The Potential of Kyokushin Karate and Its Future Direction
Kyokushin Karate has played a major role in the history of modern Japanese budo.
Its approach of facing an opponent directly, exchanging techniques, and forging both body and mind through actual practice has had a profound influence on many practitioners. Rather than merely learning formal movements, practitioners confront their own weakness and fear through kumite, where techniques are actually exchanged, and in doing so develop both physical and mental strength. This system of training still contains values that should not be lost today.
I myself have trained in Kyokushin Karate for many years and have learned a great deal from it.
Therefore, my intention is not to reject Kyokushin Karate.
On the contrary, precisely because I have practiced it for so long, I have come to recognize both the value of Kyokushin Karate and certain areas that are difficult to explore fully through its competitive system alone.
Competitive Rationality and the Principles of Budo
In the form of Kyokushin kumite widely practiced today, hand strikes to the face are, as a general rule, not permitted.
There are reasons for this rule, including considerations of safety and competition, as well as the historical process through which Kyokushin has developed.
At the same time, however, as this competitive format has become firmly established, I have come to feel that a gap has gradually emerged between techniques optimized for winning under a particular set of rules and the broader principles required under more comprehensive martial conditions.
For example, when punches to the face are absent, the need to protect the face becomes relatively less important.
As a result, certain methods of fighting may become competitively rational: moving forward while accepting some attacks, increasing the number of techniques thrown, prioritizing offensive volume over defense, or choosing to exchange blows and damage the opponent rather than fully avoiding the opponent’s attacks.
These are, of course, legitimate competitive skills within that context.
From the standpoint of martial practice, however, unnecessarily receiving an opponent’s attack should fundamentally be avoided.
Even if one can physically withstand a particular strike, the same approach may no longer be viable if that attack is replaced by a more dangerous weapon or occurs under more hazardous conditions.
One must measure the distance, perceive the initiation of the opponent’s attack, control the decisive moment, respond appropriately to the opponent’s technique, disrupt the opponent’s center, and establish one’s own technique while minimizing unnecessary danger.
This involves a technical system that differs from simple physical strength or sheer offensive volume.
I refer to these underlying principles as riho—the principles by which technique functions.
The Meaning of Face Attacks
It should be made clear that allowing attacks to the face does not automatically make a practice more martial.
Nor is attacking the face itself the objective.
What is important is that when attacks to the face are present, it becomes much more difficult to ignore such elements as distance, defense, timing, anticipation, response, and the center line.
Training conditions are created in which techniques are less likely to succeed if one simply advances while carelessly receiving the opponent’s attacks.
In other words, when attacks to the face are present, practitioners are naturally compelled to consider how to manage distance, how to maintain their own center line, how to recognize the right moment to attack, how to respond to the opponent’s techniques, and how to control the opponent’s center.
The essential purpose of training that includes attacks to the face is therefore not to make training more dangerous.
Rather, it is to enable practitioners, through training, to naturally experience that technique is difficult to establish without taking riho into account.
There Is No Need to Abandon Kyokushin Karate
Even so, there is no need to discard the training methods that Kyokushin Karate has developed over many years.
Kyokushin possesses valuable qualities that are not easily found in other systems.
The physical resilience to withstand powerful strikes.
The mental strength not to retreat in front of an opponent.
The perseverance to keep moving under difficult conditions.
The experience of discovering one’s own weakness through kumite that involves real physical impact.
These are extremely valuable assets.
The problem arises only when we begin to believe that these qualities alone represent the entirety of budo.
As practitioners continue training over many years, I believe each person eventually encounters deeper questions. The nature of those questions, and the answers one arrives at, may differ from person to person.
In my own case, one of those questions was:
How can one completely read and perceive an opponent’s technique?
I have not yet arrived at the answer.
But in searching for it, I began to ask further questions.
How can one control the opponent’s force rather than simply collide with it head-on?
How can one understand the very conditions under which a technique becomes effective, beyond the simple question of winning or losing?
I have also come to think that technique itself may have limits.
At the same time, when a person acquires the power to defeat another, how should that power be controlled?
And how should what one has cultivated through budo be applied to one’s life?
I believe that continuing to examine such questions reveals one of the great possibilities of budo.
Not the Possibility of “Continuing as We Are,” but the Possibility of “Opening Further”
I have long believed that Kyokushin Karate contains great potential.
More precisely, however, that potential does not mean that the present competitive system will naturally evolve into a new form of budo simply by continuing unchanged.
Rather, the potential lies in taking what Kyokushin Karate has already cultivated as a foundation, accurately recognizing those areas that are difficult to learn through the competitive system alone, supplementing what is lacking, and further deepening the training system as budo.
In other words:
We do not abandon Kyokushin.
We take what we have learned from Kyokushin and open it further.
This is not rejection.
It is succession.
True succession does not mean preserving outward forms exactly as they are.
To understand the value of what we have inherited, preserve its spirit, and deepen it further according to changing times and purposes—this too is a form of succession.
I have no intention of denying what Kyokushin Karate has given me.
On the contrary, I want to make fuller use of it.
That is precisely why I have come to believe that, while retaining the strengths of Kyokushin Karate as a foundation, we also need forms of training that allow us to study more clearly such martial concepts as distance, timing, response, the center line, and riho.
Bringing Budo into Life
The value of budo does not lie only in winning matches.
Nor does it lie merely in acquiring powerful techniques.
It lies in learning to understand one’s own body, understand the opponent, understand the situation, and control oneself.
It also lies in learning how one’s own power should be used.
Only when such learning is included can budo truly become something that is applied to life.
I believe that we must not lose the strength and resilience that Kyokushin Karate has given to so many people.
At the same time, however, while preserving that strength as a foundation, we must continue studying martial elements such as distance, timing, response, the center, and riho.
Through this, we can deepen both our technique and our mind.
And we must continue asking how the power cultivated through budo should be controlled and how it should be applied in our lives.
I believe that continuing to ask these questions reveals the great potential of both Kyokushin Karate and budo itself.
In short, the path I seek is not a path that rejects Kyokushin Karate.
It is a path that values what Kyokushin Karate has given us, uses it as a foundation, and opens still greater possibilities for budo.
We do not abandon Kyokushin.
We take what we have learned from Kyokushin and open it further.
Open the mind, and open the possibilities of budo.
This is the exploration I intend to continue.
