Eighty and a shiny new freshman!

I started karate at the age of seventy-five and it took me five years to become a black belt. Besides karate, I took up ice hockey on the spur of the moment when I was fifty. I still play in official games of the Kansai Businessmen's League. I also participate in an old timer tournament in Canada every year.

However, I am less than 160 cm tall, and I am neither strong nor athletically gifted. After my myocardial infarction, 2 stents

are inserted in my heart and I have to take "blood thinners" until I die.

I have two reasons for taking up karate. One is that hockey is a team game, and if I can no longer move the same way as my teammates, I have to retire. And it is obvious that the time for retirement is not far away. Karate, on the other hand, is a martial art that you can do alone. You can learn and do it until you die.

Another motivation was watching a You Tube video of a Dutch karate fighter. He was a member of a group performance and performed a very advanced kata with great skill, despite his physical limitations. Like him, we elderly people have many physical limitations. No matter how hard we try, we will never be able to move as nimbly and gracefully as elementary and junior high school students. The technique of jumping and kicking forward in the air, which appears in the first half of Chinto kata, is impossible for the elderly. When I watched my video, I laughed at the fact that I could not jump even 50 centimeters.

It is natural that as one gets older, one's physical movements become more limited. However, with karate, even the elderly and those with various physical limitations can continue to learn the techniques and perform them to the best of our ability.

I compete in kata competitions. I always lose in the first round, though. This is because I am always up against younger and better competitors. Even so, I never give up and keep trying. If I lose my first match, I have to sit there and watch the whole match until the end. But that is another chance to learn. Even in daily practice, when you think you are going to compete at a tournament, your level of awareness rises and the quality of your kata practice becomes different.

In my daily practice, I am allowed to participate in kumite (sparing). The other high dan members are considera enough to treat me accordingly. Of course, it is impossible for me to participate in kumite in real tournament matches, but kumite practice gives me a chance to learn how to take a right stance and distance and to overcome the fear of close combat when jumping into the bosom of a strong opponent.

People often talk about "100 years of life," and they praise old people doing sports better for their age. But I don't play hockey or karate for the sake of talking about how well I'm doing for an elderly person. What is more important is how long we can live a fulfilling life. I have come to believe that karate can be useful for that purpose. In this way, I have always felt the joy of being able to spend the final stage of my life learning the martial art of karate.

My favorite books are the founder’s life story and the book written by Zeami, a famous master of tea, which inspire me to live better.  These books teach me that I should be grateful and happy to know that there is a point to which I cannot reach but aim, and to be able to make efforts to get closer to that point every day. My body may grow old, but my mind does not.