Back Issues

EDITORIAL.

The interview in this edition features Nikos Afentoulis sensei 6th Dan JKA-WF based on the beautiful Greek island of Rhodes. It’s more than likely that some SKM subscribers, especially Europeans and British, have been on holiday there. It’s a magnificent place and what a great opportunity to train there if possible with a senior JKA instructor. Nikos sensei comes across as a very amicable, friendly man yet extremely serious about his dedication to Shotokan Karate-do. And what a pedigree he has, having trained with so many world famous JKA instructors past and present.

We have a wide variety of articles in this issue. Karate Historian Graham Noble has another ‘Chronicles of Shotokan’ this time focusing on the Kata of Gichin Funakoshi. Graham writes: From the mid-1920s, Funakoshi’s kata was still a form of Okinawan Shorin Ryu, Itosu style predominantly. The fifteen kata that Funakoshi brought to mainland Japan were shown in Funakoshi’s 1922 and 1925 books.

My article is hopefully a reminder for us to what were and still should be the basic (body movement) principles of Traditional Karate-do as taught by the late, great Hidetaka Nishiyama sensei. You don’t have to be a super-technical karateka or supreme karate athlete to be able to understand, perform and implement these body movement principles; e.g. Body-Vibration, Body-Rotation, Body-shifting, Body-pendulum, Bodyweight-rising and Bodyweight-dropping. It’s not complicated, apart from possibly the vibration principle.

A point I was recently reminded of and I knew was incorrect but I’ve sadly ignored, is that the words ‘sensei’ and ‘dojo’ don’t have an ‘s’ added in the plural. Also, the proper location for the word ‘sensei’ is after the person’s name and not before! Whether we think that these are important facts or not, is up to each individual.

I can easily relate to Albert Cheah’s brilliant piece, especially at my tender age.The SKM team of myself, Clare Worth and Graeme Armitage feel that Albert’s article is an absolute gem. I’m certain many older karateka will think exactly the same way. We can’t physically do many things we did 25/30 years ago but the main point is, that we are still training, by making adjustments, like shorter stances, lower kicks, focus on breathing technique, close-range realistic/practical self-defence applications and most importantly, working around and protecting long-term injuries. Bouncing around competition-style, apart from the cardio-fitness angle, seems a bit pointless!

Clive Young sensei clearly describes how karate training was done back in the day before safety issues came into play. This could be quite a shock for younger karateka, they probably wouldn’t believe it.

Martin Smith hopefully will inspire us to add training with Traditional weapons to our normal regime. It’s said that training weapons like Bo and Sai, takes tension out of the shoulders/arms and creates a more relaxed, general feeling in the techniques.

The final article by Iranian karateka Shapour Dehghanian has a thoughtful, philosophical, strong message, distinctly written by a serious Shotokan karateka.

Good Health, Good Training, Editor.