The Asai Branch of Shotokan.....Diversity, Ego and issues....and some solid leadership!

               Early on Shotokan was made up of essentially two smaller groups set up in the university system and a small group of senior professional instructor. It would not stay this direct and small for long. The style BLEW up and dozens of off shoots were formed and continue to form little off shoots for years to come. Groups sloughed off of the main body as issues, personality clashes or just old fashioned money arguments started to pile up and people through the hands up in frustration or the larger groups would send them the “Dear John” letters alerting them to the fact that they were no longer welcome in the family.

               Some left for more freedom, some left to rule their own fiefdoms, some left because they did not get along and others left because they lacked patience or just plan were feeling like they deserved more. Right or wrong the splits began with little chunks of groups, single masters and clubs moving over and the once clean and clear organization became a sea of new organizations, practitioners getting more attention and then seeking to form their own groups.

                

               Essentially you have two main branches that form the Shotokan lineage or tree, the JKA and the ShotoKai. Again, I have spoken at length about the Shotokai and The main body of the JKA and I don’t want to rehash that here. The JKA branch however is very interesting as it intersects with a lot of sub branches and groups that can look back and say they were formed off the JKA branches.  

               The JKA wing or branches origin falls under Masatoshi Nakayama and Isao Obata Sensei’s as the leadership, creators or founders of the JKA. Yes Obata left and came back and then left again but his money helped make the JKA and he deserves recognition as one of the founding fathers of Shotokan Karate as a JKA entity.

From Masatoshi Nakayama Sensei however we see a vast degree of changes and separations that create a flowing branch with off shoots like crazy. At some point it’s important to note that Kanazawa was the first real senior or “Big name” star to leave the JKA and his departure was because of a change in his thinking, training and system he taught (well that’s part of it). He also wanted financial separation from the JKA so he could make a living and also he felt he was advanced enough to make his own way. Details of that are for another time however.

               Many small off shoots appeared and have split away from the JKA over the years, mostly ego, money and power issues caused the split, but the biggest split, one that formed  a huge separation was the split with the Asai group, made up of many JKA seniors. The initial split formed two sides, the JKA and Asai side, but what happened later is more interesting. Now I know I have gone over this split before, but its important to rehash a few details here to point out a interesting bit of info that I fell upon a while back and just decided to clarify recently.

               In 1987 the split occurred and both sides went to war, by 1999 the courts had finally and completely sided with the Nakahara run JKA and expelled all the Asai side members. The repercussions of this were far reaching, but I don’t want to actually look at the JKA at this point. I want to go and check out the Asai group.

               While the court battle was going on the Asai group was super close knit, they were strong and they taught a brutally traditional system of Karate, Asai holding close to the most detailed traditional system he could as he wanted to following Nakayamas path and then veer slightly when he could. The court ruling however allowed him to pull off his gloves and make changes to the training as he wanted to, he began showing his own ideas and creating an “Asai Karate” system that he had previously not demonstrated openly. He had researched Chinese styles and had implemented some Kata changes previously but it was when he realized he was not going to be the next JKA chief instructor that the changes started coming fast and furious.

               Abe and Yahara split to form their own groups shortly after the court battle saw them “no longer JKA”. Abe formed his JSKA to keep super traditional and honor his instructor and Yahara formed his KWF to also go back to a more Budo style art that he could put his own personal stamp on. However the whole point of this blog is to look at what Asai did after finding himself on a splinter group side and no longer the leader of a JKA group.

               When Asai Sensei lost the court battle he formed the JKS or Japan Karate Shotorenmei as well as the International Japan Karate do Association or IJKA. The JKS was a Japanese based group that began to teach the altered system of Asai Sensei and allowed him to experiment and develop his system. Asai went about creating many new Kata and introduced them to the students. The result was a style very unique and different than JKA style Karate with roots in the Japanese art but with a great deal of personal changes that he implemented after studying White Crane Kung fu.

The JKS became the Japan arm of Asai’s teaching and much of his mainstream changes began with this group. He began introducing different kata and movement drills to reflect changes he was making. His students who had trained with him in the JKA Matsuno faction mostly moved to this group when he lost in court. The changes in syllabus and curriculum soon put the JKS membership at odds with each other and members like Yahara, Abe and others left.  

               After Asai Sensei passed away the organization was headed by Kagawa Sensei, a man whom had a great tournament record and was perhaps more JKA than he was in line with the New Asai Karate. The JKS began to change and move away from the change that the former founder had put in place and move back towards solid traditional JKA style Karate but they do maintain some of the changes and the alterations that Asai Sensei had put into play, they just temper them a bit with more traditional Shotokan ideals and movement patterns. 

               Along with the JKS the IJKA was being run by Asai as his European branch. The main instructor was Kato Sensei, who unlike Kagawa moved a great deal like Asai did and the changes became second nature. The IJKA is probably the closest to the changes that Asai wanted to put into effect of the two groups. Flowing, relaxed and more Chinese than the JKS version of the changes the differences between the two are striking when you see seniors practice side by side. However watching their Kata demonstrations and Kato showing the proper form, you can still see a great deal of Nakayama Sensei’s Karate influence.

