Once upon a time I trained under a Japanese 7th degree karate black belt in a Birmingham suburb

Donald Trump fancies himself a sensei, but he has had no training.

In the early 1980s, I got to know a Japanese karate master, Shihan Oyama, when I trained for a couple of years in his dojo in the Homewood suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. I progressed from white belt, to yellow belt, to blue belt, and then I injured my spine sparring with another student and I gave up karate. The next belt would have been green, then brown, then the first black belt.

Shihan was 7th degree black belt. His said his sensei in Japan, Mas Oyama, created his own form of karate, Kyokushin, and later he toured America and did demonstrations, which caused America to become interested in karate. Shihan said he and his older brother left their families to train under Mas Oyama, who became their father. Shihan and his brother performed public demonstrations of their skills, including Shihan barehanded fighting his brother wearing full samurai battle gear and wielding a razor sharp samurai sword, which Shihan captured between his bare palms. I saw them do that demonstration at a karate tournament in a gymnasium at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

During class one day in his dojo, Shihan told his black belts that they all looked like white belts to him. Another time, he told his black belts that karate begins with the first dan (black belt). Another time, he told us that when he was 18, he could beat up all the other students in his sensei’s dojo, but he was still a white belt because all he wanted to do was fight. After he got over just wanting to fight, he started getting promoted. Eventually, he became a world champion.

Shihan was the sensei in his dojo, and everyone bowed to him and said “hai” to anything he said. I never understood how he ended up in Birmingham, but I was darn glad he did, because he tried to prepare me for what angels would start trying to do with me several years later. As for how that is going, the jury is still out.

The head samurai in The Last Samurai movie is an example of how the Japanese viewed a sensei in olden times. His community. was totally loyal to him, and he and they were entirely loyal to the Emperor. of Japan They quit using “modern weapons” -guns, cannons, and only used the traditional weapons. They alone tried to protect the Emperor and Japan from traitors who. had sided with American profiteers. The Emperor is barely a young man and he views the head Samara as his teacher. The Samara all were killed in a final battle, trying to protect the Emperor and Japan.

Tom Cruz plays the drunkard American ex-Indian fighting US Army officer, who come to Japan to help them build their modern army, and his side gets beat by the Samurai and his soldiers, who capture him because the head samurai had had a vision about him. They don’t like him, but they clean him up and he teaches their sensei what he needs to know about America and the Indians. They teach him how to be a samurai, and he fights with them until the end. he is the last Samurai in that clan, and that clam are the last true samurai in Japan. 

As the tale winds down, the American samurai visits the Emperor, who asks him to explain how his teacher died, and the American says, Your Majesty, I will tell you how he lived. Then, the American returns to the remote Samurai village where there are only women and children and his samurai wife, whose husband he had killed in the battle his side lost at the beginning of the tale.

Donald Trump fancies himself a sensei, but he has had no training, nor does he want to be trained. I wish Americans were mature enough to run America properly, but they are not. If the US Military was led by samurai, they would take matters into their own hands for a while, with the intention of restoring the nation to the people if and when there were people worthy of being in control.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com