10. Masutatsu Oyama (Mas Oyama) 1923 1994, Founder of Kyokushin Karate
The founder of Kyokushin
Karate, Masutatsu Oyama,
was born in 1923 near Seoul in South Korea. He studied Chinese Kempo at 9 years of age and when he was 12, he went to
Japan to live and enrolled at University. After mastering Judo, he became a
pupil of Gichin Funakoshi (the man who introduced
Karate to Japan from Okinawa in 1916). Funakoshi himself was making such rapid
progress that at 17 he was 2nd Dan and at 24 he became 4th Dan.
Deciding he would spend the rest of his life spreading
the knowledge of Karate, it is said that Mas Oyama spent the next year in seclusion from human society,
living in temples and in the mountains; subjecting himself to the physical
rigors of martial arts, training day and night and meditating on Zen precepts,
seeking enlightenment. In 1951 he returned to civilization and started his own
training hall in Tokyo. Many claim that Mas Oyama never actually entered into 'mountain training' and
that this was, in fact, a fabrication in order to attract positive publicity
following the creation of the Kyokushin style of
Karate.
In 1952, he travelled the United States for a year,
demonstrating his karate live and on national television. During subsequent
years, he took on all challengers, resulting in fights with 270 different
people. The vast majority of these were defeated with one punch! A fight never
lasted more than three minutes, and most rarely lasted more than a few seconds.
His fighting principle was simple - if he got through to you, that was it.
In 1953, Mas Oyama opened his first "Dojo", a grass lot in Mejiro in Tokyo. In 1956, the first real Dojo was opened in
a former ballet studio behind Rikkyo University, 500
meters from the location of the current Japanese Honbu
dojo (headquarters). By 1957 there were 700 members, despite the high drop-out
rate due to the harshness of training.
Sadly, Sosai Mas Oyama died of lung cancer (as
a non-smoker) at the age of 70 in April 1994. Many now claim to be the
rightful person in charge of the organisation
created by Mas Oyama. This
has had many political and economic ramifications throughout the Kyokushin world, which are still being resolved. The result
has been a splintering of the Kyokushinkai Kan, with
many groups claiming to be the one-and-only true heir of Mas
Oyama's Kyokushin, either
spiritually or even financially. It has even been suggested, not entirely in
jest, by one Kyokushin writer in Australia (Harry
Rogers) that maybe Oyama created the turmoil on
purpose, because he didn't want Kyokushin to survive
without him!