Ligo Dojo (BKH) Director and Founder

BKH founder and director, Nathan Ligo, is the only American and one of only 3 non-Japanese to hold a graduation certificate from Mas Oyama's uchi deshi (live-in student) instructor's program in Japan. (Mas Oyama is seated at center in below photograph.) After training for 6 years as a student of Mas Oyama's nephew, Seong Soo Choi, in the United States, Ligo was accepted as a personal student by Mas Oyama (1923-1994), the legendary founder of Kyokushin Karate, in June of 1990. Following in the footsteps of 120 foreigners to attempt the program before him and fail -- no foreigner had ever graduated from Mas Oyama's program at that time -- Ligo was initially unsuccessful in completing the three years of training when he found himself unable to continue after nearly two years in a dormitory where full-contact, bare-knuckle fighting was an integral part of the daily routine.

Having returned to resume his college education in the US and finding himself equally unable to deny his sense of debt to Mas Oyama, Ligo began teaching karate and working through writing and publishing to support Mas Oyama's International Kyokushinkaikan Organization in America. While still enrolled at Davidson College in North Carolina (ranked 9th in the nation by US News and World Report) from which he would ultimately receive his BA in English Literature, Ligo began his work with the publication of an article in Black Belt Magazine about Mas Oyama and finally published a full-cover, hardback book "Budo Karate Illustrated" to help promote Kyokushin Karate in the United States. In December of 1992, Mas Oyama invited Ligo to Tokyo to test for his 2nd dan (2nd degree black belt) and awarded him with an honorary graduation certificate from from his 3-year residential program, making Ligo the only American to hold this honor. At this time -- just six weeks before his death -- Mas Oyama asked the 23-year-old Ligo to dedicate his future to teaching Kyokushin karate in the United States.

By that time, Ligo had long-since already conceived of the Budo Karate House concept (founding a dormitory program in the US patterned after the one he'd attended in Japan), but at that age of 23 he didn't consider himself ready, and he set out to gain experience that he believed he would need in order to successfully carry out Mas Oyama's final request. Having been invited to Korea by his former teacher, Mas Oyama's nephew, to help train the Korean team for the 1995 6th World Open Tournament (there was virtually no Kyokushin karate in Korea at that time), Ligo traveled to Seoul, Korea and began what would become an additional two years of uchi deshi (dojo dormitory) experience. Here, Ligo lived in a dojo that was called "Daemang" ("Great Hope") Dojo, operated by instructor Shin Tae Kyun, who is currently the Director of Kyokushinkan in Korea.

For these two years Ligo supported himself by teaching English while he taught Kyokushin karate to Koreans in this then-largely Tae Kwon Do training hall. Endeavoring to train even harder that he had while in Japan, Ligo strapped 25-pound plates to his chest and back (50 pounds total) and ran daily the 2 km course to the top of Namsan, Seoul's highest mountain. Here Ligo practiced by speed-breaking baseball bats with his shins and realized that he needed to start holding back when he unintentionally broke the ribs of his training partner during kumite. Before leaving Korea in 1996, Ligo wrote his first novel-length book, a 1000-page autobiographical account of karate experiences, a manuscript which remains shelved for future reediting and hopefully publication.

After a brief layover in the US, Ligo traveled to Hungary in Eastern Europe at the invitation of 7-time Hungarian champion, Brezovai Sandor, who had lived for 3 months with Ligo 7 years earlier in Mas Oyama's "Young Lion's Dormitory". Here Ligo lived for an additional two years, one in rural Hungary training under Brezovai's guidance for what would become 8 hours per day, and a second year in Budapest, where he continued his training and wrote two additional book-length manuscripts. At its peak, Ligo's training in Hungary consisted of 500 jumping squats, 500 push-up, and 500 sit-ups every morning after completing a 6 km run, and before beginning the first of two two-hour power-stamina training sessions per day, one before lunch and the second after afternoon karate training and before dinner. Here Ligo was taught to measure power-stamina workouts by the ton (weight training for explosive power and stamina, rather than for bulk), at his peak pressing 56 tons in a single workout (500 reps of 225 poinds in less than 90 minutes).

In 1999, Ligo returned to the US with a Hungarian wife, named Krisztina, and with the ambition of creating Budo Karate House in order to train a body of instructors from across the country who could then return to the corners of the country from which they'd come to teach Kyokushin karate. Ligo believes that it is every instructor's responsibility to encourage his students to be better than him, to train harder, and to aspire to greater achievement. Accordingly, Ligo emphasizes in his teaching two sources for what he expects of his students: one is that which he's done successfully in his own life, and other is that what he looks back upon and wishes he'd done better. Ligo blames himself for never becoming a champion -- despite 5 international tournament attempts -- realizing that he excused himself along the way by citing all the starts and stops to his training due to writing books and graduating from from a nationally-ranked college when really, he sees now, he wasn't giving the training what he should have given it at the time.

Ligo was appointed "Branch Chief" in the US by Kancho (President) Hatsuo Royama of Kyushinkan International in 2003, meaning simply that President Royama and Kyokushinkan would back Ligo's efforts in the United States to teach Budo Karate to young Americans on a wide scale as an official representative of Kyokushinkan. Above Ligo is seen (bearded) at the 2005 World Tournament in Moscow, having been invited by Kancho Royama (white jacket) to stand beside him and translate into English his speech at the tournament's opening ceremony for the benefit of those members of the 12,000 spectators present who understood neither Russian nor Japanese.

Here, Ligo is seen standing in front of a painting of Mas Oyama with two other graduates of Mas Oyama's uchi deshi program (of which in 30 years there were less than 80). Fujiwara Kenji (left), 20 years Ligo's senior, is the ranking member of Kyokushinkan in the US and Hiroshige Tsuyoshi (center), 25 years Ligo's senior, is the Vice President of all of Kyokushinkan in Japan, and the instructor in Japan best known for training the most champions. His students were world-champions for 3 consecutive world tournaments and since that tournament is held only once in 4 years, his student's held the honor of "world champion" for 12 consecutive years. Ligo, of course, endeavors to follow in these footsteps of greatness. Ligo greatfully accepting criticism by Shihan Hiroshige in Russia, 2005. Below Ligo is seen speed-breaking a baseball bat at a demonstration in 2005.

Nathan Ligo with Kancho Hatsuo Royama, Chairman Kyokushin-kan, in Budapest 2007.