My first opportunity to witness Soke Takayuki Kubota in action came at Ed Parker’s 1965 International Karate Championships, the biggest karate tournament in the world at the time. Grandmaster Parker was a great guy, who was always a pleasure to be around and who tried to make each year’s Internationals as challenging and fair as possible for competitors, fun for spectators, and educational for instructors and martial artists in general.

He invited Soke Kubota to demonstrate for the instructors who met each morning in the basement of the tournament hotel to go over the rules, make announcements, introduce people, and present demonstrations by martial artists we hadn’t seen before. There had been an article in Black Belt Magazine, which everyone read back then, about this Japanese policeman who had done some amazing things, including breaking up a prison riot unarmed and single-handed. (I later asked him how he had managed to stop the riot. He basically said that if you hit the first guy so hard that it did massive damage, no one wanted to be number two.) The article included a great photo of Soke Kubota standing next to his police car. So everyone was eager to see this Japanese policeman in action. Soke Kubota and John Gehlsen, who was only a green belt at the time but would later become one of our greatest fighters, put on an impressive exhibition.

Just a few months earlier, I had returned from Korea and been discharged from the Army. I was already a black belt, having trained both before and during my military years, and I was looking for someone, preferably someone great, with whom to continue my training.

Whenever I spotted one of the early media stars, the celebrated, big-name martial artists at any tournament, I always watched to see how good their students were. If they were strong, I assumed they had a good instructor, who taught an effective martial arts system. I found, however, that few had produced any highly skilled students. What appeared to have made these instructors so successful was not the fighting system they taught but, rather, their genetic gifts – their natural reflexes, flexibility, hand-to-eye coordination, fast-twitch muscle composition, and so on. Many were such great natural athletes that they could have made any martial arts system look good, no matter how flawed. I wanted to find someone who taught a system that could make the average person effective.

I was very impressed with both Soke Kubota and his students. The kihon or fundamentals of his Gosoku Ryu system were practical and effective in a fighting environment, as they were the result of him merging his extensive street experience as a former Japanese police instructor and bodyguard to the American Ambassador with the traditional kihon and techniques he had learned from men like the legendary Kanken Toyama, one of his early instructors. When used to implement his own brilliant tactical and strategic skills, the results were impressive. His early students – men like Ben Otake, Tonny Tulleners, Harvey Eubanks, George Damon and later John Gehlsen, George Byrd, Val Mijailovic, Boban Petkovic, Rod Kuratomi, and others – were tough fighters, their techniques quick and powerful as the name of his style, Gosoku Ryu, Hard and Fast, implied.

In addition to demonstrating at the instructors’ meeting, Soke Kubota also demonstrated at that night’s black belt finals. Part of his demo included sparring with one of his black belts, Tonny Tulleners, who was the tournament’s middleweight black belt champion. (Tonny would later win the bronze medal at the first WUKO World Karate Championships in Tokyo in 1970.) Next, Soke Kubota sparred with the lightweight and heavyweight black belt champions individually, then all three at once. Of course some of their techniques would likely have “scored” during the long, three-against-one match had a win been determined by tournament rules, rather than by the rules of budo. But in attempting to score on him, they had to move close enough to reach him, which enabled him to grab and control them. From there, he could have easily delivered one of his brick-breaking, bone-crushing punches, had he chosen to do so. But even had any of them tried to do more than merely score a controlled tournament point, he had already established his ability to take a tremendous amount of physical abuse without diminishing his ability to continue fighting.

He had started his demo that evening by “warming up” his hands and legs – beating his knuckles and shins with a sledge hammer. So everyone was well aware of his own incredible toughness. As Okinawan and Japanese masters had long taught, his personal training in the martial arts had not only focused on learning attack and defensive skills but also on body toughening, making himself better able to withstand whatever his opponents might attempt to do to him during an actual attack.

This was true old school training, which Soke had undergone beginning when he was a small boy growing up in Kyushu. It was wartime and everyone in Japan, including four-year-old Takayuki Kubota, was being mobilized to defend their homeland, fighting on the beaches hand-to-hand if necessary. He said that he and the others would punch a heavy, makeshift punching bag 500 times each morning to toughen their hands and strengthen their striking techniques; then they would do the same with their feet, kicking the heavy bag 500 times to toughen their feet and strengthen their kicks.

In addition, he religiously practiced “bottle training,” beating his shins each day with a beer bottle to deaden the nerves. As an adult, this enabled him to deliver a ferocious shin-to-shin sweep that struck fear into the hearts of anyone who knew about it and were asked to spar him. “Sweep me,” he would tell visiting black belts who had come to train with him. (And the bigger they were, the better.) When they came around to sweep him, he would snap his lead leg back, pop his hips around, and smash his shin against the black belt’s shin, taking them to the floor.

What had impressed me greatly at Soke Kubota’s demonstration at the Internationals was his warrior’s attitude. He had such confidence in his ability that he never worried about testing himself against people he had never met, let alone fought before. And he did it in front of a standing-room-only assembly of top martial artists from at least this hemisphere.

His demos were always unplanned, spontaneous events. After I joined the IKA and began training under Soke, I was occasionally selected to demonstrate with him. He always told me simply to attack. When I asked, what type of attack he wanted, he would say “Any okay.” Do anything. Even when demonstrating in front of many of the top martial artists in North America at the Internationals, he wasn’t the slightest bit worried about being up to the task or looking bad, which was in stark contrast to what others who demonstrated that night had done. All gave choreographed, well-rehearsed presentations, and looked it. In one multiple-man attack scenario, an “attacker” fell down at the wrong time. When he realized it, he got back up, to the amusement of the audience. Soke’s demo was nothing like that. When he put someone on the mat, they knew it and usually stayed down at least long enough to run a physical inventory to make sure everything was still working as designed.

