C: Mike Burgess wanted me to ask you, as you get older, obviously some things you can’t do as well and you get injuries. I think the word he used was metaphysical. Are there other things about the spiritual or emotional part of you that makes up for the fact that you can’t do some of the physical? Maybe the knowledge that you have?

O: I think [with] a human being, everything [is] possible with how you think about what you do, even how much you get injured [in] your body. Still the mind can change; you can create energy to go through those difficulties. In karate it’s really important to have that idea. With that you can pretty much go through a difficult situation. So, even me, I thought I’m strong enough. I like kumite for competition; No not competition, but training with other students. When I arrived in France, I started karate again. After I spent four months in France I found finally a dojo, again [I was] training. I went there to the dojo three times. The third time when I was doing kumite, by accident I was fighting against a really tall guy and the tall guy was holding an arm in front of my head like that. So I enter to give punch (demonstrates a body shift going under extended arm). [Unfortunately] the corner of his little finger struck the corner of my head. My head goes backward and I got hernia.

C: A herniated disk?

O: Yes, when I got whiplash, suddenly I felt electricity going all through my arms.  But, in 3 seconds, I just shook my hand and it disappeared. I thought, ‘It’s okay.’ [Keep] fighting again. But after I finished the training, during two days I felt a weird tingling feeling in these two points here, so that never disappeared entirely in two days. I say, “That’s weird,” and decided to go see a doctor. I went to a hospital and they took x-rays and the doctor said, “You need surgery immediately. Otherwise you are going to have a problem with respiration.”

C: Breathing and everything, right?

O: Right. Okay.

C: Scary.

O: (nods) Uh huh. I changed my disk into the artificial disk.”

C: Oh, okay.

O: Surgery was okay, but during surgery I don’t know, during surgery or something else, I kept [getting a] tingling feeling or numbness in both arms and the left side of my body. After the surgery I couldn’t walk during three months. I could walk, but really slowly like a ninety or hundred year old man. I was really walking slowly. The doctor thought I could never come back to karate again. I believed in myself, inside, it’s okay it’s okay. Still I can do it. I can do it. So that my ideas made me [or] made my body change when I thought about it little by little.”

C: So you think that’s the most important thing; it’s just having the will to do it?

O: Yeah. Uh huh. Even the doctor.. [so many times the] doctor said, “Mr. Otsuka you should not move after the surgery.” But still I was training like (demonstrates slow hand movement and we both laugh) old man like really slowly like Tai Chi. I kept doing it.”

C: You were talking about relaxing. I think that’s one of the things that I’ve always admired anytime I watched you or your father when he was here.  Always the relaxation and trying to copy that, trying to get more relaxed, because I think Americans, especially, have a tendency to really be like boxers. We all do that to a certain extent and trying to relax more is one of the important things.

O: Yeah, that’s… the relaxation, I think, is relating to the whole body, physically. It’s not only to relax yourself mentally. If you can’t relax your body, you can’t relax yourself. So, the body itself also has to be flexible to be able to relax more. So, like that [what] I see is mostly Occidental people are pretty much stiff everywhere.” (Starts laughing loudly.)

C: Yes, yes, I know, it’s true. (We both laugh.)

We stop to speak with my son and husband when they come through the room. Roe Carter withdraws diplomatically,  and my son Bill stays to hear the remainder of the interview. We talk about how hard it is being the teacher’s son.

O

: Right now I have difficulty with my son, also.

C: Yes, I was wondering how that was going. (I explain to Bill) His son is 12 and he said he is a champion.

O: The kumite champion of France for his age and weight. They have different weight divisions for fighting.

C: For my newspaper….something that would appeal to the public….from the point of view of the public, how is our system different from the others?

O: Well, first the system of Wado Ryu did not originally come only from karate. That is because my grandfather start from jujitsu. After the Father of Karate he studied and then afterward he mixed jujitsu and karate. From that point also Wado Ryu is a little bit different from others. And my grandfather also taught not to use too much muscles to move your body. There’s another way to create energy. That’s all he wanted to teach, which is sometimes pretty similar to another style of martial arts.  Like, uh, especially swordsmanship of Japan. I never heard of any Samurai that did pushups, sit-ups, or muscle training. But, still, they could move very quickly against an opponent. That’s important to be able to react. Because what they trained was just one thousand times, just swing the katana, the sword. Morning, afternoon, night, that’s it. They were training. That creates more relaxed muscles than just see how much you can have muscles. So Wado Ryu is also the same. Try not to develop an amount of muscles. Try not to use too much muscle to move your body”

C: When you first were talking about your grandfather, I didn’t get whether you said that was his idea or what he learned from Funakoshi, about the relaxation.

O: My grandfather went to study under Founder Sensei but Founder Sensei was a specialist in kata. He knew the order of each movement of kata, but he didn’t study, or he didn’t know, or he didn’t want to teach, I don’t know, but when my grandfather asked what was the meaning of each movement he didn’t give any answer. So my grandfather wondered why kata has to move like this. Sometimes he went to visit another Okinawan sensei. Sometimes they could give some answer; mostly it was very difficult to find out. Finally, after [he broke away from Funakoshi Sensei] and created Wado Ryu, he joined the idea of jujitsu to kata. That’s when he found out this movement must be similar to applications from some technique of jujitsu. That was his job, to find the meaning of each kata.

C: That’s why we try to always know what we are doing in kata, not just go through the motions?

O: Yes, maybe so. Even for that reason Wado Ryu is a little bit different from other karate styles.”

 C: The body shifting or taisubaki seems to be different from other types of martial arts.  It’s more subtle.

 O: I don’t know subtle.”

 C: What’s another word for that?  Not as large a movement, just more (I motion with my hands.)

O: Minimum movement to be effective. Not only Wado Ryu, all sport is kind of the same. When you become professional, they use minimum force to move themselves. In sports they can find out when they become professional. On the other hand, in karate or martial arts, you have to study from the beginning, how you have to twist your hips or how to locate your center of body, which is never taught by any other sports. That is why karate is sometimes too difficult for some people. Like baseball, if you have a ball and two gloves, even if you don’t have any knowledge, still you can start to play. But with karate, without knowledge, "Let’s play karate’, to punch each other is very dangerous. That’s karate. It’s good to study from basic and also difficult for some people to study.

 [Studying] karate is something similar to life, normal life. In general, when you study some subject in school you don’t study from something very difficult. You always start [with the basics], then little by little step up and find out that you can [apply this]. Kata is a reflection of normal life.

C: Do you want to be teaching more than you are now?

 O: Right now I mostly concentrate on [doing the seminars on] the weekends. “

 C: You do that a lot?

 O: Right now I have a seminar about once or twice every month. The system of France is about two days, eight hours of seminars. Also I travel to England sometimes and other countries too.  Like Norway. Next year I am going to the Netherlands [and] after that, Germany.

C: My last question would just be why is karate important?  It is important in every aspect of your life, is it not?

 O: Yeah, especially in my family job. It’s in my blood, so whatever I do, I’m thinking like karate.  When you do a fight against someone, you have to read the opponent’s mind or there are many ways to feint a person or to try to attract the other person coming closer and then find some good timing to attack. Many things you can use for normal life. That’s always… when I do something I always [think], “[What] if I do [like] karate in this situation? In life, maybe it’s a similar timing of this technique.”  Like kata always!