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(1923-1994)
Founder of Masutatsu Oyama's kyokushinkaikan Budo Karate .
THE STRONGEST KARATE
"The strongest Karate in the world" - that's how journalists named Kyokushin school after the First World Tournament held in 1975 by rather tough rules allowing full-contact strikes (excluding hand strikes in the head and kicks in the especially vulnerable body zones). Tough matches which were imposing highest requirements to the physical, technical and will training of athletes literally struck the world. And the documentary film that told in details about this epoch event in the Karate history and about training of strongest athletes from dozens of countries for participation in the Tournament became the real hit that vied with the best motion pictures of the day. Nobody was left untouched by the shocking knock-outs, imaginary breakings, fight of the American karateka Willy Williams with the bear, and, above all, by the uncrushable martial spirit of the Tournament participants. And the result was the tremendous popularity of Kyokushin all over the world. Presently, about 12 million persons in 140 countries engage in it. No other school of Karate is as popular as Kyokushin.
The huge interest to the Kyokushin School is connected in many respects with the figure of its founder Masutatsu Oyama (1923-1994).
When the child, he started his path in the martial arts from studying one of the Chinese styles of these arts. During the youth, Oyama got acquainted with judo. Afterwards, he was studying under leading masters of various Karate schools (Shotokan and Gojuryu) and mastering in Daito-ryu Aiki Jujutsu which became the foundation of modern Aikido. He was also profoundly studying Kodokan Judo. Terrific talent, will, perseverance, and fanatic commitment to the path chosen enabled Oyama to become one of the strongest young fighters of Japan just in a few years.
After the World War II, in order to wait through the troublous times Oyama settled in the Buddhist temple on Mount Minobu where he was training hard. Thanks to it, in 1947 he won the first post-war Japanese Karate Championship held in Kyoto.
In 1948, Oyama went to the mountains again. His new seclusion on Mount Kiyosumi lasted a year and a half. According to legends by the incredible number of which the Master's biography became surrounded already during his life, he lived there as an absolute hermit, did not associate with people, used forage crop for food, and fought with wild beasts. But in fact Oyama's solitude was not full; he was regularly coming back to civilization in order to collect money from his sponsor and letters from his Karate teacher So Nei Chu at the post-office, purchase foodstuffs, etc.
Upon his return to civilization in 1949, Oyama began organizing demonstration fights with the bulls for the purpose of Karate popularization. Altogether he conducted 52 fights with these animals, and killed three of them barehanded. Unusual "corridas" were broadly covered by mass media, and one film company even made a documentary about them. Thanks to it, Oyama's name became known throughout Japan and soon afterwards throughout the world.
In 1952-1953, Oyama as part of the group of professional fighters made a tour of the USA. During the tour, he performed mainly in the fight shows, but he also conducted several ultimate fights with American boxers and wrestlers and won all of them. His achievements and impressive Karate showings created a real furor and gave a very powerful incentive to the victorious progress of Karate throughout the continents.
Upon his homecoming in 1954, Oyama opened his first training hall, Oyama Dojo. It turned fast into the real Mecca of fighters from all over Japan who were anxious to master the art of real fighting and dissatisfied with restrictions existing in other schools. Oyama's students of that period formed the Kyokushin Hall of Fame and became the luminous Karate masters. A new style (in 1964 officially named Kyokushin Kaikan that stands for "The Society for the Ultimate Truth") sprouted up in their trainings and fights. And already during the next year, following huge inrush of Kyokushinkai practitioners the International Karate Organization (IKO) with headquarters in Tokyo was established.
Oyama saw the goal of Karate in the search for the Ultimate Truth on the way of martial arts, and that turned Kyokushinkai practice into a kind of religious ritual, yoga, and path of self-discovery. The Master was vigorously standing up for spiritual values of Budo Karate - Karate as the Path of self-discovery and self-improvement by practicing martial arts; and the Master set it against the lucrative incentive of Western (especially, professional) sports. He set the spirit of abnegation incident to Budo Karate against the spirit of self-assertion prevailing in the Western sports. Strengthening spiritual values of Budo and Bushido Oyama was tossing a challenge to the limits of human abilities and taking others with him by his personal example. His experience and skills found expression in the Kyokushin philosophy. Oyama dreamed of the Kyokushin world movement which he conceived as the union of searchers for the Ultimate Truth. He was fighting for acquisition of real martial spirit that would unite people regardless of skin color, nationality, religion and political opinion.
From 1969, when the First Open Karate Tournament of Japan was held, the athletic development of Kyokushin began. And the World Tournaments (held - similar to the Olympic Games - only one time every four years) count their history from 1975. Oyama conceived Karate tournaments in their deep substance as a kind of survival tests and a special type of spiritual martial practice. The Master conceived a dangerous fight as a martial ritual on the verge between life and death. Extreme conditions of full-contact combat imposed special requirements to the competitors' training. But they were also conductive to actualization of spare physical, technical and spiritual abilities of fighters. In a certain sense these were initial trials on the fighter's way.
Thanks to Oyama's remarkable individuality, efforts of his closest associates who made an enormous contribution to the support of image of Karate as the strongest martial art in the world, and also thanks to the large-scale promotional campaign, Kyokushinkai School became widespread. In course of time, the International Karate Organization turned into the complex organization which was getting harder and harder to manage. The more so as a great number of ambitious and talented leaders with different views of the IKO structure, principles of its activities and ways of development gathered in the School. At first, the problems have been settling by the withdrawal from the organization of particular instructors who were establishing their own schools; and right up to 1991, the single organization cultivating Kyokushinkai Karate in the world was the IKO. However, in 1991, Masutatsu Oyama brought into effect a new IKO Charter which, in particular, provided for the establishment of Japanese branches in all countries of the world, which (branches) had to be subordinated directly to the Tokyo Central Headquarters; and national federations were not virtually acknowledged. Not all IKO members could agree with such state of things since the organizational structure proposed was in contradiction with laws of their countries. As a result, in 1992, the International Federation of Karate (IFK) also cultivating Kyokushinkai and headed by the Oyama's closest student, the English Steve Arneil was created on the initiative of a number of national organizations which were not agree with the policy conducted by the Headquarters.
On the death of Masutatsu Oyama in 1994, the International Karate Organization headed by him split into a several organizations (IKO-1, President - Shokei Matsui; Shinkyokushinkai or IKO-2, President - Kenji Midori; International Kyokushinkan Karate-Do Organization, President - Hatsuo Royama; IKO-3, President - Yoshikazu Matsushima; IKO-4 or Tezuka Group, President - Toru Tezuka; Kyokushin Karate Seibukai, President - Yukio Nishida; Kyokushin Rengokai, President - Daigo Oishi; Kyokushin Budokai, President - Jon Bluming, etc.). The process of creation of new federations and unions still goes on.
Many Kyokushin Karate followers are very sore over the split of School, advocate its reunion on the foundation of Masutatsu Oyama's Budo Karate grand conceptions, and fight for the absolution of Kyokushin from hostility, envy and acquisitiveness introduced during the years of split. One of the youngest, but at the same time the most reputable Kyokushin organizations - International Kyokushinkan Karate-Do Organization - carries on the great amount of work for uniting sound forces
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