In 1966, I hosted the U.S Karate Winter- National Championships and invited Soke Kubota and Bruce Lee, who was living with a friend in Oakland at the time, to demonstrate. Chuck Norris drove up from Redondo Beach with some of his students and won his first Grand Championship. The event gave me the opportunity to speak in-depth with Soke Kubota and a few of his students. I found him very down-to-earth, a humble man with a wonderful sense of humor. He always made everyone feel at ease and was as comfortable with white belts as with the most senior black belts. What I heard and what I had already seen convinced me to join the IKA.

I have truly been blessed throughout my 64 years in the martial arts and owe so much to so many who helped me along the way, men and women who were not only wonderful people but also tremendous martial artists. Soke Takayuki Kubota was one of the most important of these and I’ll always be indebted to him.

My novel, The Arrow Catcher, released on Amazon!

I apologize for pimping my own book here but it's my first novel and I'm excited to see it finally in print on Amazon. It's only out now in paperback. But is being converted to Kindle and should be released in that format soon.http://www.amazon.com/The-Arrow-Catcher-Jim-Mather/dp/1491011394/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1379814734&sr=8-3&keywords=the+arrow+catcher

Memories from an old photo of three great karateka

I posted a photo on my Facebook page (MatherKarateka) today and it reminded me of some great people I had met through karatedo. Below is the photo:

Right to Left: Asai Sensei, Kotaka Sensei, Mrs. Kotaka, Mrs. Mimoto, Mimoto Sensei, me.
 

It was shot at the AAU National Karate Championships in Wide World of Sports stadium at Disneyworld. I can’t remember the year. Asai Sensei was a special guest for the event. I was able to spend a bit of time with him. He had always been the mysterious one among the JKA instructors we saw in an early JKA training film. Everyone else was linear and explosive, their actions clearly full of power. Asai was different. He was agile and flexible, his techniques non-linear most of the time, reminding me more of the kung fu fighters I knew back then – Bruce, Al Dacascos, Brendan Lai, etc. – than the other JKA instructors. When I finally met him many years later, I found him to be a very quiet and gracious gentleman, who we have unfortunately lost since that time.

Also in the photo with me is Kotaka Sensei, the great karateka, whose son, George, is one of our great champions. Many of his students have gone on to represent the United States very successfully in international competition, and still do so. In the 90s, I was invited to his dojo while in Hawaii for his annual tournament. I was very impress with his approach to training and the quality of his students, across the board, regardless of age, gender, or rank.

Sitting next to me is Hitoshi Mimoto. He and I met for the first time in London. As I was a graduate student at Stanford University School of Education, one of the coaches for the USA Karate Team, and co-chair of the US Coaches Education Committee, Hanshi George Anderson invited me to accompany him to the formation meeting for the World Students Karate Union, under the auspices of JKF and WUKO/WKF. Sensei Mimoto was sent from JKF, along with Mr. Yamaoka, who represented WUKO/WKF. Sensei Mimoto was named President of the new group. Richard Thomas of Great Britain was named Secretary. And I was named Treasurer.

Foundation of World Students Karate Union.
London, England

Richard Thomas, Hitoshi Mimoto, and me in London.

I saw Mimoto Sensei several times after that at WUKO events and in the U.S. – at our USAKF nationals, at the AAU Nationals in Florida, and in LA, when I was asked to hastily put together a U.S. collegiate team for a goodwill competition against a strong collegiate team which Mimoto San brought to this country for another event.

Sensei Mimoto and I in LA for Goodwill Collegate Competition

The last time I saw him was in Okinawa for the Okinawan Karate & Kobudo World Tournament in 1997. As head of the JKF’s southern region, Okinawa fell within his area of oversight. It was, as always, great to see him again. He’s a wonderful man and great martial artist.

An interesting thing occurred during the finals. Mimoto San and his delegation were seated in a plush VIP section in the new Budokan. He saw me sitting in the stands and insisted I join him. After I was seated, he went to speak with someone. A U.S. instructor, originally from Japan (and known among insiders for his attitude and questionable versions of traditional kata), saw me and raced up the steps. He stopped beside me and said “You’re not supposed to be here!” Sensei Mimoto walked up and challenged him. “What do you want?” The instructor mumbled something about me sitting in the wrong place. Mimoto San told him brusquely that I was there at his invitation and it was no business of his. He quickly returned to his own seat.

Thanks for your patience. I will try to post more often.

When the Shah was overthrown...

I posted this on my Facebook page but I'm also posting it here in hopes it will get me rolling again in making regular blog additions. My apologies to those who already read this.

 

One of the great things about being an instructor in an international hub like Silicon Valley is the number of wonderful students you get to train, students from all parts of the world. But it can also have a downside. Near the end of the 70s, I had a great student from Iran. He was an engineering major at a local college but lived in the Sunnyvale Holiday Inn. Each month, he would pay me with a $100 bill. I learned his education and board was being paid for by the Iranian government. I can’t remember a student who worked harder than he did. He gave me a great respect for the Iranian people. He told us his name was George Wilson. I didn’t know much about Iran but knew Wilson wasn’t a normal name for someone from that part of the world. I questioned him about it and he told me I wouldn’t be able to pronounce his real name so he wanted to make it easy for everyone. I told him that he was my student and the least I could do was call him by his name, learning how to pronounce it if necessary. He told me his name was Reza Mohammad Razmkhah (sp?), which I made everyone call him. He came in one day as he was about to test for brown belt. He was clearly upset and told me it would be his last class. The Shah had been overthrown and he had been recalled to Iran. He left and I never learned if he lived or died. But I think often of him.

Happy holidays!

Sorry I've been so remiss in adding new posts. It's been a tough year. But almost have my novel finished, with the 2nd about 1/3 way through.

