Korean Karate Master?

[Daniel Sullivan]

The first hogu were brought to Korea from Japan during an exchange trip in January 1961. The Korean Team brought back four hogu back to Korea. Soon thereafter, hogu became mandatory equipment at all KTA tournaments in Korea, along with shin and forearm guards, and cups. The AAU (predecessor to the USTU) required the use of hogu from the very first US National Taekwondo Championships held in 1975. Head gear became mandatory in 1986 for USTU and WTF, after a competitor in Florida fell during a tournament, hit his head, and subsequently died.

Thanks for the info. I had never seen a hogu until probably the late eighties or early ninties.

Daniel

 

[Mushinto]

It is amazing that people will make a fuss over a Korean being a karate master ....

Even funnier considering that most Japanese karate styles were started by Okinawans.

ML

 

[Master Dan]

Oyama was Korean born, but was definitely Japanese bred. There's a lot of discussion/argument about this. He went to Japan to be a fighter pilot, considered himself Japanese, and kept his Karate Japanese. The training he received as a child wasn't very formal, and no one is positive what he learned. There has been a lot of guessing. He was proud to have been born Korean, but always considered Japan home. Issues of identity are interesting, and they are very difficult to deal with.

I'm a Korean born adoptee who grew up doing Okinawan Karate in the US and is now living in Korea doing Japanese Karate (Kyokushin) and practicing my own Isshinryu Karate privately. It creates a lot of questions among older Korean people about why I don't do a Korean martial art, because my blood is Korean. It can make life interesting haha.

You could look on a few other forums, the argument about Oyama's Koreanness has been discussed a lot. You could probably Google it, and find quite a lot written about it. If you're interested that is. I myself consider Oyama and his Karate to be Japanese, because while he was Korean born, and loved Korea, he still called Japan home and felt it was his rightful place.

You seem to have knowledge of Oyama at least book or print? I am wondering if you or anyone has real information on his death. My life long GM was a prominent student of his and also world renouned in Judo in his day, he had a different account for his death than what is published on Wikipedia. He called Oyama his 1st cousin however terms like brother cousin uncle grand father are terms that are used among indiginous peoples with out actual genect ties. He did train in japan and always talked with a fond respect for thier training ethics, it certainly had an impact on our TKD training. In the early 70's we advertised as Korean Karate but as Olympic TKD took hold the advertising switched to TKD as primary with Hapkido and Judo mentions.

 

[Martin h]

You seem to have knowledge of Oyama at least book or print? I am wondering if you or anyone has real information on his death.

Masutatsu Oyamas death?
He died due to lung cancer (non smoker, crap sometimes just happen, esp if you live in a air-polluted city). That is no mystery, and a well documented fact.
I have never heard of any other alternate explanations.

There are plenty of theories about what happened in the hospital before he died (inlcuding Yakuza rumors) and the much contested "will" that eventually made kyokushin fracture into multiple factions each claiming to be the "real" one, but none that claim he died from anything but cancer.

 

[Martin h]

The training he received as a child wasn't very formal, and no one is positive what he learned. There has been a lot of guessing.

He discussed it in a interview once (dont ask me to find it, it was years since I saw it). He said that he trained "korean wrestling" (most likely Ssirum(sp?) -korean sumo) mostly as childsplay, and that he received a few months tutoring in chinese kempo (he used the common japanese term for kungfu) while staying at a relatives farm, from a non-korean farmhand. He said that from what he remembered, the Kempo form mostly involved elbow techniques.

That was the extent of his training before arriving in Japan, where he first did a (very) little boxing and then a lot of karate (first shotokan, then gojuryu), with a fair amount of judo and aiki-jutsu thrown in for good measure.
He may have other influences here and there, but this is the extent of what he claimed to have trained.

 

[K-man]

Omar B : "Can you imagine the art that would have resulted from Oyama teaching Choi's TKD? It would look quite different today, less kicks maybe, less hopping, more brutal. I'm glad he stayed Japanese."

rip271 : I don't know how much things would have changed. Kyokushin has a lot of very athletic kicks in it. They had the wheel kick, their sacrifice kicks require a lot of athleticism. If he had decided to move his style to Korea, he likely would have lost the Goju-ryu kata, and the kobudo.

