Black Belt is running a two-part piece on the history of karate. This particular piece features an interview with one of Funakoshi’s disciples.
Until his death on April 14, 1998, Osamu Ozawa was the highest-ranked shotokan karate master in the Western hemisphere.
This article discusses what early Shotokan training was like. Lets just say that it was beyond brutal!
We had 50 makiwara (punching boards), and all the students were made to punch it with much force, more than 50 times on our first day in class. The rough straw cut through the skin of many students’ [knuckles]. More than 40 quit on the first day.
I also found this part of particular interest:
Classes in judo and kendo were mandatory for Japanese students at that point in the history of karate.
I’ll keep an eye out for part two and post a link to it when it’s up!
-BCP
Good intro to the documentary; makes me wish I had the Black Belt channel.
As for the rough days of Shotokan….a lot of it was misguided fervor. Your blog gives every indication that you’re pretty well read when it comes to martial arts, so I’m sure this isn’t news to you. But a lot of the brutal training found in “the old days” was hold over fervor from the pre-war militaristic build up of Japan.
Dave Lowry puts it much better than I, but in short, there was a deliberate effort by the Japanese govt to support the notion of the “Yamato-Daimashii” among the population and the military. And in martial arts this resulted in turning long term training, into short, brutal, and unsafe “force you to do splits in 2 days” training all in the name of nationalism and perceived self-superiority.
Sad, really, that many schools even today still do this sort of thing.
SK: Some good books on the topic.
Shotokan’s secret.
A killing art covers post world war II and the transition to TKD.
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