I'll try to get more posts up in 2013. One of the things that has also slowed me down is trying to decide what to post about. As a result, they've been all over the board. I began with a chronological look but got some negative feetback or silence. So I dropped that. (One of my original reasons for writing a blog was to do an autobiography a bit at a time. I thought my journey and observations about people and events and changes in the arts might be useful to later martial arts historians, so it wasn't left to people I know have not been objective or informed - as evidenced by my personal experiences with them relative to their reporting of my experiences.)

So, please let me know what you would like me to discuss and I'll try to get to it.

Jim

John Gehlsen - Part II

John Gehlsen fights an unknown opponent, with a
young Fumio Demura as referee and me as one of the corner judges.

If you could select one person to accompany you in what could be a deadly fight on the street, who would you pick? For some, they might think first of some of the karate greats. There’s an entire category of jokes about Chuck Norris and his imagined prowess. (“When the boogeyman goes to sleep, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.”) But having the skill to win at tournaments doesn’t always translate well to skill on the street in a serious, life-threatening fight.

For me, the person I would have selected back in the day would likely have been John Gehlsen or another old friend, Jim Harrison. Not only were both great tournament fighters but (because of their professions in law enforcement and the number of “death matches” they likely fought on the street when working undercover) they were perhaps even greater street fighters. (Professional Karate Magazine did a five-part series on Jim Harrison’s experiences several years ago. They were great reading. Hopefully, the articles are still available.)

(Just to put John’s skill in perspective, he generally bested his IKA dojomate Tonny Tulleners, who placed 3^rd at the first WUKO championships, won his black belt division at GM Parker’s tournament, etc. Tonny easily beat Chuck Norris all three times they met, when Chuck was at his peak. I saw most, if not all, of those matches and don’t remember Chuck ever even scoring a point on Tonny.)

It always struck me as a bit funny when Gehlsen and the other cops who trained at IKA headquarters would enter the changing room, remove their service revolvers, and lock them in their personal lockers. I, of course, realized that the people they often faced in the line of duty were armed. And I had no illusions about the likely outcome in karate versus gun battles. But it always made me chuckle nonetheless. Gehlsen with a pistol seemed something akin to Superman carrying one.

John was a bit of an acquired taste. He was hard to get close to and it took a while before I felt accepted by him. Something I had learned along the way was that many cops tended to divide the world into two types of people – cops and non-cops. (Cops and “Assholes” was actually how most phrased it.) This helped prevent emotion from making it difficult at times to do their jobs. If a person wasn’t a cop, he or she were often considered a perp who hadn’t yet been caught. (Many years later, I was asked by San Jose’s Chief of Police to speak to his captains about how to prevent their officers from abusing the power entrusted in them. And I looked at the side-effects of this view of the public, essentially the objectification of anyone they might have to confront.)

Once, I was at the dojo when a guy came in. He waited for someone to help him. John eventually strode over to the man and asked what he wanted in a less than welcoming tone. The guy answered that he was interested in learning karate. John told him they didn’t need any more students and the guy left. (The truth was they did need students at the time.) He looked fine to me. But that was John. He was a pure karateka. The guy hadn’t look serious enough to him or something.

John and I were talking once about his job. He told me about a fight he had gotten into a few years earlier while working undercover. He had gone in on a drug bust and chased one of the suspects into a high school shower room, where the guy tried to fight him and failed. John said he was at the supermarket recently, buying groceries, when a man approached him. “Do you remember me?” the man asked. John shook his head. The guy asked if he remembered the incident in the school shower room. John said “Yeah.” The guy asked, “Do you remember beating the crap out of the guy you arrested?” John said, “Yeah,” his voice and nervousness rising. The guy said “Well, I’m that guy.” John said “Yeah?!!” his hand going into his coat for his revolver. Then, the guys said, “I just wanted to thank you. Getting my ass kicked that bad made me straighten up. I never want that to ever happen again.” He offered his hand and John shook it.

I’ll likely write at least one more post on John before moving one. If anyone has any footage of John’s fights, please let me know. (I should have some but have yet to find it on the many films I shot years ago and Val later converted to DVD.) I intend to talk next time about his unique fighting style and tamashii.

John Gehlsen

John Gehlsen

One of the highest complements I ever received was “This guy could be good.” Now on the surface, it would not appear much of a complement. I was already 3^rd dan and had won a fair amount of sparring trophies by then. But it was the person saying it and his personal standard that made it special to me.

It was the late 60s or early 70s. We were at Soke Takayuki Kubota’s IKA Headquarters on Kenmore in Los Angeles, the same dojo where they filmed the dojo scenes for the movie, The Mechanic, with Soke, Charles Bronson, and Jan-Michael Vincent. I was in an advanced class that met on a Saturday or Sunday afternoons, forget which. Soke was taking us through a drill he called “Attack-Defense.” Each person had to await the spontaneous attack of an opponent, defend against it, and launch a successful counterattack. If the counter failed, you had to wait for your partner to attack again. This went on until your counter was successful. Then, you got another partner and repeated the drill.

I was paired off with John Gehlsen. I don’t remember his attack or what I did in response but it was John who said to Soke, “This guy could be good.” Although not many people outside Soke’s organization were aware of John’s skill, I considered him (both then and now) one of the toughest fighters ever trained in this country.

John was a tall, lanky, thick-boned man, who worked both undercover and regular duties for LAPD. I first met him at Ed Parker’s Internationals. It must have been around 1965. Soke Kubota had recently arrived in the U.S. and Ed invited him to demonstrate at his annual event, the largest and most prestigious tournament in the world at the time. (I think I spoke previously about that event.) John was only a green belt at the time.

