Memoirs of a Karate Fighter Read Free Page A

… SHI …” The sensei’s calls were rhythmic and hypnotic. For more than two very intense hours we had punched and kicked up and down the length of the
dojo
. It was an exercise that was punctuated with exchanges of techniques with a partner before we returned to our lines and started all over again. “Ichi … Ni … San … Shi …”
    The instructor who was putting us through all this agony was Eddie Cox. He was a broad figure whose demeanour gave him a presence that made him seem far more powerful than anyone else in the
dojo
. Years before, when I had first joined the club, the first thing I had noticed about him was the thickness of his hands. Protruding from the sleeves of his heavy canvas
gi
, they resembled great lumps of black iron that had been forged in one of the local foundries for only one purpose: to inflict pain. With his dark skin and broad features, he looked like a shorter version of a young George Foreman – only something in his eyes made him look a lot meaner. The rumours about his toughness that I had heard while I was still a schoolkid had not done him justice. But it was not just karate that had hardened him. He had been the toughest kid in the toughest school in town before he had ever started training. Until the day it was closed down, St Joseph’s had a reputation for turning out more criminals than academics and was nicknamed ‘Joey’s Jailhouse’.Most of the boys attending the Catholic secondary school were of Italian or Irish backgrounds and Eddie was one of only a handful of black pupils – an experience that had left its mark. In an institution in which you were either predator or prey, Eddie decided it was better to become the king of that particular jungle. The tales about the severity of the training sessions he ran had been no exaggerations either. There had been many occasions when I had cursed my cousin Clinton for talking me into accompanying him to the YMCA, mostly as I was helped from the
dojo
nursing a pulled muscle, a sore abdomen, or a bruised face.
    After more than five years of dedicated training, Clinton and I were brown belts and it felt as though we had become members of a larger family unit. A few of us within this extended family were on the fringes of a promotion that would put us on par with some of the black belts. Still in our late teens, we were so sure of ourselves that we brashly thought that, on a physical level, we were already as good as the
dan
grades. The harsh training regime had made our bodies strong and hard, but our youthful limbs kept us flexible and fast. In order to rearrange the established ‘food chain’ so that it was more in keeping with our own inflated self-image, there would have to be a confrontation. I would have done well to remember one of my mother’s favourite adages:
Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it!
    The style of karate practised at the YMCA was Wado Ryu, which, according to modern translations, means ‘way of peace school’. Wado was created by a Japanese jujitsu master named Hironori Ohtsuka who blended the art he had studied from the age of six with the Okinawan fighting system that only became universally known as ‘karate’ in the 1930s. When Master Ohtsuka visited the Wado Ryu United Kingdom national championships in 1975, the first year the YMCA had entered the tournament, he had commented to other Japanese instructors that out of all the
karateka
who were competing, it was Eddie Cox’s team who had captured ‘the true essence of Wado.’ This was high praise indeed, and had probably been bestowed by the
kancho
(the head of the style) because of the attitude of the YMCA fighters. Though it had roots in older philosophies and traditions, Ohtsuka had developed his style of karate during the period when Japan was making military forays into China and Manchuria, and it was first and foremost designed to be a potent combat