Choki Motobu, Boxing, and Jen Kentel - 1 (B)

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By Graham Noble

“Kingu” was a magazine published by Seiji Noma, the founder of Kodansha. Its first edition was in January 1925 and its circulation soon passed a million. That made it probably the largest Japanese general interest magazine of the time, so the article was great exposure for karate, which had only been introduced from Okinawa three years earlier and was still hardly known in Japan. But . . . the magazine made a bad mistake by confusing the two Okinawans who were then teaching karate in Japan - Choki Motobu and Gichin Funakoshi – and using illustrations which had been drawn as if it had been Funakoshi, and not Motobu, who had beaten the boxer. When I met Motobu’s son Chosei and his senior student Takeji Inaba in London in 1998 I asked what his father had thought about that mistake: had he been angry? Inaba replied that he had spoken to Choki Motobu’s daughter about this and she had told him that Choki had not just been angry, but “super angry.” The mistake is difficult to understand because the article itself contained photographs of both Motobu and Funakoshi.

What probably also annoyed Motobu was the reference to the posture of Pinan Yodan, which was illustrated by a drawing of Funakoshi in his characteristic Pinan Yodan opening position, with the arms drawn up by the head, forming a rectangle. The artist had drawn this from the photograph of the kata in Funakoshi’s 1925 book ‘Rentan Goshin karate Jutsu.’ Presumably this was used because of a lack of other source material – as fortune would have it, Motobu’s own book on kumite wouldn’t be published for another year – and because the pose looked sufficiently “karateish” for the people reading the article. But in fact Choki Motobu probably didn’t like the Pinan forms and didn’t practise or teach them, so this was a serious misrepresentation of his karate.

There was a kind of historical context to the match. The article refers to a series of boxer vs. judoka contests which were taking place in Kyoto; and mixed-style matches between judoka and boxers were not uncommon in Japan in the early part of the last century. Joe Svinth, for example, sent me reports of such contests from “The Japan Times” dated 1913, 1923, 1924, and 1925, which indicated that this form of mixed contest had a fair run, and “Revue Judo Kodokan” of July 1952 noted that “The Budokwai Bulletin informs us that before World War 2 mixed judo – boxing contests were frequent at Kyoto. A system of points had been worked out: every time the boxer hit the judoka he (the boxer) gained a point and every time the judoka threw the boxer he (the judoka) gained a point. Of course in this way the chances were equal and the visiting boxers won as often as the judokas did . . . it must be admitted.”

The veteran English judoka E. J. Harrison also referred to such matches in his classic “The Fighting Spirit of Japan”, mentioning that he himself had been involved in arranging two contests while he was working as editor of” The Japan Advertiser” in Yokohama. The boxers were sailors from British and American ships and the outcome of the matches was even – The British boxer was thrown all over the place by his Japanese opponent while in the other match the American, a “killer” type according to Harrison, gave the judoman such a beating that the match was stopped in the second round.

Harrison wrote that sometime after this a warning came down from the Kodokan and Jigoro Kano himself that “any member of the Kodokan found guilty of participating directly or indirectly in further degrading practices of this kind would be summarily expelled,” yet the memory of such matches remained and they formed an important part of Tsuneo Tomita’s 1948 novel “Sugata Sanshiro”, which was based loosely on the early days of judo, on Kano and his famous pupil Shiro Saigo. In the novel the hero Sugata is challenged by Lister, a 6 foot tall, twenty-odd year old German boxing champion who is visiting Japan. After initially refusing the challenge because the rules of the Kodokan forbid it, Sugata does eventually meet Lister in the ring before a packed house, manages to defeat him with the yama-arashi throw, and throws the 1,000 yen prize money on his body. Earlier, Sugata has seen Lister face a ju-jutsu man called Kanro who is confident he will be able to grab the boxer and strangle him. Lister, however, has good footwork and Kanro is unable to avoid his rapid punches and takes a bad beating. Soon, “Kanro received one last blow on the chin and collapsed backward onto the mat. There he remained motionless. His bloody face no longer resembled that of a human being. The fight had lasted three minutes.”

The boxers often won in real life too, although with this kind of contest there is always the possibility that the result of the match was prearranged, and it is impossible now to judge the real abilities of those taking part.

There used to be a genre of story in which a giant westerner, often a strongman, and frequently a Russian for some reason, is beaten by the smaller Asian martial arts master. This features not only in the literature of Japanese budo but also in Chinese martial arts and in stories about such masters as Huo Yuan-chia, Sun Lu-tang and Wang Tzu Ping. And of course it is also a common theme in modern kung -u films, notably in Bruce Lee’s “Fist of Fury,” where Lee’s character defeats a foreign strongman. So in knocking out the western boxer Choki Motobu also played out one of the traditional roles of the Oriental master of martial arts.

