The Cupertino Courier

Community

Legendary karate teacher inspiration to local students

By Erin Hussey

Despite the nearly 80 people inside the Columbia Neighborhood Center, the loudest sound in the building is the buzz of the fluorescent gym lights.

The quiet among the select group of local karate students reflects their awe and respect for Kancho Kirokazu Kanazawa, a grand master who has come to teach them. Kanazawa is the last living student of the Gichin Funakoshi, the man who officially brought karate from Okinawa to mainland Japan and eventually the world.

"He is the last of a legendary generation of Japanese instructors that were assigned to teach throughout the world," says Jay Castellano, sensei (teacher) of the Satsuma Dojo located at the CNC in Sunnyvale. Castellano, a sixth degree dan (black belt), also teaches shotokan karate classes at San Jose State University.

Kanazawa, who was born in 1931 in Iwate, Japan, and graduated from Takushoku University in 1956, is the only living 10th dan, the highest title attainable for shotokan karateka.

"They used to call him the monster," says Mark Richardson, a third-degree black belt who practices and sometimes teaches with the Satsuma Dojo.

"The stories are that after he would train in his college classes, he would go burn a candle in the gym and train alone--he just wouldn't quit."

At 76, Kancho Kanazawa still isn't ready to call it quits.

"Karate is an education for life," Kanazawa tells the adults, teens and children before him.

Kanazawa weaves in and out among the students as they practice their kumite (sparring) and kata (patterns of moves), stopping to place a gentle hand on the youngest students to help them with their form.

"Not up, not down, but straight," Kanazawa says to a boy holding his wrist at his side in preparation for a spar. As he illustrates the move in front of his students, he no longer looks 76, but transforms into a strong, youthful karate champion.

The shotokan style of karate is one of the most traditional forms and draws from the methods of the ancient Okinawan masters, classical karate and techniques of several of the old schools of Japanese swordsmanship.

"In the first All Japan Karate Championship in 1957 in front of the son of the emperor, he won with a broken hand," says Richardson.

Kanazawa also won the championship the next two years. Then, in 1961, he was asked by Funakoshi to travel to Hawaii to introduce shotokan karate. He later brought the Japan Karate Association style to the United Kingdom, parts of Europe and Germany.

In 1977, Kanazawa left JKA and established the Shotokan Karatedo International Federation. Today there are more than 1.7 million active members, representing more than 100 countries.

"Other organizations will focus on competition or fitness or self-defense. His is very much a holistic approach," says Castellano. "If you have a competition-based organization, once someone is over their physical prime, they are not the best in the organization anymore. But he really is the best because of all he knows, practices and how much effort he puts throughout the world."

Kanazawa travels across the globe eight months out of the year to places such as New Zealand, Chile, Russia and Cambodia.

"You have to move your body in harmony with your heart and spirit in order to build character," Kanazawa tells the students.

For more information on the Satsuma Dojo classes held at the Columbia Neighborhood Center, call 408.523.8150.