The Kufferath Obi

I received what I consider a very great honor recently, one that greatly humbled me. I had received an email that morning from Leslee Kufferath, daughter of the late Professor Sig Kufferath, one of my favorite people and a great, great martial artist. Leslee asked if I would be at my dojo that night. I said I would. She stopped by and, to my surprise, presented me with The Kufferath Obi, a specially embroidered black belt and a beautiful certificate. I was apparently the 7^th to receive this very special award. I want to thank Leslee for this great honor.

Her father, Professor Kufferath, was a very special man. He had been a personal student of legendary Hawaiian jujitsu master, Professor Henry Okazaki. One of Professor Kufferath’s dojomates was Professor Wally Jay, who we recently lost. Professor Kufferath was one of the first to receive our USNKA Living Martial Arts Treasure Award recipients. He was a kind, gentle, very down to earth man who had the warmest, most wonderful smile. I always enjoyed the time I was gifted to spend with him.

I’ve mentioned this before but it is one of my favorite stories and when you get to my age, you will likely see the great insight within it. At 68, it always puts things into perspective for me.

Professor Kufferath paid a visit to his native Hawaii to spend time with some surviving friends. He was in his mid-80s at the time. He and an old buddy were walking the famous and very popular Waikiki Beach, where many beautiful young women lounged in the sun in their bikinis. Professor Kufferath looked at his buddy and said “What I wouldn’t give to be 70 again.” Every time I start feeling old, I smile when I remember that story and feel fortunate to have what I do. It reminds me to treasure every single day.

A couple of months ago, Leslee hosted the Professor Sig Kufferath 2011 International Martial Arts Symposium in honor of what would have been her father’s 100^th birthday. Martial artists came from all around the world to honor this great man. I was fortunate to be included among those who taught workshops. If she ever does it again, be sure to attend.

How to catch an arrow – Part III

My call from LA stunt coordinator Ray Anders was to ask if I would appear on a TV show called The John Newcombe Show, hosted by one of the top tennis players at the time, John Newcombe. He wanted me to catch arrows in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. I said I’d give it a try.

It was an overcast day. It had rained recently so the ground was damp and a bit muddy in spots.

The place they had set off for me to catch was among the trees. My archer was to shoot from under another tree, around 45 feet away. The arrow would have to travel across an open, significantly brighter section of lawn before passing under another tree, where I was to make the catch.

Had they asked me to do this later on, when I had more experienced with such things, I would have told them no or made them move to a different location. But I was new and thrilled about the prospect of appearing on a national show, albeit a minor one.

The problem with the site was the arrow went from shadow into light and back into shadow again. Our eyes are marvelous things that can make many amazing adjustments. But tracking something moving rapidly from dark to light to dark again isn’t one of them. Our irises can’t open and close that quickly, leaving either the darker or the lighter sections harder to see. As it turned out, the lighter section dominated everything, like trying to shoot a photo of someone indoors with bright sunlight flooding in from a window behind them. The image of the person will appear very dark.

The same occurred here. I always focused on the tip as, to intercept one, my hand had to start its movement the instant the arrow started forward. Apparently, I would subconsciously calculate an arrow’s trajectory based on the angle of the shaft as it left the bow. This would direct my hand upwards or downwards, or whatever, to be in a position to intercept it.

Here, the arrow started in relative darkness, making it almost impossible for me to see its tip. So I was behind right out of the gate. When it crossed the open patch, I could track it easily. But then, it went dark again just before it got to me and I had to try to intercept it based solely on its trajectory and speed within the middle section. Making things even worse, I was standing in mud and my footing was not great.

In spite of all that, I managed to catch one for them. But it wasn’t as clean a performance as I would have liked. In the end, I think I only managed to grab about one out of every ten shots, as I had done the first day on the beach.

Turned out, this was significant. Ray asked if it was possible to increase my catch rate. They were shooting in film in those days. So it was very expensive to shoot high speed film on all those misses. That became my focus and forced me to change the way in which I caught.

I’ll talk about that next time and the surprise I got when appearing on my next show.

How to catch an arrow - Part II

Sometime in late 1964, after getting back from Korea and discharged from the army, I opened my first official dojo, California Karate Academy, in my hometown of San Jose. I soon opened a branch in the nearby coastal town of Santa Cruz.

Movies at the time showed martial artists as possessing magical powers. They could leap over high walls, rip hearts out of bodies, and the like. I was searching for something I could do to garner attention for my dojos but wanted to keep it within the realm of the possible.

At the time, three reportedly true stories circulated in karate circles about martial artists. The first was the ability to wrestle and/or kill a tiger with their bare hands. (If I remember right, this was something Gogen “The Cat” Yamaguchi once reportedly performed.) The second was the ability to catch a bullet in their teeth. (There was a German guy on TV who did this. There was, of course, a trick to it, which was later revealed.) And the third was the ability to catch an arrow in midflight. (I first heard of it in one of Sensei Oyama’s books.) Of the three, the latter seemed the least foolhardy.

Early one overcast morning, my brother and I met one of our Santa Cruz students on a sheltered beach. My brother planned to shoot arrows at me, mainly to see if it was do-able. I had always had good speed and reflexes but this was totally new territory.

My brother, Bob, paced off around 40 feet. While my student filmed everything on old 8mm film, Bob shot a series of arrows. I stood back and just watched the first couple of shots to see if the speed was within a realistic range. It seemed to be. With each shot, I moved closer to the catch spot we had marked in the sand.

On around the fifth shot, I was standing just outside the catch point and managed to touch the arrow’s shaft with my fingers as it flew past. I stepped into the catch point and deflected the next couple of shots. But I found I had a problem, I couldn’t get my hand to close fast enough. Arrows would leave the bow and slip through my hand before I could get it closed. I had them within my grasp but couldn’t quite grasp them. I was so close I felt it could be done. I don’t remember how I overcame the hand closure problem but managed to catch the tenth arrow.