The “Kingu” article was not a fight report; it was an imaginative feature written about something that had happened three years or so before and so it can’t be relied upon for factual details. It is hard to know how the article came to be written, or who the author talked to. Although he may have spoken to an eyewitness, or perhaps Motobu himself, it’s a little hard to believe that the author himself had been an eyewitness because of innacuracies such as “the posture of Pinan Yodan” etc.

In fact, there are no contemporary reports of the contest. Junichi Ikemoto, in an article he wrote for the Japanese magazine “Hiden” (May 2018) quoted from a brief paragraph in the Okinawan “Asahi Shinbun” newspaper of June 27, 1925:

“Motobu faced the Russian boxer in Kyoto-city, and connected his powerful strike to the back of the boxer's neck. The tough boxer was badly hurt. He did not appear to have control of his legs and surrendered immediately. The boxer seemed have suffered permanent damage to the back of his neck.”

Interestingly, that appeared a little while before the “Kingu” article, and so it seems to be the earliest reference we have, but it was still three years or so after the event and may have been based on second- or third-hand information.

In any case, the ”Kingu” article was soon pretty much forgotten, and that allowed other versions of the contest to arise over time, maybe quite quickly, actually. Joe swift once printed several short translations from “Okinawan oral traditions on line” which included some karate content. This was one example, from a male of Ginoza village, born in 1915, (recorded in 1982):

“Motobu-Zaru – Motobu the Monkey was short, but he was a Bushi. Once he fought with a large American man. I don’t know where this took place, but anyway, it’s the story I heard.

“Like modern boxing matches, spectator fees were charged. The difference in height between Motobu the Monkey and the American man was like heaven and earth, like a parent and child. Motobu the Monkey only weighed in at about 42 kg. The American was apparently very tall. I don’t know if this fight took place in mainland Japan or in Okinawa, but anyway, the story I heard was that there was indeed a match. The spectators formed a wall around them and nervously watched the proceedings. Motobu the Monkey was very light on his feet, and he jumped up at his opponent’s neck, wrapped both legs around his neck and won. He wrapped his legs around the man’s throat and told him, ‘I’ll decapitate you!’ It is said that the American surrendered and thus lost the match.”

Well, this is a memory trace of something, transmitted at third hand and distorted along the way. If the villager’s account was correctly recorded then, in contrast to the other supposed memories of Motobu as a giant, and presumably to exaggerate the size difference to his opponent, he is described here as a small man weighing just 42 kilograms: 42 kilograms is 92 pounds so in this account he weighed even less than the famous “7 stone (98 pound) weakling” in those old Charles Atlas adverts, the one who had sand kicked in his face by the beach. Such stories illustrate the frequent total unreliability of early karate history.

Some years ago (1980s) when I spoke to Mitsusuke Harada (Shotokai) he said that back in Japan he had talked to an old man who had once seen a contest between a karateka and a western boxer. The karateka had stood in a relaxed kamae and then as the boxer attacked had kicked him in the mid-section before knocking him out with a punch. At that time the young Harada hadn’t heard about Choki Motobu, so he thought the karateka must have been Gichin Funakoshi, who he thought had been the only Okinawan teaching karate in Japan at that time. Later of course he realised that the karateman could have been Motobu, and he may have been listening to an eyewitness account of his match with the boxer in Kyoto. The 1977 Ryukyu Imports reprint of Motobu’s 1926 book on kumite included a brief foreword which stated that Motobu’s opponent had been a Russian fighter who had issued an open challenge after he had beaten all his Japanese opponents. In this version of the events too, Motobu kicked the Russian in the solar plexus with a front kick and then when he doubled up, hit him in the neck below the ears. The foreword also stated that that “The Russian died off of Japanese soil.” The information on the match, it said, came from Seiyu Oyata, who had heard it from old masters Nakamura and Uehara: Shigeru Nakamura and Seikichi Uehara presumably.

The Okinawan Shorin Ryu teacher Eizo Shimabuku wrote a book about karate masters in 1964 and included a chapter on Choki Motobu and the boxer. In this account the contest took place around 1921 when Motobu was working in a factory in Osaka. According to Shimabuku, the contest was held not in Kyoto, but in Tokyo, where Motobu and his friend Yamaguchi had gone to watch university boxing contests. When they were in the boxing arena a foreign boxer, a German called John Nicholaiski, stood up and challenged any Japanese. The winning university team accepted the challenge but in the ensuing contests they were all knocked out by Nicholaiski, one after another.

