THE CAT


An article in Black Belt Magazine 1966.

The Cat, whose real name is Gogen Yamaguchi, is the head of the famous Goju school of karate. With his flowing hair and his piercing black eyes, this remarkable karateka has become a world figure and something of a legend in his own time. Coming out of a Manchurian prison camp after World War II, he picked up the reins of a flagging school and built it into a powerful, sprawling karate empire 

At 59, Yamaguchi remains a baffling figure. This descendant of samurais certainly is one of the most complex figures striding the world karate stage, and a bundle of contradictions. A Shinto priest, he is a deeply religious man. He also has the unmistakable flair that, if it were in any other field, he would have to be described as a showman. 

He is an apostle of calm meditation and philosophy and at the same time a restless, driving, and energetic head of a worldwide karate organization. Deeply suspicious of businessmen, he is himself the business head of what is one of the biggest and most financially successful karate systems in Japan. Domineering, humorless, he keeps a tight karate fist on the operation of the organization and the more than 1,200 dojo and clubs and 600,000 members claimed for the Goju system. 

At the same time, he can be a boon companion to close karate companions on their exuberant physical outings. He comes alive best when charging up a mountainside in the dead of winter at the head of a group of followers, sandalless and clad only in a thin gi. While his interests are limited now, his has not been a narrow background. Trained in the law, he is also a medical doctor. He has studied all the major branches of the various arts and is a fifth degree black belt in judo. 

Yamaguchi is a vegetarian but he still has managed to put on a few pounds in the last few years. Yet it doesn't seem to have slowed him down. He still flashes his famous speed when he goes into action. He can deliver three or four kicks to the stomach, chest and head in one lightning-like lunge. 
Yamaguchi was born in Kyushu, Miyazaki Ken, in 1907. The young man was fond of athletics while growing and it was here he first began to study karate. But it wasn't until the family moved to Kyoto while he was in his teens that he began the serious study of karate.

It was while attending Ritsumeikan University that Yamaguchi first heard of Goju karate and of Chojun Miyagi, the Okinawan who was head of the school.  Curious about the system, Yamaguchi wrote to Miyagi and invited him to come to Japan. Miyagi accepted and left shortly thereafter. The meeting of the two was to be a fateful one, not only for Goju but for all of karate as well.  Miyagi came from the city of Naha where the development of karate had taken a separate path. The other major schools of karate were centered mainly in Shiri in Okinawa. In Shiri, the emphasis had been more on the hard approach. But with Miyagi's Goju, the soft style was as important as the hard. 

Hard-Soft Style
Indeed, the word Goju means hard-soft. Go is the Japanese word for hardness and ju means softness. The system is based on an Oriental concept that all hardness and stiffness is not good. At the same time, all softness and too much gentleness can be harmful. The two should complement each other. This combination of the two gives Goju karate its beautiful, disciplined movements, filled with grace and flowing form. But lest anyone believe that Goju is merely a beautiful style of the dance with little of the art of defense, he need only watch two Goju practitioners square off in kumite against one another. 

Yamaguchi immediately fell in love with the strange and intricate patterns displayed by Miyagi. From that moment on, the future of Yamaguchi was sealed. He concentrated on the study of Goju to the exclusion of almost everything else. When Miyagi left to return to Okinawa, he left behind a well-trained and dedicated follower. Miyagi awarded Yamaguchi the highest rank in Goju and made him head of the school in Japan. 

Devoted Apostle
Miyagi couldn't have made a better choice. Driving, relentless, Yamaguchi became the apostle of Goju in Japan. With single minded determination, he set about the task of spreading the word throughout Japan. The first thing he did was to set about establishing dojo. He organized the first karate club at Ritsumeikan University and the first karate dojo in western Japan in 1930. Under his indefatigable leadership the school began to attract new adherents and the Goju karate system began to fan out across the island nation. 

Early in the Japanese development, Yamaguchi made a fundamental change in the Goju school that was to alter radically the course of karate. After observing his students, he came to the conclusion that the strict Okinawan brand of karate, with its ancient Chinese origins, was too static and limited in style. 

Free Sparring Developed
He believed that just the practice of kata (forms) and the prearranged steps in sparring called yakusoku kumite inhibited too many of the students. Under the movements of the Okinawan system, he noticed that many of the students could not create combinations of techniques readily enough or follow through with an advantage when an opening presented itself. What Yamaguchi wanted to do was to open up movements to make for faster play and to allow greater freedom of movement. He wanted a system that could be tailored to individual needs yet still retain the basic fundamentals of the system. The idea he hit upon was kumite, or free-style sparring. 

