Article

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

Part 5 - Merit and Demerit of "Osu"

.. the training was unbelievably tough and severe beyond my imagination.

As I heard about the tradition of tough and severe training at Takushoku University before I joined the Karate club from the person – an old boy of the Judo club of Takushoku who boarded at my house, I was, to a certain degree, prepared for it. But, the training was unbelievably tough and severe beyond my imagination. For example, one thousand Choku Zuki*21 or one thousand Mae Geri*22 were, when I look back now, reckless training methods. It is hard enough to move the arms one thousand times even without exerting any power. We trained with tears in our eyes, thumped by the seniors with their fists. Even those who had trained in Karate before they entered university had to crawl up the stairs of the Otsuka Station on their way home. The training was that hard.

It was indescribable by words how torturous it was to train with the bodies that would not move.

The young bodies – as they were at that time – would recover to a certain degree from normal fatigue with a good night’s sleep. But in our case we did not recover at all even with a good night’s sleep. Our bodies were heavy and stiff as if lead had been infused inside the bodies. It was indescribable by words how torturous it was to train with the bodies that would not move. My limbs were so stiff that they seemed not to belong to me. I joined the Karate club without any experience in martial arts and had many regrets because the whole thing was totally different to my expectation. But it was too late and I could not quit the club.

I could not raise my arm. My arms were swollen to the maximum point that they could not be swollen further.

I was commuting to the university from my home in Ageo in Saitama. I used to go home by metropolitan tram from Myogadani Station to Ueno Station. When I tried to hold on to a strap on the tram, I could not raise my arm. My arms were swollen to the maximum point that they could not be swollen further. If they were lowered, there was no other alternative but to keep them in that position. Besides, whenever I fell asleep on the tram or train, my body always twitched. Everybody experiences those twitches after hard physical training. But my case was much worse. With my body twitches, my legs reflectively kicked up and caught the person in the shin standing in front of me or gave an elbow strike to the person sitting next to me. If it was a man, I was yelled at and if it was a woman, I was mistaken for a pervert. There were many occasions where I had to apologise to those people.

The train had already reached Kumagaya well past my station...There was no alternative but to walk back 30 km.

One night on my way home after training everything was fine until I got on the train from Ueno Station. It was later than usual and the train was not crowded. Due to fatigue, I fell into a deep sleep on the train. It was too late when I woke up. The train had already reached Kumagaya well past my station. The return train services had already been finished. There was no alternative but to walk back 30 km. It was a long and miserable walk and took me till dawn to get home.

We were preached in a loud voice that we had to punch on a makiwara*23 hard until the skins on the knuckles split and came off, showing the bones, otherwise we would not become proficient in Karate. A senpai would put his hand behind the makiwara when we punched it. We had to punch the makiwara hard enough for the wooden board to bend backwards enough to touch senpai’s hand. Punches where the makiwara did not touch the senpai’s hand were not counted in. No matter how many times we punched, the counting was stopped at “One”. “Damn”, we punched with all our might, then the counting of our punches moved forward “two”, “three”…… Maybe the hand becomes numb once the skin comes off and starts bleeding. From that moment, we stopped feeling the pain. But on the following day when we punched the makiwara with the swollen and infected knuckles, the pain was sharp enough to make us jump.

“What beautiful hands you have for a person who does Karate!”...But in reality, my knuckle bones had been split in two.

As we kept on with the makiwara training, breaking wooden boards and roof tiles with the fist, the knuckle bones would be squashed wide and our hands became ugly. The skin would, depending on the person, become either callous or squashed. In my case, the skin is not callous but squashed. Recently, someone told me “What beautiful hands you have for a person who does Karate!” I felt a little shy, so I replied “Because I have never done primitive things like breaking”. But in reality, my knuckle bones had been split in two.

What made me feel lost most at the beginning when I joined the Karate club was the strict relationships between senpai and kohai*24 or seniors and juniors. I managed to withstand the physical hardships, but this was a totally different thing. An example of such strict senpai – kohai relationships was that when a junior and a senior were entering the room at the same time, the junior was not allowed to enter the room before the senior. Another example was that a junior had to wash the back of a senior in a bath. I had spent carefree times throughout junior and senior high school, so I had to pay the utmost attention to adherence to the strict rules of relationships of senpai and kohai. I had to make every effort to live with the strictness of relationships as with the Karate training. To be continued...

Notes:
Translated from Japanese into English by Nishimura Takaatsu Sensei, Senior Instructor, JKA Victoria
*21 Choku Zuki is a punch executed in a natural standing position with the legs shoulder width apart.
*22 Mae Geri is a front kick.
*23 Makiwara is a practice wooden board with a pad made of straw attached.
*24 Kohai is a junior person in the order of joining the club.

Read our Tribute to Shoji Sensei from November 2003

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