In the OP video it says that after studying Shotokan with Funakoshi he studied Goju Ryu (Chojun Miyagi). It was actually Goju Kai under Gogen Yamaguchi and as I understand it, he went there because it was Yamaguchi who introduced Ju Kumite into karate. Yamaguchi had little, if any training directly under Miyagi and this shows, not only in the changes in the training, but also the performance of kata.

Kyokoshin have more kata than most other styles and these include the ones derived from Shotokan and Goju Kai. I can't speak for Shotokan but the Kyokoshin kata based on Goju Kai are changed a lot and are really quite unlike the Okinawan form.

Not that this takes anything away from Kyokoshin. It is a hard style of karate but really quite different from the Okinawan styles that I have seen. Another interesting question might be, what if he had gone to Okinawa instead of mainland Japan? :asian:

 

[Martin h]

In the OP video it says that after studying Shotokan with Funakoshi he studied Goju Ryu (Chojun Miyagi). It was actually Goju Kai under Gogen Yamaguchi

The OP vid is more enthusiastic than accurate.

and as I understand it, he went there because it was Yamaguchi who introduced Ju Kumite into karate.

He switched to Goju because of his personal friendship with SoNei Chu, a fellow korean national (I forget the name for koreans descendants living in Japan) who was a top level instructor (I dont remember who SoNei was taught by, but not by Gogen) in Goju in Japan at the time.
Gogen Spent much of the war period posted in china/manchuria (when Oyama did the switch) and didnt return until 1947 (after some time as a POW), and SoNei basically ran his dojo while he was away.
After Sonei moved to Korea in the late 40ies, Oyama continued his studies under Yamagushi, who eventually graded him to 8th dan in the goju kai organization (created 1950).

And as for who invented kumite, that depends on who you ask. All styles seems to claim that honor.

 

[K-man]

He switched to Goju because of his personal friendship with SoNei Chu, a fellow korean national (I forget the name for koreans descendants living in Japan) who was a top level instructor (I dont remember who SoNei was taught by, but not by Gogen) in Goju in Japan at the time.
Gogen Spent much of the war period posted in china/manchuria (when Oyama did the switch) and didnt return until 1947 (after some time as a POW), and SoNei basically ran his dojo while he was away.
After Sonei moved to Korea in the late 40ies, Oyama continued his studies under Yamagushi, who eventually graded him to 8th dan in the goju kai organization (created 1950).

What I found elsewhere:

I do not have any personal knowledge of this, but reproduce for your information a passage from Cameron Quinn's book, "The Budo Karate of Mas Oyama."

"So Nei Chu
Master So was one of the highest authorities of Goju karate in Japan at that time. He was renowned for the power of his body, yet he was most distinctively a man of deep spiritual inclination, and indeed a man of rare character. This great teacher had a profound influence on the young Mas Oyama. A devotee of toth the Nichiren sect of Buddhism and the Martial Arts, Master So taught his new friend and student the inseparability of budo and the spiritual foundations of religion. After a few years of training Oyama, Master So advised his young student to make a firm commitment to dedicate his life to the Martial way:

"You had better withdraw from the world. Seek solace in nature. Retreat to some lone mountain hideout to train your mind and body. In three years you will gain something immeasurable. As the proverb goes, "Temper the heated iron before it gets cold", so train yourself in self discipline before you grow older if you wish to be a great man".
​

Master So's words kindled the fire in Oyama's heart like no other. He resolved to face the challenges that lay ahead with all the vigour he could muster...".

I can't find any reference to So Nei Chu's original training in Goju apart from one reference that states he was Miyagi's most senior student and that is patently false. It is quite possible he was with Yamaguchi in the early days at university, pre-war, as that is when he ran the school for Yamaguchi. Other references tag him as Yamaguchi's student. By the time Oyama trained with him, he could have been with Yamaguchi the best part of 20 years. On the other hand, he could also have been a student of Jitsuei Yogi who was Yamaguchi's friend and teacher.

