SENSEI KASE INTERVIEW

Sensei Kase interview (Tampere, Finland 2002) © Jarmo Niiranen
Interviewer: Jarmo Niiranen

What has been the most memorable thing during your remarkable karate journey?

It is the love towards karate which has lasted almost six decades. I cannot name only one thing because so much has happened. Sometimes I ask myself - why do I continue training? I must continue because karate gives me so much - karate is my life. I have been training and teaching karate all over the world for over half a century.

Main purpose is the continuous development. Even though I am 73 years old - I still feel that I am developing all the time. When I decide that I am standing after the fight - I will. This is the original budo spirit - the training should also be done this way. Budo - karate takes about 20-30 years of basic work. Only after this period one can start to understand karate more deeply and see things more clear. The development is a continuous process - continuous training gives basics for that.

Gichin Funakoshi was my first teacher - he was the one who established Shotokan ryu school. His karate was more like Okinawan. Stances were short and kicking techniques were only few. The second teacher was his son Yoshitaka Funakoshi - who developed karate tremendously. He created more dynamic moving patterns - lower stances came along and kicking quantity and quality expanded. Karate as a whole became more versatile. Yoshitaka created fudo-dachi stance - which enabled one to move towards multiple directions more strongly and more naturally than old zenkutsu-dachi does. Fudo-dachi is the basic stance of the Shotokan ryu Kase ha. My third important teacher was Motonobu Hironishi who teached me during my six Senshu university years in Tokio. Hironishi sensei was a very important person in Shotokai school after he left shotokan.

He started to practice karate in 1931 when he was 19 years old. He was a student of Gichin and Yoshitaka Funakoshi and he teached karate in Japanese universities. Hironishi did not like competitions and he was always saying that karate should be trained as budo - not as a sport. He said that karate is not real in competition situation. As I told you before Hironishi changed to Shotokai and the main reason was that there is no competition element in Shotokai.

In my opinion Yoshitaka reached higher level than Okuyama. When Yoshitaka passed away in 1945 - Okuyama naturally continued his own development - but still he did not reached Yoshitakas skill level. To me Yoshitaka is always number one. In fact these two cannot even be compared because their karate was different. Yoshitaka was more physical karateka and Okuyama caught his energy from somewhere else - strange isn't it.

We have not met in a few years. We call each other time to time. Usually we discuss about training and change opinions. He is over 80 years old and training and living in Japan. Our friendship has lasted from 1940`s - university years.

Problems, not necessarily. The training of course was quite different during the war compared to nowadays. The difference is in controlling the technique. Atobaya was very common in wartime training - there was no control. Killing with one blow was the basis of the training. Nowadays some people are training for competition - why is that?

Budo is not competition. Budo is fighting. Karate is protection / defence - yourself, other people, your and others property. The traditional karate does not include competition - if somebody claims otherwise then he is wrong. Believe it - I have seen the whole development of modern karate. The rules of competition were developed during 1950`s. There is no points for effective uke-waza. Budo is realistic fighting based on samurai tradition - this tradition also includes traditional karate. The realistic fighting is very far from competition karate. The rules and narrow technique selection does not give real picture of karate. The technique becomes unilateral and karate changes to point scoring sport as dancing - this is not the case with true budo.

Karate should be trained more seriously. Why do people practice kata only to learn the form? It is like dancing. The realistic kata bunkai training helps people to understand katas thru totally different way. A strong block(ukeuchi) hurts your opponent - there is no need for attack necessarily. There is no needless movements in karate. These are the things I wish to be remembered while training karate. Karate ni sente nashi - block always first.(There is no first attack in karate.)

" Why always wander the flat course, when there is the possibility to climb higher level and see more wide and more far!"

- Sensei Taiji Kase in Finland-