7. Travel (B)

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By Graham Noble

When Nisaburo Miki, a member of the Tokyo Imperial Unversity Karate Club, made a research trip to Okinawa in 1929 one of the experts he met was Chojun Miyagi. In “Kempo Gaisetsu”, the book he wrote after the trip, Miki included short pen portraits of several masters. On Miyagi he wrote:

“Chojun Miyagi Sensei, Naha-city, Uenokura-machi, Chome 15:

“Sensei is teaching Okinawa’s Police as well as at the Commercial School and Wakasa dojo. He introduced karate to Kyoto Imperial University, after which the art began to develop in the Kyoto area.

“His idea is to study Shina (Chinese), Taiwanese and Korean Kempo, comparing them to what exists in Okinawa. As he told me, he wanted to do this was because the primary characteristic of karate is the use of the closed fist for attacking. Meanwhile, Chinese kempo almost always uses nukite (finger strike). Taiwan and others use this method too.

“Anyway, his own method of practice relies strongly on asceticism and I was rather apprehensive of him, feeling I wouldn’t be able to approach him as I was only a beginner and everyone had warned me about him in Tokyo. However, when I met him he was very nice and gentle and so I laughed at my fears and watched the practice. In his case again it was more a question of physical training rather than the martial arts side.”

“Kempo Gaisetsu” is a valuable book in the history of karate. Nisaburo Miki included in it various kata that he had learned in Okinawa from masters such as Kentsu Yabu and Chotoku Kyan. These kata were all from the Shuri-te stream and it’s a great pity that Miki did not show any of the kata of Miyagi’s Naha-te. His time in Okinawa was relatively short and maybe he was never able to study any of those forms; he may also have felt that they were too different from the Gichin Funakoshi kata he had learned in Tokyo.

In the 1930s karate was gradually becoming better known in Japan and in 1933 the art was accepted by the Butokukai, the umbrella body for Japanese budo. The Butokukai had an established grading system for martial arts instructors, in ascending order: Renshi, Kyoshi, and Hanshi, and in 1937 Miyagi, Yasuhiro Konishi and Sannosuke Ueshima received the grade of kyoshi, the first time that any kind of Butokukai ranking had been given to karateka. Karate was still a new budo in Japanese terms and so this was an important recognition for the art. It is also evidence of Miyagi’s standing in the karate world of that time. He was also involved in the 1936 meeting of senior experts which agreed the naming of karate, the 1937 meeting which discussed the development of basic training kata, and the 1940 committee held to address, again, the need for easier basic kata for children. By 1940 Miyagi was fifty two years old and the senior karate expert on that committee.

Anshu Tokuda, who had studied with both Miyagi and Chotoku Kyan wrote that, “With the exceptions of Funakoshi Sensei and Miyagi Sensei, no Okinawa experts had the political power to unite and organize the various styles of karate. Kyan Sensei personally treasured budo, however he did not have the capability to introduce his ideas to the outside and to unite the Okinawa karate world.”

Miyagi’s Goju Ryu is one of the four main traditional styles of Japanese karate, but unlike some other Okinawan teachers such as Funakoshi, Motobu, Mabuni and Toyama, he never settled in mainland Japan: his direct contact with the mainland was limited to several, rather brief teaching visits. Nisaburo Miki mentioned Miyagi’s early teaching trip to Kyoto Imperial University, and that is also referred to in a short article on Miyagi in a 1934 edition of the Hawaiian newspaper “Yoen Jiho Sha”, which states that Miyagi was invited to be karate instructor in the judo department of Kyoto University in October 1928. This article also states that in May and June of 1932 he taught at Kansai University karate club and visited Tokyo “where he conducted lectures and gave demonstrations.”

Hardly any memory remains of those early teaching trips to Japan, but Gogen Yamaguchi told Sadao Sakai (1978) that “The first time I met Miyagi Sensei was, I believe, sometime in the summer of Showa 4”, (1929, presumably he is referring to Miyagi’s first visit of 1928). “At that time, I was attending Ritsumeikan University, and I was Oendancho (head cheerleader) to the Sumo club and other sports clubs. Miyagi Sensei’s very first visit to mainland Japan was the result of an invitation from Kyoto Teikoku University Judo club. The student leader there was Kumao Ono Sensei. There was also Katsumi Sakai Sensei who was a judo cub senpai and a lawyer from Saga. I was an assistant for Katsumi Sakai Sensei. There was Shigenari Yoshida Sensei who is now at the Supreme Court and was also a student there then. We all observed Miyagi Sensei’s instruction from a distance at Kyoto University. Therefore I had not personally met Miyagi Sensei at that time. I realized then for the first time that Miyagi Sensei was a karate expert. I was doing judo during that period and Sakai Sensei supported me a great deal.

“ . . . Sakai Sensei was the toughest former member of Teikoku University Judo Club. I had no idea why Sakai Sensei invited Miyagi Sensei to teach. However, there were about forty or fifty people participating in Miyagi Sensei’s seminar. . . . Later, when I established the karate club at Ritsumeikan, we named it ‘Tode Kenkyukai’ - We used the name ‘Tode’, not ‘Karate’. I really wanted to extend an invitation to Miyagi Sensei for some time. There was a student named Jitsuei Yogi from Okinawa who had joined Ritsumeikan. Yogi-kun said to me, ‘I know Miyagi Sensei. I studied under him.’ That sort of triggered our plan to invite Miyagi Sensei. Therefore, we invited him for the first time around Showa 6 to 7 (1931/32). Miyagi Sensei was an extremely polite person. He often told us about ‘Zen Ken Ichi’, mastering Zen and Ken (fist) equally.”