Yamaguchi asked Choki Motobu if there was anyone in Okinawa strong enough to defeat the German and Motobu said that there were maybe five or six, an answer which Yamaguchi doubted. Motobu then said he would fight Nicholaiski himself. He stood up and announced that he would accept the challenge. He was given a judogi to fight in. During the first round he was on the defensive, fending off the boxer’s fists. In the second round Nicholaiski became overzealous and by the third round his arms had grown tired and his punches weak. He swung a punch and ”in a flash Choki, going round behind him, laid him down flat with both feet, and without a moment’s delay, took him around the neck. At that point, the referee declared the match over and raised Choki’s arm. . . . It is recorded that NIcholaiski died soon after having returned to his home.”

Shimabuku added that “It is also recorded that someone named John Nicholaiski visited Okinawa sometime after 1921 but it has not been made clear whether it was the same man or a different man with the same name.

“According to what is recorded, Nicholaiski, either before he went to Tokyo in 1921 or on his way back home, stayed in Okinawa for about a month, and going around to different schools, studied about karate.

“To this day there are stories that during that time he tied a rope to a car and pulled it with his teeth; he wrapped a steel bar around his wrist, and he pounded a five inch nail into a piece of wood and pulled it out again. However, even a boxing champion like himself was no opponent for karate. Therefore, it is easy to understand how frightening Okinawan karate can be and how valuable training in karate is.”

It’s hard to fully believe that story but at the same time you wonder where it could have come from: it seemed to be an old memory trace of something. It also demonstrated a curious idea of boxing: professional boxers do not bend steel bars or pound nails into wood with their hands, rather these were feats popular with stage strong men, particularly in the 1920s. (Seigmund Breitbart and Alexander Zass, for example. Zass is actually on You Tube showing such feats).

When Richard Kim wrote “Weaponless Warriors” (1974), his own book on the old karate masters, he appears to have copied large chunks from Shimabuku’s work, including the chapter on Choki Motobu. He largely followed Shimabuku’s account of Motobu’s match with the boxer, including the Tokyo location and Motobu’s friend Yamaguchi, but he stated that the contests which were taking place in Tokyo were between boxers and judomen. Kim also added an imaginary conversation in which Yamaguchi reads in a newspaper that “This heavyweight fighter has never been beaten in Europe. He is the German Champion and when he feels the time is right he intends to visit America to take the title there. . . He has flattened every judo challenger so far.”

In his account of the fight Kim wrote that in the early stages of the fight Motobu remained calm and defended or avoided all the boxer’s punches and then “The boxer finally became careless and threw a powerful right at Motobu’s head, but the wily Okinawan ducked underneath and scooted behind him. It was at this point that Motobu demonstrated why he was called ‘Saru’ (monkey). He had a phenomenal ability to jump onto an opponent’s back like a saru. He jumped high in the air and double-kicked his opponent on the way down. When the boxer dropped, Motobu was quickly upon him and choked him into submission.“

Shoshin Nagamine and Chozo Nakama both studied with Choki Motobu and apparently he had talked to them about his match with the foreign boxer. Nagamine wrote that in early 1921 Motobu had left Okinawa and ventured to Osaka, where he became a security guard for a large company. One weekend he and a friend went to nearby Kyoto to see a fighting competition. A big foreigner came in the ring challenging everyone and Motobu accepted the challenge. For the first two rounds there was no real action as Motobu maintained his distance but then in the third he dropped the foreigner to the canvas with a strike to the temple. In an interview in the November 1983 number of “Karate Illustrated” Nagamine added the information that that when a professional fighter issued a challenge to take on any and all fighters a friend taunted Motobu into accepting the challenge. Motobu asked his friend to put a bet on the outcome of the fight for him. People in the audience laughed at the contrast between Choki Motobu and the boxer but “Motobu evaded the boxer’s first attack and then struck him on the ear with such force that the boxer went down and blood came out of his ears.” Motobu told Nagamine that he had won 100 yen from the contest.

In 1978 the Okinawan general interest magazine “Aoi-Umi” had a special edition on karate which included an interview of Chozo Nakama by Seijin Jahana. Nakama had studied with Motobu when he returned to Okinawa around 1940. Nakama told Jahana that at the time of his match with the boxer Motobu was working as a guard at a textile factory in Osaka and and living in a rooming house in the city. The owner of the rooming house told him about an advertisement in which the promoter of a Russian boxer named Johnson was looking for opponents. “He explained the advertisement to Choki, who could not read, and for a joke he suggested Choki apply. Choki agreed with his suggestion at once. The ownere of the rooming house was surprised to hear his reply but he made an application for Choki.”