When I hosted my first tournament, the U.S. Winter-National Karate Championships in San Jose the following year, I also invited Soke to demonstrate. He brought both John and Tonny Tulleners with him. Chuck Norris drove up with Chris Wells and one of his other students. And Bruce Lee also demonstrated. I had met Bruce through someone. I think it was a great, old Kung Fu friend, James Yimm Lee, but not sure. (Bruce lived with Jimmy when he first came to California.) In the finals, Chuck fought Roy Castro, GM Ralph Castro’s brother, for the grand championship and Chuck prevailed, winning his first grand championship.

John and Soke Kubota shared an apartment back then in Hollywood, on Vine Street, if I remember right. It was on the second floor and they used the large front room for the dojo. I would fly to LAX in the morning on my one day off. I’d rent a car, drive to Hollywood, take a private lesson from Soke, and participate in every class. Then, I’d take the long drive to LAX, catch the last flight to SFO, then drive the 40 miles to my home in San Jose. (I relate this story whenever someone tells me the dojo is too far from their home – usually 5 miles or less – to train with us.)

As I mentioned, John wasn’t known to many beyond Soke’s dojo. But in 1969, or thereabouts, he was asked to accompany an American team that Sensei Nishiyama assembled to compete against several university teams in Japan. A friend, who was a senior student of Sensei Nishiyama’s, went on the trip too. He told me that the Japanese treated John and most of our fighters with a degree of disdain much of the time until his first fight. John had been an alternate to the team and didn’t fight during the first couple of competitions. But when they finally put him in, his opponent refused to stop when John scored on him and kept trying to hurt John. So he drove the guy out of the ring, into the stands, and didn’t stop until the officials grabbed him. My friend said everyone in the large gym jumped to their feet and applauded. After that, he was treated with respect wherever he went.

In 1970, WUKO held its first World Karate Championships in Tokyo. The U.S. sent five teams, comprised of many of our top fighters at the time. John and Tonny Tulleners, also from Soke Kubota’s dojo, were on one of the teams. In the individual competition, Tonny tied for third with the legendary Dominic Valera. John didn’t make it to the finals but received one of the Outstanding Spirit (Tamashii) Awards distributed to the most respected fighters.

In 1972, the United States sent just one team to Paris for the second World Championships. John was selected to this team as well. This event was highly controversial. The U.S., Japanese, and several other teams walked out due to what friends termed the inadequate quality of the officials. (I heard they used judo, kendo, and/or aikido officials in matches – depending on who told me. But I wasn’t there so I’m not sure if any of this was true. I just know teams walked out.)

Well, enough for now. I’ll be writing more posts on John Gehlsen and what I learned from him. Thanks again for your patience and continued support.

Postscript: Here is a link for footage of Senseis Gehlsen, Smith, Tulleners, etc. at the team selection tournament for the 1972 WUKO World Karate Championships in Paris. There is a clip at the bottom of the DVD ad. http://www.empiremediallc.com/DVDs/1972%20World%20Karate%20Do%20Champ.html

Tsuken Akachu no Eku Kata and Learning to Better Appreciate Every Day

I apologize for my long absence in posting. It’s been an eventful six months, and not much of it in a good way. Since it is behind me now, I am returning to normal and don’t mind talking briefly about what happened and what I learned from it.

First, the good part, at least for me – although probably less interesting for you. I was able to finish an extensive rewrite of my novel, The Arrow Catcher. It is with my editor, awaiting her read-through and suggestions. I’m fortunate to have a great editor, Lynn Stegner. Lynn is not only an award-winning novelist but also a writing teacher at Stanford University (considered one of the two best writing programs in the country). And she is also the daughter-in-law of the late Wallace Stegner, who was one of America’s greatest writers.

The reason I had so much time to focus on my writing over these last few months was my two stays at the hospital.

I wasn’t sure if I would ever go home after my first stay. I developed an infection that spread throughout my body, a condition they call “sepsis”. It came out of nowhere. I was fine, then developed a fever. I drove to the dojo to teach and got sicker and sicker as I went. (I live 90 miles from the dojo.) By the time I arrived, I figured I’d teach the first class and then go home early, getting one of my senior students to cover my classes. I felt so bad I lay down on the office floor, thinking I might feel better if I rested a bit. But I kept getting sicker, my fever climbing and my kidneys aching. I realized that if I didn’t leave then, I might get so sick I wouldn’t be able to drive home later. So I left a note for my office manager and set out. By the time I got home, I was burning up and felt like someone had hit me in the kidneys with a baseball bat. I had been kicked so hard in the stomach many years ago that it bruised one of my kidneys. This was a hundred times worse. I called my doctor and he told me to go straight to the emergency room, which I did.

The emergency room staff ran some tests and told me I had an extremely bad infection, which they later identified as sepsis. They admitted me and put me on a strong antibiotics drip. I was there for 5 days before being released. Another infection hit me a few days later and another after that was treated.

I mention all this in more detail than I feel comfortable with, or you probably wanted to hear, for a reason. I teach Tsuken Akachu no Eku kata to my students. Within this kata is an unusual jump, reportedly unique to weapons kata. In it, you drop the eku handle, kick your feet backwards unevenly as you jump, and (while still in midair) reach out as far as you can with the blade of the eku.

I learned this kata many years ago and told it was called Tsuken Akachu no Eku Bo. It was explained as a battle between two fisherman, one with an eku (oar) and another with a fishing spear. The spearhead was made of metal, I was told, which would become rusty and encrusted with rotten fish guts over time. A cut from its tip would introduce bacteria into ones bloodstream. As this kata was reportedly created 150 years earlier, there were no antibiotics at the time. The person cut was believed to have approximately ten days before he went into septic shock and died.

So the odd jump had three purposes: 1) block the spear thrust at ones feet with the handle, 2) kicking the feet back to make sure they were not stabbed or even scratched, and 3) reaching out and smashing the attacker in the side of the neck with the blade of the eku.