As far as we can determine, Miyagi was never in Japan for long periods, and his instruction on the mainland is not well recorded. Morio Higaonna in his “History of Karate. Goju Ryu”, lists several Miyagi trips to the mainland: 1928, when he taught at Kyoto Teikoku University judo club; 1933 and 1935 when he gave demonstrations at the Butokusai, a major martial arts festival held at the Butokuden in Kyoto; 1936, during which he presented his essay “Karate Do Gaisetsu”in Osaka, and 1942, his last visit to mainland Japan, when he taught at Ritsumeikan. In addition a 1932 visit, to Tokyo and to Kansai University (Osaka), is mentioned by the Hawaiian newspaper “Yoen Jiho Sha”, and also by Tatsunori Sakiyama, a Miyagi student who was then working as a policeman in Tokyo. That makes six Miyagi trips in Japan. There may have been more, but we don’t seem to have any record of them.

Miyagi wasn’t the first to show karate at the Butokusai; there had been previous demonstrations by Yasuhiro Konishi in 1929 and 1931, and by Sannosuke Ueshima in 1930. These were Japanese instructors, though, so it was a great honour for Miyagi, an Okinawan, to demonstrate the little-known, provincial art of karate at the centre of Japanese martial arts.

Morio Higaonna noted that in Miyagi’s 1935 demonstration he was assisted by Jitsuei Yogi, the Okinawan who had trained in karate on Okinawa and was then studying at Ritsumeikan University. According to Higaonna, Miyagi stayed with Yogi on both his 1935 and 1936 trips, and the two practised karate in Yogi’s second floor apartment. According to Yogi, in the 1935 Butokukai demonstration, Miyagi performed Seisan and the two then showed yakusoku kumite. Many years later Yogi told Higaonna that “As Chojun Miyagi Sensei’s partner I was really afraid. He performed with great seriousness and because of this he would sometimes make contact with his techniques.” At that time Yogi was in the same university classs as the son of the famous judo master Hajime Isogai, and Isogai’s son told him: “Mr. Yogi, my father has praised your teacher very much. He must be really a first-class budōka and personality.”

During that 1935 stay Miyagi also visited Ritsumeikan University and met with the Dean and Shoichi Wada, head of the Physical Education department. This led to the University’s formal recognition of the Ritsumeikan Karate Club Kenkyu Kai (Research Club). That was in December 1935, and in January of the following year a club prospectus was issued which listed Chojun Miyagi Miyagi as Meiyo Shihan (honorary master teacher) with Jitsuei Yogi and Yoshimi (Gogen) Yamaguchi as Shihan Dai (assistant instructors).

The formal establishment of the Ritsumeikan Karate Kenkyu Kai was an important moment in the history of Goju Ryu. It soon became the centre of Goju Ryu practice in mainland Japan and after the war its seniors, such as Gogen Yamaguchi, Shozo Ujita, Kenzo Uchiage and others formed the All Japan Goju Kai and spread the style throughout Japan, establishing it as one of the four main schools of Japanese karate. If the Ritsumeikan club had not existed it is quite possible that Goju Ryu on the mainland would have disappeared, or at least have existed only as a marginal style. As the early references indicate, Miyagi had taught at other mainland establishments and universities, but none of those clubs seemed to have been able to survive even over the medium term.

If Morio Higaonna’s chronology is correct then there was a six year gap between Chojun Miyagi’s last two mainland trips, in 1936 and 1942. In 1939 however, a group of Ritsumeikan students including Shozo Ujita, Taisuke Nakamura, Jo Taniguchi, and Tetsuya Ioku came to Okinawa to train with Miyagi for a period of two months. Higaonna wrote that in fact Miyagi was absent for much of the Ritsumeikan students’ stay and that they were generally looked after by Sakima, (Sakaima?) a Miyagi pupil. Shozo Ujita told Higaonna that they were taught by “one who was not tall but extremely powerful.” Rather surprisingly, Ujita couldn’t remember this teacher’s name, although at the time Higaonna spoke to him that Okinawan trip must have seemed many years in the past. Higaonna speculated that this unknown teacher was probably Jinan Shinzato. Another Ritsumeikan student, Haruyoshi Kagawa, told “Gekkan Karate Do” magazine (April 1980) that he also had gone to Okinawa (1940?) for two weeks to study with Chojun Miyagi. He had seen Miyagi in Osaka and felt that “he looked very strong” and that his kata “was on a completely different level” which gave him the idea of making the two day boat trip to Okinawa to study Goju Ryu with the master. In 1940 too Miyagi met a group from Takushoku University Karate Club who had travelled to Okinawa to research karate. After their summer training camp at Numatsu, seven members of the Takushoku club, Fukui (captain), Mizushina, Kikuchi, Kudo, Sano, Sato, and Morihana, left for Okinawa. The group received instruction from experts in both Shuri and Naha and engaged in joint-practice with their students, but the time with Miyagi seemed to have stuck in their minds. “We received two hours instructions in the early morning from the Goju Ryu originator, Chojun Miyagi Sensei,” Fukui recalled. “That was the best experience from the trip.”

According to Morio Higaona, Chojun Miyagi’s last Japan visit in 1942 ended under a cloud. He had been invited to teach at Ritsumeikan University but towards the end of his stay he was offered an envelope of money, the implication being (?) that he would award black belts to students in return for payment. Miyagi was affronted and pushed the envelope away, vowing never to teach in Kyoto or Japan again. Of course, Myagi’s travel to the mainland after that time would have been affected anyway by the war, especially as the fighting moved closer and closer to Okinawa and mainland Japan.

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