Hard time for Chch karate exponents

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33938, 3 September 1975, Page 34

Hard time for Chch karate exponents

Nine members of a Christchurch group were attacked by a Japanese wielding a 6in x 2in piece of wood and a bamboo sword during a fiveweek stay in one of the rougher areas of New York recently.

But no charges were pressed. The assaults were an integral part of the intensive training course a team from the Mas Oyama karate club completed under Tadishi Nakamura, a sixth dan black belt, and Kishi, a fourth dan.

Nakamura, one of the world’s leading karate exponents, smashed the trainees across the shins with the sword and battered at their fists with the piece of wood until they swelled. Nakamura recently broke two concrete slabs across his own shins. Renzie Hanham, the club’s head instructor who returned with the group on Sunday, said that the course had been a great success and plans were already being made to repeat the exercise next year. The team started the course at a relatively slow pace — only one training session a day — because of the need to recuperate after the long air trip and the difficulties of adjusting from a bleak Christchurch winter to a New York heatwave, but from the second week it had two or even three sessions of up to two hours each day. i

The New Zealanders were training with members of the American team to compete in Master Oyama’s first world open tournament in November, and most of their black belts were negroes — some very big specimens, said Mr Hanham. AMERICANS Two of the top American exponents, Claude Battel and Charles Martin, were more than 6ft and weighed around

1951 b, but both are in their thirties and are no longer so concerned with competing. The top competitor at the training sessions was a 22-year-old, William Oliver. Oliver weighs 'only about 1301 b but is very fast and one of the leading karate exponents on the United States East Coast, said Mr Hanham.

Mr Hanham said that his team compared quite favourably with the others doing the course, and his opinion is partly substantiated by the American gesture of

presenting them with a large trophy “for outstanding achievement” at the conclusion. “We learnt a lot of new things — new teaching methods and combination techniques, and sharpened up in general. Particularly interesting was the different system of fighting or sparring employed. “No grappling or blows to the head with the hands were allowed. The reason was that they feel that hitting someone in the head is easy and a harder punch is produced if a blow lands in the less accessible, protected area of the body. “Another good reason was that blows to the head cause a lot of black eyes and broken noses and would make it very difficult to recover between training sessions,” said Mr Hanham. FILM SHOWN During the course a feature film, which will have world-wide distribution was made, and shots of the New Zealanders training were included. “A measure of the esteem in which Nakamura is held is shown by a guy from Trinidad who changed his style to train under him and another who spent seven hours travelling once a w r eek to make training sessions.” The team went to some clinics run entirely for black belts; at one instructors from as far away as Chicago and Alabama took part, and at another an impressive line-up of 43 black belts attended.