I was never sure if their sepsis explanation was realistic until I found it could occur even today. Had I come down with what I did back then, I would have died.

They found that my infection was caused by an internal tear. (I won’t bore you with the details.) Surgically fixing it was what necessitated my second hospital stay. But that was completed in early June and I’m back to normal, or as normal as one can be at nearing 70. I now have nothing wrong that rolling back my age by ten years or so wouldn’t clear up completely. But I feel fortunate to be this healthy and fit at this age. I contribute it to my lifetime in the martial arts and my long quest to always keep myself in shape both physically and morally in order to serve as a positive role model for my students.

Anyway, thanks for your patience and continued support. It means a lot to me.

The moral of this story is...

In the mid-60s, I opened a branch dojo in Santa Cruz, a beachside town about 30 miles from San Jose. I had opened one not long before in San Jose. But signups were slow. I attributed it to the fact that there were two other schools in the valley, which must have had a population of around 300,000 at the town. I thought there were too many schools in San Jose – 3, counting mine. Now, there’s one on every corner and we do fine.

Santa Cruz, at the time, was a small town, with a very conservative attitude – almost like you would find in small towns in the Midwest. We once tried to rent their civic auditorium so we could hold a tournament on a Sunday and they refused. They told us that decent people were in church on Sundays. (They had no problems, however, hosting the Miss California pageant there each year on a Sunday. I guess decent folks were either in church on Sundays or watching beautiful women in bathing suits.) After the University of California, Santa Cruz, opened its sprawling, very liberal campus there a few years later, the area made a drastic change of directions politically.

Before opening the branch dojo, I wanted to test the area. So I rented a junior high gym for the night and ran an ad in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, their top newspaper, offering a free karate class. When I got to the gym, I found 85 people waiting to be taught. Only around 20 stayed with it and became regular students. I had some great fighters come out of that small group.

Santa Cruz, counter to its very conservative population core in the early days, was long one of the surfing capitals of the world. So there were always a bunch of non-conservative surfers who trained on occasion. One offered to swap me marijuana for instruction. I passed and his own liking of the substance made him an occasional student at best. But he was one of the top surfers at the time.

Me (right) and Bill Burja, with his trophy for winning
Brown Belt Division at GM Ed Parker's Internationals.

One of my best students from the Santa Cruz group was Bill Burja. His family owned a mushroom farm in the area and Bill had lived there all his life. Bill was a handsome, muscular, nice guy, who the ladies absolutely LOVED. While he was training, women would leave photos of themselves under the windshield wipers of his car with their telephone numbers. Problem was he was married to a woman called Tony. (I don’t know if I am spelling it right or what her full name may have been.) But she was very watchful of him. When all the photos started appearing, she began driving him to the dojo and picking him up after class. (There’s a great story about the night she didn’t show up and I drove him home that I may tell one of these days.)

After we relocated the dojo from the junior high, which was on one of the main streets of town, she let him drive in again. I received a call at the dojo one night from Tony. She asked to speak with Bill. I hadn’t seen him. So I looked around to make sure he hadn’t just come in without me seeing him. But I came up empty. I struggled a bit over what to tell her. I had a personal policy of always telling the truth. That was how I was raised. But the truth could end in a divorce. I couldn’t lie, however, so I told her I hadn’t seen him. “He’s not there!” she screamed, angrily. “Ah, no,” I said. Then, she laughed. “I just called to tell you he wouldn’t be coming in tonight. I wanted to see if you would lie for him or not.”

I was glad I had been raised as I had and honesty was held in high esteem. So the moral is this story is always tell the truth.

Thanks for your patience and continued support.

Hanshi Anderson's Patch

The above photo is of a patch given to me by Hanshi George Anderson many years ago, when he was 1^st Vice President of WKF (previously WUKO) and member of the powerful WKF Executive Committee. It was one of his.

He handed it to me one day and I thanked him, then asked him what I was supposed to do with it. He said “Put it on your blazer.” I said that I couldn’t as I wasn't a member of the committee. He said “Put it on. If anybody questions you about it, tell them to come talk to me.”

I, of course, never put it on my blazer. And, as was his nature, he questioned me about it every time he saw me in my blue blazer from that point onward. I never figured out why he wanted me to wear it. I suspected it was to thumb his nose at someone but never discovered who that was. Life was never dull around him.

Me and Hanshi Anderson (right)

I apologize for my slowness over the last few months in putting up new posts. I’ve been swamped with a bunch of additional stuff, not to mention work on my novel – The Arrow Catcher. I recently acquired a great, new book editor who has made some astute recommendations which require a bunch of rewriting. I’m working my way through that as well right now. Thanks for your patience.

More on who writes our history

While a graduate student at Stanford, we were taught how to evaluate all sorts of written material – books, dissertations, newspapers, research results, etc. The university expected us to one day publish our own books and articles and to perform and publish our own research. So we had to know how to do these properly and present valid conclusions. Many, if not most, research projects are flawed to some degree. Sometimes the experiment was structured or setup improperly. Sometimes there were flaws in their math. And sometimes their conclusions weren’t valid.

For example, someone found that children who could walk balance beams were better readers than those who were poor at it. From that, they concluded that you could improve reading scores by teaching students to walk a beam. So schools all across the country ran out and bought balance beams and required their students to walk them on a daily basis. Reading scores didn’t change. They had erroneously assumed that since those who could walk balance beams were better readers that not just a relationship but a causal relationship existed between the two, that walking beams made people better readers. No such relationship existed. When someone asked me about it, I told them I had a theory about how to defeat cancer. Everyone who came down with cancer wore underwear. So if you didn’t want to contract cancer, you should stop wearing underwear. There was a relationship (everyone who had cancer wore underwear) but not a causal one (wearing them didn’t cause cancer).