               My impressions of the different movement skills of Kagawa, Kato and seniors from these groups, the focus of the groups was similar, to spread the teachings that they were introduced to by Asai Sensei. The JKS was based in Japan and had a great deal of hype about being “The Asai” Sensei group. However the IJKA was heavily represented in Europe, with a headquarters in the UK.  The JKS has stretched out to some of the world, but the IJKA seems to have started in Europe after Asai passed away.

               Now all this back ground has taken me to this point in talking about Asai Sensei and his legacy. Other than the two “Official” or “Original” Groups of Asai style Karate (and the many little off shoots like WTKO and others) there are now two new groups set up to represent Asai Karate and they are very much different from each other.

               Upon Asai Sensei’s passing his wife was sort of out of the Karate world for a bit, she had never really had much to do with Karate or running the organization before this as well. The seniors did not really see her as having a place in the JKS or IJKA as she was not a Karate practitioner. However as the wife of their late master she still was afforded a great deal of respect, and a lot of students would contact her and stop by her home to pay respect to Asai at the little temple they had in the house. However she was not part of a board, she was not, obviously, part of a senior council and I think this began to cause her distress. She felt that she had inherited a right to the Karate system, or at least a piece of the political pie.

               The JKS was run by Kagawa and Kato ran the IJKA and did not need her being involved, which probably would have only lead to issues. However she did keep tabs on them and at some point she decided she needed to “Protect Asai Karate” and establish an organization to safeguard the memory of her late husband. At first she approached a few people to assist her in setting up the group, but shortly after it was established a few things became very clear and those who had helped her set up this group left. One of the first things that came to light was her assertions that Asai sensei “would have done it this way” and using her late husband’s name to make some very strange decisions.

               One of the decisions she made was to hijack the IJKA name that Kato had been running for years.  She had fought with Kata publicly and did not take well to his standing his ground to her. One of the people helping her to set up the organization had warned her that the use of the name could lead to issues, to which she ignored the suggestion and bullied forwards.

                The second and biggest issue that she created was that she put her brother in charge as the Nidaime Shuseki Shihan or second generation head of the style. Who cares if her brother never studied Asai Karate and was a kung fu student who had limited interaction with Asai Sensei and his Karate. Today the IJKA is an organization basically in Taiwan and has not grown much aside from a sprinkling of Dojos in Europe and other Asian areas.

               It became very obvious that Mrs. Asai would attack anyone she felt would hinder her progress, as extremely limited as it is. She posts on their web page the dirty laundry most would not post and she attacks people who had been loyal to Asai Sensei very publicly. A spat with one of Asai Senseis students was posted on the web site and a picture that is obviously of Andre Bertal appears where she says that the certificate he holds is not a real Asai certificate.

               Mrs. Asai also is prominent on the web page as she posts her ideas of Bushido and other things, which as she is a non-practitioner of Karate makes it all the more interesting.

               No other group I have seen does  the kinds of things that the IJKA out of Taiwan does, but that stands to reason as they are not really high level Karate people and don’t have the depth of training or knowledge most have. Its unheard of for groups to air dirty laundry like this….but damn if it aint entertaining.       

               The Mrs. Asai lead IJKA group created a conflict internally by not actually focusing on Asai Karate, letting to much drama run the show and this lead to several people leaving the group to form their own groups. One such separation created the ASAI or Asai Shotokan Association International. The group was formed by Yokota Kousaku, a former JKA member who worked with Okizaki Sensei of the ISKF and had moved to the JKS before being a founding member of Mrs. Asai’s IJKA.

The ASAI group teaches 26 of Asai Sensei’s additional Kata as well as a solid JKA based curriculum. The group was forged out of Yokota Sensei’s trying to help Mrs. Asai set up the organization that was supposed to be dedicated to continuing teaching her late spouses system of Karate. To say that did not work out very well is a understatement. One of Mrs. Asai’s personal attacks on her web site is dedicated to Mr. Yokota. Having read both her site and his sites rebuttal I can say that he puts forward a much better argument and is much more respectful than she is…..but go read both for yourself.

The very public spat that came about when he left did not look good for Mrs. Asai and ended up creating a new group she has zero control over. In the end Yokota’s Asai Karate organization has become much more prevalent and has a much better growth curve than the IJKA-Mrs. Asai group. And as part of the full disclosure of this blog, I have been in contact with Mr.Yokota about his group and he is super open and wants to share his organizations goals and how he is running it with an open door policy and no hidden agenda.

After Asai Sensei passed away he, much like his mentor Nakayama Sensei, did not really leave one single person to continue in his quest. Asai Sensei and his Karate are perpetuated by qualified instructors like Yokota, Kagawa and Kato Sensei and their many followers, while I remain JKA I respect the fact that Asai Sensei had some different ideas that may very well be worth looking into and these men openly teach and train in the system that he generated and perpetuated, unlike instructors like Chen Hontsung and his sister these men will honor Asai and his traditions and create an open door for people to continue training and growing in Karate.