According to Nakama, Motobu turned up at ringside to accept the boxer’s challenge, but refused to put on the boxing gloves which were given to him. When he entered the ring to fight the crowd had shouted “This man must be a fool!” Jahana’s article went on: “In the first round the big Russian boxer was driving Choki into a corner of the ring. The boxer was stronger and tougher than expected. ‘I cannot defeat him. I will lose,’ thought Choki. ‘But if I easily lose this match I would be very sorry for my Okinawan fellow students of karate.’ The first round was over with much difficulty for Choki. In the second round, the professional boxer Johnson maybe thought that this match was too easy for him. He charged toward Choki with less guard. Seeing the unguarded moment, Choki immediately jumped. The big body of Johnson fell to the mat. In a moment the spectators could not understand what had happened. Then, knowing Choki won the match, they shouted and applauded with admiration. Some of them excitedly threw their money and precious watches into the ring. Choki had jumped and hit the back of Johnson’s ear with his fist. Choki Motobu or Motobu Saru’s jumping and karate skills were really amazing.”

Musing on the various conflicting accounts of the match and Choki Motobu’s knockout technique, Katsumi Murakami wrote: “Depending on the account, it is said that he attacked with a palm heel, a regular fist punch, or the keikoken. If he used the palm, he probably struck a point somewhere on the face. If it was the keikoken, he probably struck somewhere on the face, the temple, or behind the ear. In any case, I believe that this strike was delivered from a very close combative engagement distance. The most effective hand formations when one has entered close to the opponent are the uraken, keikoken, or shotei. Motobu Sensei seems to have specialised in fighting in close proximity to the opponent. This, then, was the reason that Motobu Sensei was so strong in actual combat.”

It’s all very confused and in the absence of any contemporary report or reliable eyewitness account we can’t say what happened. And interestingly, Motobu never mentioned anything about his encounter with the boxer in either of the two books he wrote. However, in the sayings of Choki Motobu put together by his student Kenji Marukawa in 1978 Motobu is quoted as saying “When I fought the foreign boxer in Kyoto, he was taller than me so I jumped up and punched him in the face. This is effective against people who are taller than you.” That is interesting and to some extent clears up the question of the knockout technique. Although Choki Motobu does not show any jumping technique in his books he may have had this as a special, “last chance” technique for bigger opponents; he may also have been forced to change tactics after the first round to try and win by knockout. Also, in 1936 the Okinawan “Ryukyu Shimpo” newspaper ran a short series of articles in which Motobu discussed karate and answered questions on his art from younger practitioners. In one of the articles Motobu is quoted as saying “I think it was around Taisho 11 (1922) that I went to watch a match with the foreign boxer John ‘Somebody’ in Kyoto. The boxer fought against a judo stylist for the first match. This boxer fought very sluggishly. He looked like an amateur. I applied to challenge this boxer and bet money on the match. I was already over fifty years old at the time. I didn’t have a chance to fight that day so I went back the next day. I told him that I would fight him with my bare hands, without gloves. This boxer was much taller than me and he despised me very much. He started to pull my ears, punched my nose, and twisted my cheeks. He treated me just like a small kid. I did not fight seriously during the first round and we took a break.

“When I got up to fight the second round I suddenly thought ‘If I am defeated by such a foreign boxer it will bring shame for both karate and Okinawa. I want to beat this opponent.’ I determined to win the fight. As soon as the boxer came forward to attack with his full power I hit his temple very hard with one punch in a rage. He collapsed right there. All the spectators got very excited and with a thunderous round of applause started to throw their floor cushions, cigarette holders, drawstring coin purses, and other things towards me.

“It was such an exciting event because the boxer was big, about 6 feet tall, and was knocked out by a karate technique.

“Many newspaper articles stated that I hit the boxer with a flat (open) hand. I did not use my flat hand to hit him. I hit him with my fist but the spectators thought it was a flat hand, not a fist, because my fist hit him so fast; it was lightning fast.

“The essence of karate is to move gently or casually and to immediately hit the enemy when the opportunity presents itself. This is karate jissen, actual fighting.“

In “Sugata Sanshiro”, Kanro, the jujutsu man who fights Lister tells Sugata that it is hard for jujutsu teachers to make a living and he agreed to the match purely for the money. For Motobu too, money was part of it, and after winning he found himself richer by 100 yen. I wonder if he ever thought about fighting any more of these mixed matches?

