Article

The Road to Karate – A Budoka’s Way To Live
By Hiroshi Shoji. Shihan of the Japan Karate Association.

Part 12 - Food

Dumpling Soup, Dark Bread and Foreign Rice

It was no longer the era of a lack of goods which had occurred immediately after the war, but we struggled with hunger.

The Korean War started in the year when I entered university. Peace talks of the war were progressing at around the time when I became a resident of the dormitory. The broadcast of television which was the beginning of the development of mass communications started this year, characterising the post war era. Unaffected by such rapid changes in the society, our morning, lunchtime and evening training continued. What troubled us was a lack of food. It was no longer the era of a lack of goods which had occurred immediately after the war, but we struggled with hunger. It is a general pattern that students belonging to the athletic clubs get hungrier, but our case was terrible. The basic problem was that we did not have money – we could not work at part time jobs due to our Karate training.

The dormitory was managed by the resident students. After each club paid various bills to the university, such as electricity bills, each club managed its own affairs independently. Each club cooked its own meals. The dormitory fee that we had to pay to the Karate Club was cheap, 2,000 to 3,000 yen a month, which was a great help to us. The first year students were on a roster which they decided among themselves, for cooking and they managed all the shopping for foodstuffs and firewood as well. The delivery of rice, the main staple, was still rationed at that time but if you had money, you could buy it on the black market. But the rice we could afford to buy was foreign rice. As an expression of my cooperation for the members on the roster for cooking, I used to go home and stuff my bag with rice instead of university books. But the rice I brought from home was consumed in a few meals due to a large number of the members we had.

A graduate senpai whose family was running a bakery business could not bear the sight of our hunger and he brought fashionable looking bread for us to eat whenever he came to our evening training. You cannot imagine how grateful we all were.

“How good is today’s bread?” we wondered whilst listening to the senpai’s lecture about how the dough should be prepared and how the bread should be baked. It was a luxurious and wonderful moment.

We were a bunch of men who had never cooked till the end of our high school life.

For breakfast we usually had flour dumpling soup, which was very common at a time of food shortages. It was easy to cook and did not cost much to make. We were a bunch of men who had never cooked till the end of our high school life. Repertoires of the dishes that we could cook were incredibly limited. If we had foodstuffs like today’s instant foods, our eating life would have been a little more enjoyable. There were not many dishes that we could cook easily around that time.

We had a roll of dark bread only for lunch. It is said that lunch should be nutritious, but we just ate the dark bread only without any side dish. It was an uninteresting lunch for always-hungry youths. Whilst our meals were poor, we nevertheless endured many hours of morning, lunchtime and evening training. There must have been something else apart from us being young, which sustained us through the training. It may have been our desire to reach the ultimate stage in Karate-do.

The more we drank, the more eloquent we became, and a new energy towards tomorrow was generated within ourselves.

Dinner was a treat for us, the rice which had a smell peculiar to the foreign rice, a miso soup and a side dish of another item. But after the evening training that finished at around 9 pm and when we went to bed, we all became hungry again. Even if we had some money in the evening, as a natural course of young people’s life style, we would use the money on drinking. We talked over shochu*31 mixed with sour plumb juice and Yakitori*32 about Karate-do, contemporary life, and what youth should be. The more we drank, the more eloquent we became, and a new energy towards tomorrow was generated within ourselves. It was a fresh feeling of content, which we could not obtain from the meals.

If we could afford to buy even 200 grams of meat, it was a treat for us. But, it was not unusual that the meat never found its way to our mouths, the mouths of senior members. It was due to the frequent test-tasting by the junior members who were on the roster for cooking and ate them all. Even if ill feeling over foods was strong and long lasting, we could not scold at the juniors, because they were only carrying out the test-tasting as a part of their duty of cooking. For unknown reasons or perhaps due to such perks that came with the duty of cooking, the juniors who were on the duty of cooking were all well covered. To the contrary, I was at that time slender and my body shape was a reversed triangle with the measurement of my waist being around 60 cm. It may be the result of my Karate training why my arms and legs were big relative to my body.

