, “I’m fine, thank you.”

During the party Mr. Ho said something about how appreciative he was that we had given them so much of our time, especially considering we were paid such a small amount of money for it. I asked my friend if he had gotten paid. He shook his head. To this day, we don’t know where the money went.

Mr. Ho appeared with a bottle of American whiskey in his hand. He beamed as if holding a bottle of the finest Champagne. In the early 60s, it was illegal to possess almost everything produced outside of Korea as the government was trying to improve their economy and wanted their people buying only Korean-made products. Everything else, including the bottle of whiskey, was considered an illegal black market item and probably very expensive. So it was a great honor.

Mr. Ho poured everyone at the party a shot so we could drink a toast to our service. We then drank another to U.S./Korean friendships. Then, another and another to a long list of noble ideas.

The party was held on our Easter Sunday. When someone suggested the next toast be to Easter, I told them how we celebrated Easter in the States – the Easter Bunny hiding eggs so the children could find them and so on. They all stared at me in disbelief. Next thing we knew, the bottle of whiskey had disappeared. They thought me and my friend must be drunk to make up such a story.

When Mr. Ho discovered I was involved in the martial arts, he told me he had a Chinese friend who was a skilled martial artist and lived in the country. The next day, he drove me out into the countryside and introduced me to Dr. N.B. Lee.

Dr. Lee’s home was in a very dramatic setting near the river, with a steep, jagged mountain range behind it. It was beautiful country, especially in Winter, when I first visited Dr. Lee. Training on the packed earth of his back courtyard with that vista behind us was awe inspiring.

The first time we met, Dr. Lee tried to discover if I spoke any language other than English. He spoke several but English was apparently his worst. He was clearly disappointed when he learned it was all I understood. As a result, we ended up speaking a form of pidgin English much of the time, which very unfortunately made it difficult to talk about anything of any depth or complexity.

Occasionally, Mr. Ho would stop by and translate for us. But, considering his first comment to me – “I’m fine, thank you” in response to my “Glad to meet you” – I was never sure if he or I got things right. Dr. Lee was an older gentleman at that time so I doubt if he’s still with us. But I wish I could see him again in the company of a reliable translator and clear up a lot of questions I’ve had over the years.

From what I thought he had said at one point, he taught Iron Fist. And that was what I believed for several years. But I later became friends with a great California Iron Fist master, Al Novak. We talked and what I showed him was different than the Iron Fist system he knew. So I don’t know exactly what system I was taught.

Dr. Lee never charged me for lessons but Sensei Brown had taught us it was the duty of students to take care of their teachers. (At one point, Sensei Brown told us that he needed new shoes and didn’t have the money to buy them. So I always tried to add an additional $10 to my $20 monthly dues when I was one of his students.) I would always leave money for Dr. Lee in an envelope on the table near his front door. And I would bring him things from the PX – like a warm coat, a good quality hot plate, and so on – to make his life a little more comfortable.

When my tour of duty was coming to an end, I paid Dr. Lee a final visit. He seemed honestly sad to see me go. The last thing he told me was to open a school when I got home and invite him over. (I sent him a letter soon after I opened my first school but never heard back. Not sure why.)

I arrived back in the U.S. and was discharged on New Years Eve day, 1964.

Within a few weeks, after the time lag had worn off, I opened my first dojo. In my next post, I will probably talk about meeting Bruce Lee, then a struggling instructor in Oakland, and catching arrows on the beach in Santa Cruz. (I’m never sure what I will actually get into until I’ve written it, as the process of writing these things down always jogs my memory and stuff starts flooding back. There are a huge number of very interesting stories I could tell about my army days but I’m trying to stay more focused on just my martial arts life. I’ll likely save those other stories for the book, if I ever write it.)

Thanks for reading my humble ramblings.

Great Books - Four

Another of my favorite books is Hanshi Stan Schmidt’s Spirit of the Empty Hand. South African Schmidt was the highest ranking non-Japanese JKA Shotokan practitioner in the world for many years. He traveled often to train at JKA headquarters in Tokyo and had many tales to tell. Rather than write an autobiographical book on it, he chose a different approach. He wrote about a fictional karateka who travels to Japan to train, weaving stories from his own experiences and those of several friends and students, into a single story.

As with Moving Zen, Spirit of the Empty Hand is a fun read, full of humor but also insights into Japanese life and dojo etiquette. Spirit of the Empty Hand probably contains far more technical information for the martial artist, allowing him to go away with greater knowledge about higher martial arts concepts.

I mentioned in my writeup of Moving Zen that I had learned something from it that not only helped me in my own karate at the time but I also found useful while a national coach and advising members of our national team when competing in international competition. I scanned through my copy of Moving Zen and couldn’t find the exchange. I searched for my copy of Spirit of the Empty Hand but haven’t found it yet. But I’m pretty sure the exchange in question was in that book, not Moving Zen. The exchange was between the ficitional karateka and Sensei Tabata, I think. They were talking over lunch at a restaurant. The conversation went as follows – as I remember it:

Karateka: What’s the most important thing in karate?

Tabata: Distance.

Karateka: What do you mean by “distance”?

Tabata: I have told you too much already.

It launched a huge amount of thought and experimentation on my part at the time. (This was many years ago.) I came to several very useful conclusions. But what do you think he meant by this?

(Again, I've linked both books to Amazon books, for those who haven't yet read these classics.)