As he explained in silencing his critics: "In kendo, a real blade can cut any part of the human body and cause damage or fatal injury. But for safety purposes, points are made for striking only the head and stomach." So too for karate, he said, the strike zone should be limited. And so were the types of blows that could be delivered. For shiai, the opponents are restricted mainly to kicking and punching. Elbowing, clawing, and other finger and open hand strikes were disallowed. However, for dojo free-style sparring, the play is wide open with no restrictions. For this reason, as has been often observed, the best player in the dojo may often not be the best tournament player, and vice versa. 

With the freeing of karate from the strict adherence to kata and the addition of the competitive element, karate made tremendous strides in the next few years. But the war drums were beating during that time, and under the leadership of the war lords, Japan had embarked on an expansionist policy. In 1939, Yamaguchi had to leave his school and was sent to Manchuria as an officer of the Japanese government. He remained there throughout the war. But while abroad, he took the opportunity to travel throughout China to study various Chinese martial arts. 

Near the end of the war, the Russians intervened in Manchuria and Yamaguchi was taken prisoner. At the time, his wife, Midori, was expecting their third child almost any day. Taking her two other children with her, Mrs. Yamaguchi walked for miles to another village where she gave birth. For the next few months, the village was raided constantly by four different armies. 

Though a calm, sensitive person, Mrs. Yamaguchi displayed during that period the quiet strength and strong will characteristic of her. There are those close to the Goju organization who say that if Yamaguchi hadn't had the strong-willed Midori at his side during all these years he wouldn't have been able to organize his system. Some of the old-time students feel greater affection for her than they do for the master. She encouraged them and kept up their spirits during the years of rigorous training. 

Yamaguchi had been slated for hard labor in the Russian POW camp. But even his Russian captors were impressed by the man. When they found out who he was, they had him give karate lessons to the Russian troops. And so the captive became the master of the captors, who became his students. When Yamaguchi was finally released in 1947, he came home to find the martial arts in disarray. The victorious Allied armies had outlawed the practice of the martial arts under the terms of their occupation. But karate was not affected by the ban. At that time, the art was not well known to Westerners and the army brass believed karate to be a form of Oriental dance. 

Expansion of Arts
His striking appearance and his appeal to ancient pride struck a responsive note in the Japanese people. The years ahead were to witness a remarkable expansion in karate and all the arts as well, and not only in Japan, but other nations, too. It is somewhat ironic that, while Japan was unable to expand its ideas by force of arms during the war, its system of individual fighting was to sweep the rest of the world in peacetime. It's also interesting to note that the military occupation was also to prove advantageous from one point of view. There were many servicemen who found their way to his Goju-Kai dojo in Tokyo and studied the art there. When they left to return home, they took the art with them and aided the expansion abroad. 

One of the first things that Yamaguchi did when he arrived back from Manchuria was to try to revive interest in the arts again. He decided to hold a big week-long exhibition in Tokyo featuring all the various Chinese arts he had discovered during his years there as well as the traditional Japanese arts. The festival proved to be a great success and helped reawaken interest. Meanwhile, Yamaguchi's students were flocking back to him. Today, the Goju school flourishes in Japan. From his headquarters at the Goju-Kai, Yamaguchi oversees a vast network of dojo in schools, offices, factories and elsewhere across the country. And Yamaguchi keeps tight control over the organization. 

The result is a highly organized school with strong financial resources for running and expanding the system. To his instructors and top students, Yamaguchi can hold out the prospect of their opening their own dojo. He can supply them with the monetary backing they need to tide them over while becoming established. In return, they owe their allegiance to the Cat and his school. Partly through financial help and partly through force of personality, 

Yamaguchi has been successful in tying his dojo heads to him instead of seeing them spin off to open up systems on their own. To keep the system going, there has to be a steady stream of funds moving upward through the organization to be dispersed at the top for promoting the system. Times have changed since the old days when a master instructed a few pupils who came to his home to study. Yamaguchi now has almost 2,000 students at his Goju-Kai dojo alone. It takes organization and financial liquidity to run a large and successful martial arts institution today. 

