The 1st Kyokushin-kan Instructors' Seminar
(International Instructors' Seminar / Shihan Certification Seminar)

The 1st Kyokushin-kan Instructor s' Seminar (International Instructors' Seminar / Shihan Certification Seminar), Organized by Kyokushin Karate-do Renmei Technical Committee, was held from March 19th through 21st at Fukushima-ken Ishikawa-cho Sogo Taiiku-kan.Instructors included Kancho Hatsuo Royama, Fuku-Kancho Tsuyoshi Hiroshige, Technical Committee Chairman Hiroto Okazaki, and special instructors, Shihan Nariharu Kuramoto and Shihan Sun Li.

Apart from 150 Japanese participants, instructors from overseas included: Hamid Asna Ashari (Canada), Wassili Geier (Germany), Davood Daneshfar (Iran), Gianclaudio Torlizzi (Italy), Tadjimurat Naizabekov (Kazakhstan), Adlet Demezhan (Kazakhstan), Shin Tae Keun (Korea), Michael Ding (Malaysia), Alexander Nesterenko (Russia), Sergey Stepanov (Russia), Evgeny Prokhorov (Russia), Natalia Petrova (Russia), Hennie Bosman (South Africa), Collen Sedoaba (South Africa), Jose Millan (Spain) Tharaka Fonseka (Sri Lanka), Prasanna Fernando (Sri Lanka), Kenji Fujiwara (USA), and Nathan Ligo (USA).

Instruction by Kancho Royama.

Tips on Kumite by Fuku-Kancho, Hiroshige Shihan.

South Africa's Shihan Hennie Bosman (left) practicing Kumite with BKH's Nathan Ligo. (Hennie Bosman is 6'4".)

Shihan Fujiwara (left) from USA, above, and Shihan Tajimurat (left), from Kazakhstan, below.

It was a first time for traditional weapons training (bo and sai) for many Kyokushin instructors present. Karate of course means "empty hand" which implies training without weapons and the emphasis of Kyokushin-kan training still or course remains "empty hand" training. However, since one of the goals of Kyokshin-kan is to return to the roots of Karate, and since Japanese Karate derived from traditional weapons training -- and very importantly from learning to defend against atacks by traditional weapons -- the Kyokushin-kan Technical Committee will introduce basic traditional weapons teaching in order to deepen the karateka's understanding of karate or "empty hand" techniques.

Since it was a frst time for so many, training (and memorization) of these basic weapons kata spilled over until 2:00 in the morning in the halls of the Spa (Japanese Hot Springs Hotel) where we stayed.

Celebrating the growing strength of Kyokushin-kan.

Seminar's foreign participants on the bus on the way to the first 8 hour training day.