Monat: Oktober 2024

During my recent stay in Okinawa, I observed the Ryū’ei-ryū training led by Sakumoto sensei, which reminded me of stories about Yabu Kentsū’s karate. Yabu emphasized a balance of gentleness (lamb), agility (cat), and strength (tiger) in his teachings.

It is impossible to write a well-founded article without following in the footsteps of other authors who have already written on the topic, trying to gain new insights and then connecting these with previous knowledge. That is exactly what I did with my latest article.

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to the late Kinjô Hiroshi sensei and the late Yamauchi Seihin sensei, who wrote an article back in 1956, also discussing the figure of Yabiku Môtoku sensei, a person who is now relatively unknown even on Okinawa.

Further thanks goes to Chinen Yudi sensei (the grandson of Kokuba Seitoku), who shared the video of the 1951 demonstration on his YouTube channel in 2016. It was Motobu Naoki sensei who revisited the report by Kinjô Hiroshi sensei and Yamauchi Seihin sensei and connected it to the video published in 2016, documenting the demonstration. He was also able to establish contact with Yabiku Marcelo at that time.

I also owe a special thank you to Yabiku Marcelo, the great-grandson of Yabiku Môtoku sensei, who has always been willing to answer my numerous questions, sent me a copy of the demonstration, and provided me with 14 photos for my research.

The almost exclusive credit for the research in Hawai’i goes to Charles Goodin, who, as far as I know, spent countless hours in libraries, sifting through endless newspapers. Even more importantly, he spoke with the children of the demonstrators from that time and was able to gain significant insights. I discovered an error in one of the newspapers, which I corrected to create a clearer picture. I also extend my gratitude to the staff at the Hawaii Karate Museum, who allowed me to use four photos that Mr. Goodin had found, which are currently housed at the University of Hawaii.

From my newspaper research in Germany on German Jiu-Jitsu, I’ve learned that with enough searching, you can almost always find a program, report, or something similar for a demonstration. In this case, I was also able to find a program of the 1951 demonstration in São Paulo, which my wife and I translated after many hours of character search.

A special thanks goes to the BAB (Gekkan Hiden) publishing house, which allows us to publish our research findings. For this article, we took on the challenge of translating it into English and also publishing it in Portuguese for the first time. A huge thank you to Thomas Krekel for proofreading the English version, and an even greater thank you to Lucas Barboza for the wonderful Portuguese translation.

Thank you so much.

Without all the help, this article would not have turned out as well as it did.

I wish I could have expressed my gratitude to everyone directly in the article, but we were limited to just 6 pages in the magazine, even though we could have easily written 15. So, the only option left was to dedicate a few lines on my blog.

An in-depth exploration of the karate history of Yabu Kentsū necessitates working with Japanese primary sources and analyzing them in great detail. Only in this way can discrepancies be uncovered and corrected, even if they pertain to seemingly minor details. Otherwise, there is a risk that errors will be perpetuated or false information will be regarded as truth, which can significantly undermine historical accuracy.