The goju brand of karate is as complex as the baffling figure who heads the system. Its style is a hybrid of Chinese, Okinawan and Japanese influences. In addition, Goju karate has been influenced by a number of the other martial arts. Many of the school's movements are very soft, as in Chinese kenpo. The Okinawan brand of karate was originally imported from China more than 400 years ago, but had developed into a hard style during its years on the island. Goju doctrine holds that certain breathing exercises can harden a man to the point where he can absorb a kick or a punch without feeling pain. 

Goju men will sometimes test themselves by raining blows on each other during the breathing kata. Their concentration is so. intense that they continue the exercises, seemingly impervious to the blows. Miyagi reinstituted the Chinese influence after he made a trip to the mainland to study the different Chinese arts. Originally, Miyagi had been a student of the Shorin school, a hard style. 

The story is told that while visiting a temple, he noticed a crane sitting on a roof which was made of tile. As he approached the huge bird, the crane became alarmed and flew away. As it was flying away, the frightened crane flapped its wings against the tile roof, breaking some of the tiles in the process. Miyagi was amazed that the soft feathers of the crane were able to break something as hard as tiles. With that as the beginning, he devised a whole new approach to karate, mixing in with the hard techniques many soft ones to be used in countering hard blows and kicks. 

Many goju techniques today actually look like the flapping of a bird's wings. Many blocks and strikes are in the form of slaps, though the slaps usually feel a lot more bear-like when one is on the receiving end. Though graceful and bird-like in appearance, they are delivered with a powerful snap. In actual practice, the goju man uses what he terms the "five power rule" in countering a hard blow with a soft technique. The five-power rule is used for grading the intensity with which a blow is delivered. A lightly delivered blow would be using only one-power or two-power strength. An extremely heavy blow would be five-power. 

Of course, this waiting until toward the -end of the opponent's blows requires developing a good sense of timing and split instant reactions to be able to get the counter blow off quickly and accurately. Hence, the great emphasis on speed in this school. Blows are delivered swiftly and in rapid succession. Yamaguchi, for instance, can deliver three or four kicks to the chest, neck, and side of the face in the same lunge. His hand strikes are delivered with blinding speed. One of his tricks is to hang a piece of cardboard by two slender threads and then withdraw his hand into the sleeve of his gi. His hand can shoot out and Pierce the cardboard with three finger holes and then be withdrawn into the sleeve with an observer barely able to notice the flicking movement. At the same time, the cardboard hasn't moved, though it bears the telltale three punctures. 

The overall movements of the entire system are based on speed. There is a great deal of moving in and out quickly and weaving from side to side, in contrast to the hard schools which concentrate more on straightforward movements. Naturally, all this fast motion lends itself to graceful and artistic techniques. A basic stance, called the cat stance, is a very soft one with one foot poised on tiptoe, ready to move quickly in any direction. This is in direct contrast to the solid, flat-footed stance so often employed in the hard styles. 

Another facet of Goju is the extreme closeness with which the blows are delivered in kumite. The school emphasizes control of motions and a student is supposed to be able to stop a punch or kick only fractions of an inch from target. Yamaguchi himself knows hundreds of techniques. But his favorite techniques are concerned with kicking and elbow strikes. He has huge elbows and delivers the elbow blows with great force. As for kicks, he likes specially a front kick and roundhouse kick in combination. But even with all this emphasis on speed, the study of the traditional kata is still underscored. Goju, with its love of graceful and delicate movements could be expected to venerate the historical kata. Many Goju men feel that the kata is usually more dynamic and far more beautiful than kumite, not to mention considerably more varied. 

There is another form of kata for which the school is famous and without which no explanation of the Goju style would be complete. That is the school's breathing kata. No one who has ever witnessed a Goju man practicing his breathing kata under a full head of steam will ever forget the experience. It is an awesome and, to those of a more timid turn, sometimes frightening experience. A good Goju man can be heard half a block away and more while engaged in breathing exercises. 

There are two types of breathing practiced, the in-ibuki and the yo-ibuki. The in-ibuki is the soft but firm type of breathing which starts from deep within the abdomen. This is similar to the type of breathing which is practiced in Yoga and Zen meditation, and is usually directed towards spiritual and meditative matters when practiced. Goju adherents never tire of repeating that this is the normal way a baby breathes. It is only when we get older that we learn to breathe from our chest.