From his own account Motobu had watched the boxer in a previous match against a judoka and judged that he “fought very sluggishly,” and “looked like an amateur”, and it may have been at this point, and not before, that he applied to fight, placing a bet on himself to win at the same time. He must have been confident in his ability to beat his opponent, but even so, the contest may not have been as easy as his various biographers imagined. If Chozo Nakama’s account was a reasonably accurate rendering of what Motobu had said then the foreign fighter was stronger than Motobu expected and he had a bit of trouble in the opening round of the match: “In the first round the big Russian boxer was driving Choki into a corner of the ring. The boxer was stronger and tougher than expected: ‘I cannot defeat him. I will lose,’ thought Choki. ‘But if I easily lose this match I would be very sorry for my Okinawan fellow students of Karate.’ The first round was over with much difficulty for Choki.” In this version of events the boxer grew overconfident in the second round and Motobu managed to knock him out. Motobu won, but he may not have cared to repeat the experiment.

There is an article on Choki Motobu in the 1934 publication “Karate Kenkyu” and in an interesting section Motobu talked a little about karate and western boxing, for which apparently he had quite a bit of respect. “It seems that those who have studied karate a bit and learned some techniques of attack and defence want to make an issue of fighting with a boxer,” Motobu is quoted as saying. ”However, in this case karate is not very advantageous, so it is a good idea not to engage in such bouts.

“The reason is that karate’s value is in its use of both hands and feet, and if one enters into a contest with a boxer then they will be bound by the rules of boxing. Thus the true power of karate cannot be put forth. If someone states that they definitely want to take part in such a match for their own studies, then they must receive special training beforehand. Those without the experience who want to fight with boxers, just because they know karate, should not do it. If they do, then they are in for a rude awakening. Of course, in a pure test of skill with no rules, it is a different issue altogether.

“The free use of both the hands and feet is the life breath of karate. One should not take part in cross-style bouts that are governed by unfamiliar rules.”

So you wonder, just a little, whether that first round against the boxer may have been something of “a rude awakening” for Motobu himself. Maybe . . . or maybe not, because in 1932, at over sixty years old, he travelled to Hawaii and that was purportedly to engage in matches against judoka or boxers. According to Bruce Haines’ 1962 thesis on the development of karate in Hawaii, “In the late twenties and early thirties in Hawaii it was common for boxing promoters etc to match judo men against boxers. Seeing that these matches proved interesting and profitable, a group of Okinawan men headed by Mr. Choso Tamanaha decided to pit a karate man against a boxer. This group selected Choki Motobu, the great Okinawan master who had defeated a Russian heavyweight boxer in a bare handed bout in 1922.”

These boxing – judo matches had something of a fashion in Hawaii at one time, but whether Motobu was being brought to the islands specifically to fight is not wholly clear. He was over sixty and the purpose behind the Hawaiian visit may actually have been to teach karate, because Kentsu Yabu had taught karate on the islands for a while in 1927 and later Kamesuke Higaonna and Mizuho Mutsu (1935) and Chojun Miyagi (1934) also taught the art there, without getting involved in any contests. Chozo Tamanaha, the Hawaiian who supposedly wanted Motobu to fight a boxer, was involved in bringing Mutsu and Higaonna to the islands.

The Hawaiian newspaper ”Nippon Jiji” of 13 March 1932 reported that “Karate-jutsu authority Choki Motobu will be arriving in Hawaii on board the Shinyo Maru. Choki Motobu, who is teaching karate-jutsu to several hundred students in Tokyo, is a well known authority and presently has his own dojo in Hara town of Koishikawa ward in Tokyo. At this time we understand that he is en route to Hawaii on board the Shunyo Maru, scheduled to arrive on the 26th. Invited by Tamanaha Yoshimatsu of Hawaii, Choki Motobu is the third son of the wealthy Motobu family from the town of Shuri in Okinawa Prefecture. He has enthusiastically studied karate-jutsu since his childhood and is recognised as an authority in Japan.”

In the event Motobu was never able to teach, or fight, in Hawaii because when he arrived he was refused entry by the immigration authorities. No reasons were given but Haines speculates that it was because of his reputation as a brawler. In any case, Choki Motobu’s stay in Hawaii was limited to a short time at the immigration station on Ala Moana Boulevard before returning to Japan – and what a missed opportunity that was!

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