Non-research material – magazine and newspaper articles, non-academic books, etc. – are always suspect as literally anyone could write one of these. When checking such publications, we knew to be very careful about using their data, quotes, or results in any serious study.

I once read a book entitled Mind Over Matter. In it, the author gave accounts of several instances in which people‘s minds had been verified to have overcome matter. One such proof was a martial artist who supposedly beat a world champion arm wrestler using only his thumb or one finger (I forget which). It had, according to the author, been verified by Black Belt Magazine. Since I had every issue of Black Belt from the first, I tracked down the article because I knew the martial artist involved and doubted the claim. In the article, the martial artist himself claimed he had beaten the world champion arm wrestler, not some independent and objective observer. It may have been true but was, like “hearsay” evidence in court, not useful in any serious study.

Magazine and newspaper articles are full of errors, misquotes, and outright lies. Some of these are intentional but most are not. The writer is honestly trying to do a good job but lacks the skill or sufficient knowledge of the subject to do it justice.

I tell people that if you don’t want to be misquoted, don’t let anyone do an article on you. If you do, it’s pretty much a given. I’ve had many articles done on me and never had one that didn’t have something – a quote or explanation – that didn’t make me cringe a bit. The writer will hear what they want to hear, mishear what you said, etc.

A local journalist did an article on me several years ago. She quoted me as saying that the nunchaku was developed to beat the husk off of corn. I don’t remember seeing a lot of corn when I was in Okinawa as it was a new world product. But then, I had never said anything about corn. I had said it was used to beat the husk off of rice. But I took some kidding about it for a while nonetheless.

The following was written in a 1987 Karate-Kung Fu Illustrated Magazine article. It was about me and my thoughts on the subject of ikken hissatsu, the so-called one strike kill.

“The Japanese call it the one-punch kill,” wrote the writer of the article, based on information I supplied her. “It’s a blow that brings all fighting elements together with perfect timing to immobilize your opponent with one sudden burst of power.”

Close enough.

“The one-punch kill is tough to teach, since many students believe they can do it naturally without any thought put into the correct power-producing dynamics.”

Have no idea where she got that.

“Some instructors won’t even bother to teach the one-punch kill to women, because they think women don’t have enough power to punch. Then when a female student learns it incorrectly, she proves them right. However, women can actually learn the technique faster than many men because they have no pre-conceived notions about how it’s done.”

This was a mixture of things I had told her, but about a different topic. (Female students often learn how to punch correctly faster than their new male counterparts as they have no bad-habits to unlearn so they improve from day one.) It had nothing to do with ikken hissatsu.

“If the one-punch kill is more difficult than meets the eye, who can teach it correctly? In Japan instructors of the one-punch kill are commonplace. However, in North America, they’re rare. But Jim Mather, who owns and runs the California Karate Academy in San Jose, California, is an American who has put a lot of thought into the dynamics of punching.”

What??? It was true I had given it a lot of thought but so had many others in this hemisphere.

Anyway, just a bit more food for thought to bear in mind when you read a history or article on the martial arts – or someone proposes to write an article on you.

Do the victors write much of the history of our arts or the losers?

They say history is written by the victors. And in the old days, that was generally true. Whoever controlled things, decided what the official story would be. But in recent times (especially since the advent of the free press, multi-channel TV, the internet, Wikipedia, etc.), it has often been written by anyone, including people who may know little about a given subject, who have an agenda that slants their telling, whose egos float astronomically higher than their IQs and knowledge, and so on. This has been especially true in the martial arts, where history was often based more on legend, mythology, and writer bias than fact. I think Bruce Haines’ Karate’s History and Traditions was the first book I read in which the writer actually did an academic investigation into things. It was flawed but not for lack of trying.

Until recently, most martial arts history was passed down via word of mouth. Philosopher Karl Popper called this “subjective knowledge,” knowledge that often changes with each retelling or personal slant and would disappear with the death of the last person to hear it.

“Objective Knowledge” is knowledge put into some form of hard copy (books, magazines, video files, pdf, etc.) that enables it to be Googled or microfiched or whatever and accessed by students or researchers possibly forever. This can be a good or a bad thing.

There are a few qualities a person must possess it they are to undertake certain tasks. If they want to be a security guard, they can’t be blind. If they want to become a piano tuner, they can’t be deaf. And it they want to write a history, they can’t be less than honest and truthful to a fault.

Several years ago, I was asked for assistance from a writer who was putting together a book on the history of karate in America. I supplied him with a fair amount of info he didn’t have and some rare photos, if I remember right.

In our last conversation, he asked me about a local martial artists who I had had problems with. A woman had enrolled her son in his school but quickly left, referring to them as “hokey”. She brought her son to us and, after being with us for a few months, she wrote me a note that said “Karate at CKA (my dojo) was the best thing she ever did for her son.” I asked her if it would be okay if I used her quote in an ad for the dojo. She said she was happy to recommend us.

I ran an ad that featured her quote and placed her name under it. It was a great ad that brought us many students. After some period of time, our local competitor ran the same exact ad, with her quote and name in it. She was livid. I sent a letter to the guy, explaining the situation. I figured he would do the right thing and stop running it. I was wrong. He said he had been given the ad by a management company, who said I had given them permission to use it. It was trademarked and I never gave them permission. In fact, I had told them they couldn’t use it.

When he refused to stop running the ad, I had my attorney contact him and politely let him know it was illegal for him to use it. He got an attorney, who wrote back that they would fight us and that we would lose because of some technicality. I had a student who oversaw the hiring of proprietary attorneys for a major corporation. He referred me to an attorney in San Francisco who was considered the top expert in the field. She sent the instructor a letter that shut down his attorney. The guy stopped running the ad, although only because he had to, not because it was the right thing to do.