Just to clarify. Yamaguchi founded the Goju Kai in 1935, not 1950. It was officially called "The All Japan Karate-dō Gōjū-kai Karate-dō Association". :asian:

 

[chinto]

perhaps it is just what I have seen, but I am not a Kyokushin fan. I study a couple of traditional Okinawan styles. I find that what I have seen of Kyokushin seems to have lost a lot from what the original okinawan teachings would have shown them.

That is just my opinion... but it is mine.

 

[K-man]

perhaps it is just what I have seen, but I am not a Kyokushin fan. I study a couple of traditional Okinawan styles. I find that what I have seen of Kyokushin seems to have lost a lot from what the original okinawan teachings would have shown them.

That is just my opinion... but it is mine.

I would agree totally with your opinion. :asian:

 

[punisher73]

Just to add fuel to the fire and play a little devil's advocate.

From what I have read, the japanese won't admit that Mas Oyama is korean, they insist that he is japanese. Due to their ethnocentric beliefs about Japan being superior to everyone else they won't accept that one of their foundational karate styles is anything but japanese.

I don't know if this view has changed in more modern times, but it was also in the reflection on their denial that karate was derived from a chinese source originally also.

 

[Martin h]

Just to add fuel to the fire and play a little devil's advocate.

From what I have read, the japanese won't admit that Mas Oyama is korean, they insist that he is japanese.

I know for a fact, after communication with one of the daughters, that Oyama brought his family up to regard themselves as fully Japanese, and not as koreans. Apparently he didnt talk about his korean origin at home.

 

[oftheherd1]

...

and back in those days the name of the MA was Korean Karate, Tae Kwon Do was new name that not every one knew those days so tht's the way to get the regular people on it.
...

I'm new and looking at some of the older threads. FWIW, I studied TKD under Jhoon Goo Rhee in the mid-60s when he only had one studio on the 3rd floor of a building at Connecticutt and S St in Washington, DC. At that time he was definately calling his art Tae Kwan Do. And those that were competing, were recognizing the fact that they needed more work with hands, as the Japanese Karate people could move in and score points with their hands, whereas our people, if they could maintain some distance, could more likely score points with kicks.

I think we all wore cups, but nothing else, whether at competitions or sparring in the studio. What we were taught, was control; to stop the punch or kick just before making contact. We were taught to stop farther out while sparring until our control was good enough to get closer. Actually striking someone was considered very bad form, and in a competition could get you disqualified.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

I'm new and looking at some of the older threads. FWIW, I studied TKD under Jhoon Goo Rhee in the mid-60s when he only had one studio on the 3rd floor of a building at Connecticutt and S St in Washington, DC. At that time he was definately calling his art Tae Kwan Do. And those that were competing, were recognizing the fact that they needed more work with hands, as the Japanese Karate people could move in and score points with their hands, whereas our people, if they could maintain some distance, could more likely score points with kicks.

I know the place! It was my first experience with taekwondo. My folks took me there because I begged them to let me take 'karate' after seeing his commercial. I still remember the phone number: USA-1000 (no area code needed back then).

Now the building houses Tai Yim's Kung Fu and his store, Flying Dragon Imports, which had previously been located on Georgia Avenue in Wheaton. Used to go there for 'ninja stuff' in the eighties after high school let out. That man and his staff sat there and answered every stupid question that I could think of to ask. I still shop from him and he remembers me from all those years ago.

Lots of good memories from that location.

Daniel

 

[Twin Fist]

when i was stationed there in the late 80's, the ethnocentric attitude of the japanese was in full force.

but the koreans are no better, they still buy into the whole "TKD is 2000 years old" crapola

Same with the Chinese...

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

when i was stationed there in the late 80's, the ethnocentric attitude of the japanese was in full force.

but the koreans are no better, they still buy into the whole "TKD is 2000 years old" crapola

Same with the Chinese...

Actually, they do that out of humility: They thought that it might come across as bragging if they said that it only took them a couple of decades to put together a martial art that is that good.

Daniel

 

[Kong Soo Do]

Actually, they do that out of humility: They thought that it might come across as bragging if they said that it only took them a couple of decades to put together a martial art that is that good.

Daniel

Now that was funny