The tensing that is carried out during the breathing exercises is similar to that carried on in dynamic tension and isometric exercises. Tensing is believed to build up physical strength. And that goes internally, too, where the breathing is said to strengthen the heart and other vital organs. The student is taught never to exhale all his breath at once but to ration it out in short breaths. One reason is to always save a little breath so that an opponent cannot strike when one is out of breath and at one's weakest just before inhaling. The idea is always to save a little breath to counter. A good Goju man who is really warmed up will stride across the floor rippling every muscle from head to foot while engaged in powerful animal-like breathing. The effect can be quite spectacular. 

But there is another side to the breathing exercises, the side concerned with the mental and spiritual aspects of karate. By its very nature, this is the side most difficult to grasp for many persons, especially Westerners. The most advanced type of breathing exercise is that in which all of one's strength is concentrated on a specific feeling or thought. It is through concentration and meditation that man learns to improve himself. 

The martial- arts are an excellent example of the Oriental approach to life. In the Western world, great emphasis is placed on team sports. But the Oriental thinks of life as an individual and personal thing and trains by himself in his sports. The arts also stress discipline-not only physical control of the body but control of the mind as well. The idea is to try to conquer one's own laziness and shortcomings through mental training and discipline. Whereas in the West we are taught that the needs of the body are important and not be neglected, the opposite is true in much of Oriental philosophy. Shintoism and Buddhism deny people's nature. A person is taught to endure hardness and to shun bodily pleasure. As a result, many serious students of karate in Japan go into periods of hard training without eating anything to test their endurance and patience. 

Finally, most Orientals tend to be pessimists. They tend to deny their service as human beings. Religion teaches them that this life is just borrowed and the really pure and happy life comes after death. As a result, the Oriental tends to live not for himself but is taught to be self-sacrificing.(this point is debateable) ed. As this is translated in the martial arts, it requires much self-sacrificing effort and disciplining. For instance, in Yamaguchi's place, he goes out into the mountains once a month to toughen himself up spiritually and physically. He engages in sanchin (breathing) exercises for several hours under an icy waterfall to try to make his mind and spirit impenetrable to adverse physical conditions. 

( Many Australian karate ka have experienced similar training especially in the latter years at Kashima Jimbu Den.) ed.

When away from such a stimulating environment, Yamaguchi still keeps a rigid schedule at home. He rises early and manages to get in an hour or more of meditation and more than an hour of kata practice by himself every morning. After breakfast and catching up on his correspondence and other business details, he puts in a full day teaching and working at the dojo. He can be found there most days from noon until 10 p.m. 

Though he's 59 years old now, Yamaguchi shows no signs of slowing down. Just the opposite. He has big plans afoot which require his energies. He has one big dream and that is to start a four-year martial arts college in Japan. He has started construction on the first building already. After the first two years, the student would receive his black belt. In the third and fourth year the student would train to be an instructor. Other subjects studied would be weaponry, chiropody (Yamaguchi is a bone specialist), religion and Japanese art.(It  is this College that Paul Starling Shihan entered as Sandan Instructor, and graduated from in 1973 as the first Shihan Graduate.) ed.
, 
Fully realizing the spread of karate outside Japan, he has reached out to try to expand his school in the United States. Since the Shotokan school got the jump on Yamaguchi and has been strongly established in the Los Angeles area for years, he has made his principal U.S. headquarters at the Goju-Kai Karatedo in San Francisco. The San Francisco school is under the direction of Yamaguchi's son, Gosei. Gosei is a black belt, of course, like his two brothers and two sisters. All five children began instruction at an early age. But though Gosei studied karate practically every day of his life from age five onwards, his father did not give him a black belt until he was 20 years old. 

"Remember," he admonished his son, "we are always students of karate. We can never be complete masters." He drove his sons relentlessly in their study of the art to try to make them as expert as possible. The result is as might be predicted. Though he made them highly proficient, even brilliant, practitioners of the art, their main interest has not been in the field of karate, at least in the case of the two oldest sons. Originally,
Gosen Yamaguchi was sent to the United States to establish the school here. But after two years, he quit and went to work for Japan Airlines. Gosei Yamaguchi, who took over, is more interested in literature and acting, and is taking his master's degree in English literature at San Francisco State College. The third son, Goshi, is the strongest and best karate fighter of the three, but he has artistic and photographic interests and it remains to be seen in which field his interests will lay. (interestingly, it has been Goshi Shihan who has emerged as the IKGA World Wide leader of the International Goju Kai).ed.