The book author got very defensive of the local guy. He thought he was the greatest martial artist in the world and I was obviously a jerk for not seeing that. So when his book came out, in which he listed the credentials and accomplishments of most American martial arts instructors, the only comment associated with my name was “martial arts administrator.”

What’s the big deal? Well, if a future writer (maybe next week, month, year, ten years, or a hundred years) researched this era for an article or book, my name and role could be deemed inconsequential, or diminished, based upon what had been written about me – either rightly or wrongly. And this is not just some theoretical fear I have about something that might possibly happen in the future. Next time, I’ll discuss a case in which I was attacked in a history book because of something I never said or did.

Thanks again for your continued support.

Karate and the Olympics

Thanks to Sensei Claudio Iedwah for the following on Delcourt and Nishiyama efforts relative to the Olympics. http://www.eurokarate.eu/02recogn/040220.htm Lots of interesting stuff.

What I know about karate and the Olympics - Part IV

One of the first martial arts books I ever read (and reread many times back then) was Nishiyama and Browns’, Karate: The Art of “Empty Hand” Fighting, which was published in 1959. I still have a copy in my extensive martial arts library. It was a great, elegantly published work for that time. In hindsight, it had little on kata and lacked a lot of the detail that would be included in later Shotokan books – one of my favorites being Sensei Nakayama’s Dynamic Karate, which I used to reread at least once each year to pick up technical details I had missed, forgot, or misinterpreted. (Two other memorable books I read and reread in the earliest days were Mas Oyama’s What is Karate? and George Mattson’s The Way of Karate.)

I only met Sensei Nishiyama on a couple of occasions. I never spoke personally with him as I was fortunate to do with several other Shotokan greats. So, I was never able to form any kind of direct insight into what kind of man he was or what drove him to do what he did.

Ron Marchini (right) ref-ed my match with Francisco Rameriz in the late '60s

I once asked old friend, oft-time mentor, and great karateka, Ron Marchini, about a particular martial artist, who he knew but I didn’t. “There are great martial artists and there are great guys. He’s a great guy.” There are also, of course, those who are great martial artists and great people. I’ve met a few of these along the way. But, unfortunately, I’ve met far more who were great martial artists but not very good people. (And I’ve met a bunch who were both bad martial artists and people.) I can’t say where Nishiyama would fall on all this. He obviously had great knowledge and technical skill. That can’t be denied. I just don’t know what kind of person he was.

Even when we lack direct knowledge about someone, we can often derive a fair amount of insight via indirect means – their behavior, the opinions of those who did know them, etc. (Juries often convict people accused of crimes based solely on such indirect or circumstantial evidence.) The fact that some very great American karateka trained under him for many years, knew him very well, and decided to leave him (including Frank Smith and Ray Dalke, arguably two of our all-time greatest), says a lot, in my opinion. I met Smith only once but knew Ray for many years and have great respect for him as a man of honor, a karateka, and a teacher. If they left him, a man they obviously greatly respected, then there had to be something very wrong. Neither of these men are the disloyal type. In fact, they were reportedly loyal for years under conditions most would not have tolerated for any time at all.

In the mid-70s, I was asked by the editor of Samurai Magazine to write an article for them. The magazine’s publishers (the money behind the publication) were two LA doctors, who I assumed were also Nishiyama students, as everyone knew Samurai was Nishiyama’s publication. At the time, I considered it the best martial arts publication on the market as it dealt only with traditional Japanese karate and traditions and was very professionally done.

I forget the timeline but at some point the magazine went rapidly downhill. I think the last copy I received was printed on a copier and hand stapled. I asked a friend who was highly placed in Nishiyama’s LA organization what happened. He told me that one of the doctors/publishers had died. When the surviving doctor informed Nishiyama, he reportedly responded, “Where will we get the other half of the money for the magazine?” There was no “I’m sorry to hear that,” or “That’s terrible,” or “My condolences to his family.” According to my friend, the surviving doctor told Nishiyama he had better worry about where he was going to get all of the money and pulled out. I don’t know if this is true or not, as I got it second-hand. But it came from what I considered a very reliable source and someone who was on Nishiyama’s side.

Alone this tells us little, as we don’t know the actual circumstances or even if it actually occurred. But, if true, it would seem to give credence to the general opinion that he was a man on a personal mission, who didn’t care who or what got hurt in the process, even karate.

There are many other stories out there. I’ll leave those for others, as I don’t know the truth of any of them. (Some of these are outlined in Jon Evans’ piece, mentioned in Part III.) I will be probably soon post an article, perhaps more, written and sent to me by Soke Patrick Hickey on the subject of karate and the Olympics. I also have copies of letters between the various parties – Delcourt and Nishiyama, et al. I will likely be posting them as well.

Thanks again for your support. I greatly appreciate it.

Black Belt Article - 1970 WUKO Championships

While I work on my next post on karate and the Olympics (a bunch of documentation is still coming in which I would like to pass on to you guys), here's a great article on the first World Karate Championships in Tokyo. It appeared in the March 1971 issue of Black Belt Magazine.

What I know about karate and the Olympics - Part III

Although Sensei Hidetaka Nishiyama’s International Traditional Karate Federation (ITKF) was far smaller than WUKO and didn’t have sufficient numbers to gain acceptance as an Olympic sport itself, he had a sufficient number of both members and high profile supporters to prevent WUKO from being named.

To my knowledge, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) never approached karate (or most likely any other sport) and said anything like, “We have to have you in the Olympics, please, please, please join us!” Most sports go to them and beg to be included. The IOC has long felt they have too many sports already. “Why should we include your sport?” is a question every applicant must be able to answer.

To convince them to accept another sport, it must prove it has a significant number of practitioners around the world. It must be a competitive sport, not merely an activity. It must be represented by a world organization that is supported by a vast majority of the practitioners of that sport. The organization must have rules for competition that are widely accepted and in keeping with the Olympic Ideal. It must host a regular world championship, etc.