My slender and smart body was not a result of the food shortages, but a result of.. training in Karate...

My slender and smart body was not a result of the food shortages, but a result of our morning, lunchtime and evening training in Karate, which made my muscles firm. As compared to some sports that use particular parts of the body, Karate requires the use of every muscle of the body. This is why some middle-aged former Karate people take up Karate again to solve the problem of a lack of exercise.

Gigantic Lunchbox
Those of younger generation who have been brought up with the lunch provided by school may not be familiar, but when we were children, we took lunchboxes to school. In winter we heated up our lunchboxes on the coal-burning stove in the classroom and during the class just before lunch, the delicious smells coming from the heated lunchboxes used to stimulate our hungry stomachs and cause them to grumble.

“What have we got today in the lunchbox?” We used to wonder. We could not wait for lunchtime. We did not expect to experience the joy of lunchbox after we became the members of the dormitory.

“Is it my turn today?” It was a joyful thought. The centre of our thoughts was the lunchbox that “N”, the member of the same year, brought. As he commuted from home, he brought a home-made lunchbox. He asked his mother to pack the lunchbox with rice as full as possible. He drew with the chopstick a line in the middle of the tightly packed rice and gave us a half of it. Who would receive a half of his lunchbox was decided by roster. It was a great excitement to think “It’s my turn today”. Sometimes, we deliberately invaded the rice on his half and said in an exaggerated manner “Oh, I am sorry”. It was a rather childish moment that we enjoyed.

“N-san, lunchbox.”

It was our greetings to “N” in lieu of our usual greetings of Oss whenever we saw him, not even at lunchtime, to show our gratitude to him for his sponsorship of lunchbox. His lunchbox was appreciated so much by us and helped give us a pleasurable existence.

“N” could have entered and graduated from Aoyama Gakuin University without any trouble.

The life at the dormitory of the Takushoku University’s Karate Club with a long-standing tradition was peculiar to other ordinary students. “N” was also unusual as compared to us. He entered Takushoku University after finishing the high school of Aoyama Gakuin. As Aoyama Gakuin is well known as a school for well-off family members, “N” could have entered and graduated from Aoyama Gakuin University without any trouble. We thought that he was strange enough not only to enter Takushoku University, but also to join the Karate Club.

N’s family had a publishing business and he came to university whenever he found time in his family business. He came to the dojo on his way to his delivery job and attended the Karate training often enough to placate the seniors. For this reason, I hardly saw him in the lecture, but his ability in English was next to none, which was perhaps a particularity to the high school he went to. Members of the athletic clubs always circled around him at a time of university examinations. Of course, the members of our Karate Club had the privilege to sit next to him. I got an A in commercial English, a compulsory subject, thanks to the help I received from “N” during the examination, but he who helped me got only a B. We both were disappointed for “N”, but laughed at the results at the same time and also we were cross with the incompetent professor.

..our first words to him after the training were always hopeful, because we could visualise the smells and smokes of yakitori...

As “N” was a businessman, he had money. We, the members in the same year as “N”, grinned whenever we saw him. As in the case of his lunchbox, our first words to him after the training were always hopeful, because we could visualise the smells and smokes of yakitori drifting from drinking stalls located outside the West Exit of Shinjuku Station and the noise of Military cabarets.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have money on me today.”
“Is that so? What a pity.” we said as a matter of course.

But I was not sorry at all.

“Well, if that is the case, we will have to change your watch to money. I will introduce you to a pawn shop.”

It was like “N” encountering a highwayman. You do not need to be introduced to go to a pawnshop. I bet he still thinks even today that friendship is costly.

When we were in the fourth year, Captain “O”, I who was the Vice Captain, “S” and “N”, all from the same year, worked hard together as “the Mighty Four” and led the contented student life. Although we are all in different situations today, we still maintain our friendship that we fostered through Karate-do. I would like to keep treasuring it. To be continued...

Notes
*31 Shochu is a distilled potato based alcohol.
*32 Yakitori is grilled diced chicken on a skewer.