Internal Martial Arts
the
TAIKIKEN
pages
The Taikiken pages, a compact introduction of Taikiken and Kenichi Sawai's book -
The Essence of Kung Fu
& profiles of known and unknown martial artists who practice Taikiken.
2024
Discover the story of Sosai Masutatsu Oyama, founder of Kyokushinkai Karate. From a rebellious childhood to his rigorous training method, learn about his journey to success. Learn about the founder of Kyokushinkai Karate, Masutatsu Oyama, and his journey from a rebellious child to a rigorous training method.
Masutatsu Oyama was born in 1923 in Southern Korea, 300 km from Seoul. After a rebellious childhood, he starts his training with martial arts master who worked on his parent's property, but because of his rebellious and irreverent nature his father decides to sent him, at age 14, to the military academy Yamana-shi in Japan. It is here, in the period Japan was at war with China, in 1937, that he decides to learn Japanese and starts to train Karate. But these training's do not convince him. And he decides to leave for Tokyo to follow the teachings of the biggest masters, one of them Sensei Gichin Funakoshi. He reaches Nidan (2nd Dan) within 2 years, but abandons Shotokan Karate, because he does not agree with the work-outs, which he considers to be too rigid and linear.
In 1947 he wins the first 'All Japan Tournament,' held in Tokyo at the Karuyama Gymnasium, where all Karate-Do schools were united, providing the young Korean a unique opportunity to prove the efficiency of his training's. But it is an incident during a party in Tokyo, during the occupation of Japan by the Allied Forces, that Oyama kills a Japanese with one single blow, which decides the future of the 24-year-old Yondan (4th Dan), creating the conditions for his solitary retirement in the Kyosumi Mountains. Here he imposes self-discipline and a rigorous training method, using from the old Korean methods the leg work to which he also adds the Ashi Barai (crawler) and the attacks to the legs. He took inspiration from Goju Ryu for the respiratory work and the first techniques, and from Shotokan for the linear principles, he adds for the more advanced, the circular forms from his mentor, master Kenichi Sawai.
