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History
History of Club
History of Kyokushinkai in the
uk
History of Kyokushinkai
History of Karate
Guest book
Discussion board
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The
founder of our system, Masutatsu Oyama was born in 1923 near Seoul
in South Korea. He studied Chinese Kempo at 9 years of age. When
he was 12, he went to Japan to live and enrolled at University.
After mastering Judo, he became a pupil of Gichin Funakoshi himself
making such rapid progress that at 17 he was 2nd Dan and at 24 became
4th Dan.
Deciding he would spend the rest of his life spreading the knowledge
of Karate, he spent the next year in seclusion from human society,
living in temples and in the mountains;subjecting himself to the
physical rigors of martial arts, training day and night and meditating
on Zen precepts, seeking enlightenment. In 1951 he returned to civilization
and started his own training hall in Tokyo. |
In
1952, he travelled the United States for a year, demonstrating his
karate live and on national television. During subsequent years, he
took on all challengers, resulting in fights with 270 different people.
The vast majority of these were defeated with one punch! A fight never
lasted more than three minutes, and most rarely lasted more than a
few seconds. His fighting principle was simple - if he got through
to you, that was it.
In 1953, Mas Oyama opened his first "Dojo", a grass lot in Mejiro
in Tokyo. In 1956, the first real Dojo was opened in a former ballet
studio behind Rikkyo University, 500 meters from the location of the
current Japanese Honbu dojo (headquarters). By 1957 there were 700
members, despite the high drop-out rate due to the harshness of training.
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| Sadly,
Sosai Mas Oyama died, of lung cancer (as a non-smoker), at the age
of 70 in April 1994, leaving the then 5th Dan Akiyoshi Matsui in charge
of the organisation. This has had many political and economic ramifications
throughout the Kyokushin world, which are still being resolved. In
the end, the result may well be a splintering of Kyokushin, much like
Shotokan now appears to have done, with each group claiming to be
the one-and-only true heir of Mas Oyama's Kyokushin, either spiritually
or even financially. It has even been suggested, not entirely in jest,
by one Kyokushin writer in Australia (Harry Rogers) that maybe Oyama
created the turmoil on purpose, because he didn't want Kyokushin to
survive without him! It is however reasonably certain that all Kyokushin
groups, regardless of their ultimate allegiance, will still maintain
the standards set by Mas Oyama. |
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