People were starting to gather nearby so we left. I was afraid someone would get hurt, as there wasn’t anything behind me to stop the arrows.

In the early 70s, while I was an undergraduate student at Stanford, one of my advisors in the film department heard about the arrow thing from one of my students. (My advisor, Bill Zarchy, had trained some in the martial arts and come by my dojo.) He acquired the use of a high speed camera for a few days and asked if I would let him film me at Felt Lake behind Stanford. I agreed. So Bill filmed arrow catches at 500 frames per second. (Regular cameras at the time shot at 18 frames per second so this was at extremely high speed.)

Leslie Miner, a producer at KQED, the San Francisco branch of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), saw the clip and asked if she could interview me. From the interview and outtakes from the footage Bill had shot at Felt Lake, she produced a short feature entitled “The Arrow Catcher,” which ran many times on PBS over the years.

One of the people who saw it was Ray Anders, who was an LA stunt coordinator. Ray contacted me. He said the arrow catch was among the five most dramatic stunts he had ever seen and wanted to book me for a show he was working. Ray soon became one of the industry’s most successful and opened many doors for me. I’ll talk next time about appearing on my first TV show and almost losing an eye.

How to catch an arrow

I’d like to record for posterity my answer to the question I’m most asked – “How’d you get started catching arrows?”

It was something I did first in the mid-60s. In the 70s, others heard of it and I was featured on the major TV networks, in magazine articles, and in personal appearances. I was praised on several occasions and viciously attacked once in the national press for something I never said, did, or claimed. An arrow went through my hand. And one almost took my eye.

Let me begin by making two important points: First, it is extremely dangerous to attempt to catch an arrow at any speed. Most eye losses are reportedly due to low speed, blunt force impact. This means any arrow shot at you, or even thrown, holds the potential to cost you your sight! Don’t try it. I was extremely lucky not to lose an eye and I was generally very careful.

Second, almost anyone can catch an arrow. If I held an arrow in my hand and tossed it at you, most of you could easily catch it. But if I shot it at you from a high powered hunting bow at relatively close range, no one (not even I during my prime) could catch one. The question is not if you can catch an arrow or not but, rather, at what distance and speed. The critical issue is its elapsed time (ET) – the amount of time it takes to get from the bow to your hand. The shorter the ET, the harder it is to catch.

If you do a Google search, you will find a number of people claiming to catch arrows. And there’s nothing wrong with that. As I said, anyone can do it.

A number of arrow catching clips are posted on YouTube. (None of these are mine as I’ve not posted any.) Some of these clips document something challenging. However, most do not. In some, the arrows are clearly traveling very slowly or from a long distance, which gives the catcher a great deal of time in which to react. But it’s sometimes hard to tell distance and speed in some of these, which are the two critical factors. How can you tell? Well, a telltale sign of low speed and/or extreme distance is the angle of the arrow at the catch point. If the arrow is angled downward, towards the floor, it was traveling very slowly when caught, making the demonstration meaningless.

I would like to point out another couple of important facts that generally get missed: First, catching arrows doesn’t indicate possession of any mystical or supernatural powers. And, second, arrow catching per se has nothing whatsoever to do with being a competent martial artist. It can demonstrate superior speed and reflexes but says absolutely nothing about the catcher’s ability to efficiently and effectively defend himself against an actual attacker.

In coming posts, I’ll be discussing what caused me to first try it, what enabled me to catch arrows, specifics about the task, and some of my more interesting experiences. Thanks again for reading.

Can you name these two fighters?

Can you name the two fighters in the above photo?

Instructing Children in the Martial Arts – Part IX

Many years ago, I had just gotten home after teaching one night at the dojo. I clicked on the TV but wasn’t paying much attention to it. The late news came on and I caught a glimpse of someone I thought I knew, being led into court in an orange jail jumpsuit.

It was the breaking story and turned out to be who I was afraid it was, a martial arts instructor who everyone had known for years and liked. He had been charged with molesting one of his teenage students. And they were expecting to possibly find more victims. (The details are a bit hazy after all these years so I’m hopefully remembering things correctly.)

According to the news, he had held regular sleepovers for his students at his house. He would apparently serve alcohol to underage people at these events. While the teenager who reported him was drunk and asleep, the instructor fondled him. Turned out, however, the teenager wasn’t as drunk as the instructor thought. He woke up to find himself being molested.

The Boy Scouts of America has a “No One-On-One” policy. No adult associated with scouting is allowed to meet one-on-one with any scout at any time, for any reason. Unless they are the scout’s parent, they are never allowed to sleep alone in a tent with a scout. They are not allowed to pick up and drop off individual scouts in their cars. Another adult has to always be with them when they did any of these. Obviously, they would not be allowed to have individual scouts for sleepovers, or if it’s a group function, never be alone with any scouts during a sleepover.

The same should apply to us as martial arts instructors and anyone who works for us or teaches at our schools. Always teach in public or in a place that is visible to the public. Leave doors open to public view if you’re meeting with a student or teaching a private lesson or have someone with you. Don’t room with individual students while at tournaments, etc. All of this is, of course, just common sense. But as I mentioned before, commonsense isn’t always so common. Be careful.

Thanks for putting up with my humble ramblings.

Kenny Kuch Team Photo

This is the team photo I mentioned in my post on Kenny Kuch. Kenny is the fighter on the left. (Next to Kenny is Jeff LeValley. In the middle is Casey Elliott, a very tough leftie. Both Jeff and Casey were among my early black belts.)