Memoirs of a Karate Fighter Read Free Page B

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    Like many other Japanese
budo
masters of that time, Ohtsuka had been recruited into the ultra-nationalist and secret Black Dragon Society, the members of which had worked as spies and assassins for their government in Chinese and Russian territories. Collectively, their minds were set on refining ancient methods of killing, and Ohtsuka unashamedly appropriated techniques from other martial arts if they were shown to be effective. But like his good friend Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of modern aikido, Ohtsuka knew that without the proper ‘fighting spirit’ – as he had witnessed within the YMCA team that day – all the good techniques in the world counted for little in a real combat situation.
    After training for a decade with Gichin Funakoshi, the man credited with bringing karate to Japan from Okinawa, Ohtsuka became frustrated with Funakoshi’s rule that forbade his students to spar with each other; at the time karate was deemed far too dangerous. However, this did not sit well with Hironori Ohtsuka; he had been training in
bushido
(the way of the warrior) since he was a child and knew that without the element of sparring any combat system would be limited in its effectiveness. Initially, he and other like-minded students donned kendo armour breastplates and held secret sparring sessions. Then he did something that, to this day, remains unforgivable to some Japanese Shotokan
karateka
: he broke away and formed his own school. It was a move that was implicitly critical of Funakoshi’s philosophy and methods. Not only that, following the suggestion of his friend and colleague Eiichi Eriguchi, he called his school ‘Wado’, which nowadays can be benevolently interpreted as ‘way of peace’, but in 1934, when patriotic fanaticism was sweeping through Japan, it seems more likely that, given Ohtsuka’s membership of the Black Dragon Society, Wado would have been more correctly translated as ‘Japanese way’ – which again could be construed as a slight to the Okinawan-born Funakoshi.
    But whatever Ohtuska’s original motivations were, it seemed that Eddie Cox and the rest of the black belts had interpreted the Wado ethos as: ‘there is nothing so peaceful as a man who is laid out unconscious.’ In the time I spent training at the YMCA, more than a few boxers and practitioners of other martial arts had been drawn to the
dojo
by its reputation – in order to test themselves as well as the members of thekarate club – and I had seen this ethos put into practice with frightening efficiency.
    Always prepared to enter any sort of karate competition, the original YMCA team were pioneers who travelled the length and breadth of Britain during the 1970s, when, fuelled by the sort of films I had watched at the Colosseum and by various Kung Fu television series, participation in the martial arts had reached unprecedented levels. For many young black men of that era, carrying a knife as a means of self-defence, or participation in an oriental fighting art seemed almost obligatory.
    In keeping with the way Eddie Cox had been taught at the Temple Karate Club in Birmingham by his Japanese instructors, Toru Takamizawa and Peter Suzuki, I was introduced to
jiyu kumite
( free-fighting ) very quickly. The more senior members would go easy on me by giving me openings on which to capitalise; they rarely attacked and when they did their techniques were light and relatively slow. To some it may have seemed that they were toying with their prey, but I took it as their way of helping me to develop the correct techniques and selfconfidence.
    The days of such easy lessons soon passed, and as I became more proficient, every little advance in my technique was paid for with the pain of constant repetition, and on the occasions when I failed to concentrate, with blood and humiliation.
    â€œIchi … ni … san … shi …” Cox sensei continued to call