I am afraid I have entertained the reader too long with this long prologue.
But I feel it is necessary so you may better understand why Mr. Egami took
the first step towards a new horizon that years later would derive in his
own style of karate.The Kyokai funeral boycott hit all of us very hard and left deep scars; Egami was more affected than anyone else, I even had the following conversation with him:
" I don't know! How can I explain it to you, if I myself can't even believe it?
In the mid-War years our conversations always centered on the kata and their movements. The line of thought of Egami could be resumed the following way: "The Kata must be movements full of vital energy, not merely movements".
His revolutionary ideas were still in a embryonary stage and would need a few years to take their form in the Kata, Taikyoku, Chinokata and Tennokata. When he was able to dominate these movements, he was able to practice the Taikyoku with complete freedom dominating his body to perfection, ending in an inevitable revolution of the traditional kata.
His original point of view crashed head on with the principles the Kyokai obstinately adhered to, this association's point of view was that the kata were "sacred", untouchable and should not be modified. You had to respect them exactly as they were and practice them always the same way.
This was the same inflexibility that ended with the Kyokai's boycotting of Master Funakoshi's funeral... After recovering from that tough experience, this is how Egami interpreted the Kyokai's attitude, I am not sure if he was right or not with respect to this opinion and that doesn't really matter, what is sure is the fact that he forgot completely about the Kyokai and began developing his ideas freely; he dedicated himself to teach his method to his students.
In Buddhism it is said that the soul wants to express itself with form and the form requires soul. The ideal would be this way, but in reality the form many times forgets about the soul and tries to maintain itself alone. The temples (form) forget about Buddha (soul) and only show their beauty and structural size.
Form and soul are as meat and bone, but they must not clasp themselves to a given form. Said in another way, they must not transform form into something divine. The soul, if it constantly evolves, will never cease to search for a new form with which it may better express itself. You have to break the actual form and take a new one. This is the reason Kyokai's position was completely incomprehensible.
I can now remember his bright eyes, those of a truly excited person,
of those dedicated to a noble cause. Also his favorite comment:
"All my life entirely training". You were always surrounded by
students, but you never got lost in vanity because you always said your
tsuki's were taught to you by Okuyama (a younger student than you) and
you repeatedly mentioned this comment so as to, unconsciously, avoid any
divinization. That is how you always have been, free of all vanity...
His karate excels by far the level of traditional karate by its quality and its concepts. The technical level emphasizes the MAAI, where nobody has been able to attain his perfection. His impeccable Maai permitted him, if confronted by an opponent, to defeat him before the combat itself. This mental superiority characterizes his Karate and testifies to his immense value.
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