KARATE DÕ
MY WAY OF LIFE
GICHIN FUNAKOSHI
Many of us have heard of standing on the roof on Okinawa
in a typhoon and standing in horse stance working at maintaining the stance in the
winds.
Here in Funakoshi Sensei’s own words is likely a source
of many of those stories.
TRAINING FOR LIFE
Against a Typhoon
Perhaps it would be more modest to let
another person describe one’s youthful feats
than to do so oneself. But resolutely swallowing my sense of shame, I shall
here quote the words of Yukio Togawa, the author,taking no responsibility for
them beyond assuring my readers that the incident described is a
true one. The reader may see a touch of madness, but I have no regrets.
“The sky above,” writes Mt Togawa, “was black, and out of it there came
a howling wind that laid waste to whatever stood in its paths. Huge branches were torn like twigs from great trees, and dust and pebbles flew
through the air, stinging a man’s
face.
“Okinawa is known as the island of typhoons, and the
ferocity of its tropical storms
defies description. To withstand the onslaught of the winds that
devastated the island regularly every year during the storm season. The houses
of Okinawa stand low and are built as
sturdily as possible; they are surrounded by
high stonewalls,
and the slate tiles on the roofs are
secured by mortar. But the winds are so tremendous (sometimes attaining a
velocity of one hundred miles per
hour) that despite all precautions the house shiver and tremble.
“During one particular typhoon that I remember, all the people of Shuri huddled
together within their homes, praying
for the typhoon to pass without wreaking any great damage. No, I was wrong when
I said all the people of Shuri huddled at home; there was one young man, up
on the roof of his house in Yamakawa-chõ, who was determinedly battling the typhoon.
“Anyone observing this solitary figure would surely have concluded that he had
lost his wits. Wearing only a
loincloth, he stood on the slippery
tiles of the roof and held in both hands,
as though to protect him, from the howling wind, a tatami mat. He must
have fallen if the roof to the ground
time an again, for his nearly naked
body was smeared all over with mud.
“The young man
seemed
to be about twenty years old, or perhaps even younger. He was of small
stature, hardly more than five feet
tall, but his shoulders were huge and his biceps bulged. His hair
was dressed like that of a small sumõ wrestler, with a topknot and small silver pin, indicating that he belonged to the shizoku.
“But all this is of little importance. What mattes is the expression on his face: wide eyes glittering with a strange light, a wide brow,
copper red skin. Clenching his teeth as the wind tore at him, he gave of
an aura of tremendous power. One might
have said he was one of the guardian Deva kings.
“Now the young man
on the roof assumed a low posture holding the straw man aloft against wind. The stance he took
was most impressive, for he stood as if astride a horse. Indeed, anyone who
knew karate could readily have seen that the youth was taking the horse riding stance, the most stable of all karate stances, and that
he was making use of the howling typhoon to refine his technique and to
further strengthen both body and mind. The wind struck the mat
and the youth with full force, but he stood his ground and did not flinch.”
Now I have looked for a while but I can find
no photos of anyone on a roof in Okinawa in a typhoon. In fact no one seems to stand
outside in typhoons taking photos of their houses.
I believe I know why.
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