Japanese trip for Bonniface

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32266, 8 April 1970, Page 13

Japanese trip for Bonniface

’TRAINING seven days a x week for three to four hours daily and living almost completely in the Japanese style will be the fare of J. W. Bonniface, a chief Instructor at the Christchurch International Judo Club, for at least the next 12 months. Bonniface left New Zealand yesterday to study at the Seibu-kan, a private school in Kyoto which teaches seven of the Japanese martial arts to some 30 foreign students together with local exponents. At the school, which is run by an eighth-dan karate instructor, Mr Matsufumi Suzuki, Bonniface will attempt to improve his gradings in jiu-jitsu (having a third grade, sixth degree black belt he is already one of the two highest in New Zealand). At present a first dan black belt, he will be seeking to improve to a second or third dan grading. His jiu-jitsu instructor could well be an 80-year-old sensei (teacher) who is one of the leading theoreticians and certainly the oldest in Japan. Bonniface will also be taught Goju-ryu style karate and aikido, an art which is little known outside Japan. “Aikido is not a sport but an art of self-defence,” Bonniface said. “It’s a new art somewhat similar to jiu-jitsu and it’s growing in popular-

ity. I think it will take on in New Zealand very soon,” he said. Bonniface explained that his main reason for making the trip, bis first to Japan, was to gain more experience in methods of instruction. He plans to use his increased knowledge to improve the standard of junior boys’ judo at the Christchurch International Club. Asked if it might be more advantageous to specialise in just one of the arts instead of attempting the four, Bonniface said that he had always concentrated on unarmed combat and jiu-jitsu. “Judo is an ideal side-line and I’ve never really trained seriously for it,” he said. However, he has been able to add the New Zealand light-weight title to his list of achievements in both 1967 and 1968. “I think a good all-round knowledge is far more beneficial and efficient (in selfdefence) than any one individual art,” he concluded. The unarmed combat and jiu-jitsu section of Christchurch International will be handled by C. McDonald, who was recently promoted to a first grade, sixth degree black belt in jiu-jitsu, during Bonniface’s absence. Bonniface will remain at the Seibu-kan for as long as he can obtain visa extensions, living as his Japanese fellow students do.