Nishiyama kept insisting that WUKO didn’t practice true karate and that the ITKF was the only world organization that did. WUKO countered with letters from many of the most traditional Shotokan stylists (and former dojomates of Nishiyama) – like JKA Managing Director and WUKO General Secretary Fusajiro Takagi, Takayuki Mikami, and others – stating that what Nishiyama advocated was no different than what WUKO practiced. (I read some of these but don’t think I have copies of any of them. If I can come up with one, I will post it along the way.)

From the reports we received, the IOC seemed convinced on several occasions that WUKO was their choice and that karate would soon be in. Then, Nishiyama would mount another attack and things would be put in limbo yet again. This went on for many years.

One of Nishiyama’s supporters was reportedly Mexican Olympic Committee Chairman, Mario Vazquez Rana, who was also president of the powerful IOC New Sport Committee, which heavily influenced which sports got in and which did not. If true, such a friend would be extremely helpful in blocking WUKO’s application and in keeping Nishiyama informed of what WUKO was saying and doing as well as advising him as to how best to thwart WUKO. (From communications I’ve read between Vazquez Rana and Nishiyama, he may have come to later regret his possible part in checking karate’s entrance. But I could be wrong on both counts. I may publish a copy of this communication sometime soon and you can be the judge.)

The IOC didn’t know what to do with karate. They wanted a unified world body, as TKD had been smart enough to give them, and tried to get the two organizations (WUKO and ITKF) to merge. But Nishiyama refused, even though WUKO offered to allow a separate division for his “traditional karate.” With too many sports in the Olympics already, the WUKO/ITKF fight gave the Olympic Committee the excuse they needed to block karate’s entrance.

People talk about “Tyranny of the Majority,” the powerful or numerous forcing their goals or desires on a small minority. But there is also “Tyranny of the Minority,” where a small number (sometimes even just one person) can bring things to a halt. If consensus is needed, one holdout can achieve this. (Court trials often see justice undone by a single holdout, for example.) Such a position can give power to the otherwise powerless (or less powerful), enabling them to achieve their goals or to right social inequities but sometimes it is used merely to stroke someone’s ego.

Someone once defined Nishiyama’s position as “If I can’t run it, I’d rather TKD got in than karate did under anyone other than me.” Many within the traditional karate world considered him a traitor, that by his long battle with WUKO and the IOC he had prevented karate’s acceptance and facilitated TKD’s. I don’t know if this is true or what his motives actually were. Jon Evans, Shotokan stylist and former head of AAU Karate, wrote an article on the subject for Black Belt Magazine in ‘88, blaming Nishiyama’s resistance on a long-standing rift within Shotokan in Japan. If you’re interested in reading more on his theory, the link is as follows: http://www.shotokai.com/ingles/interviews/wuko.html

Well, let me end this for now. I’ll have more to say about this, including a couple of personal observations relative to Sensei Nishiyama next time. Thanks again for your continued support.

What I know about karate and the Olympics - Part II

Something I apparently didn’t make clear last time was that I’m not attempting to lay out a definitive history of karate’s attempt to gain Olympic acceptance. I’ve heard that someone is undertaking such a book and will gladly leave it to him. My goal is just to pass on what I know or was told by knowledgeable people, as well as some of my experiences with some of the participants to give some insights into how these people appeared to think and act.

Karate’s quest to gain Olympic approval began in the mid to late 60s. I (like most traditional Japanese instructors in the country at the time) was contacted in the 60s about plans for the first WUKO World Karate Championships. The event was the brain-child of French attorney Jacques Delcourt and Japanese industrialist Ryoichi Sasakawa, co-heads of WUKO, and organized around rules established by FAJKO – Federation of All Japan Karatedo Organizations – for competition within Japan. It was presented to us as the first step towards gaining Olympic recognition for karate.

Selection and training tournaments, organized under the AAU, were held around the country. I was invited to an event in Stockton, where an event-within-an-event was held at one of Ron Marchini’s tournaments. Minobu Miki and, I think, Fumio Demura and Kiyoshi Yamazaki came up to teach us the rules to be used by the world organization and ultimately the Olympics.

Four teams of five athletes were ultimately selected to represent the United States. These included many of our top competitors, including Marchini, Mitch Bobrow, James Yabe, John Gehlsen and Tonny Tulleners (both from my instructor’s IKA dojo), and others. The Northern California athletes worked out together at Sensei Don Buck’s dojo in Marin County.

Tonny Tulleners (left) and me at IKA championships

The first championships were held in Tokyo in 1970. My fellow IKAer, Tonny Tulleners, was the top US finisher, tying for third with the great Dominique Valera of France. First place was won by Koji Wada of Japan. John Carnio of Canada took the silver. John Gehlsen didn’t place in the final group but was awarded one of the Outstanding Fighting Spirit Awards.

According to George Anderson, karate was vastly more popular around the world than TKD. He told me that karate had over ten times as many registered athletes as did the Korean art. Hirokazu Kanazawa had a membership of over one million athletes in just Indonesia alone.

With so many athletes and a series of very successful world championships under its belt, why didn’t it happen?

The general consensus is that karate was largely kept out of the Olympics by Hidetaka Nishiyama. He wanted his organization, the International Traditional Karate Federation (ITKF), to be named the world governing body for karate. He claimed that what he called “sport karate,” which WUKO and others practiced, was different than true traditional karate and should not be allowed into the Olympics. Or, if allowed, it should be considered a separate sport.

I’m awaiting some documents which I hope to share with you on this subject. So I’ll stop for now, rather than wait longer for it to be tracked down.

I want to thank all of you for your continued support. We recently surpassed 25,000 pageviews of this blog. I greatly appreciate your readership.