Master Sasaki

BENCHWARMER

Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- Over 45 years ago at the Shibuya subway exit in Tokyo, a young karate teacher (sensei) spotted one of his students, a foreigner, hungry and begging for alms.

The sensei ordered the student to get up and follow him to a nearby restaurant where the teacher ordered food for both of them. When they finished their meal, the sensei warned the student against begging again. It would be hazardous to his  the student’s well-being especially if he would be seen by  his sempai (senior students)..

The teacher was Kunio Sasaki of the Japan Karate Association (JKA), one of the leading traditional martial arts organizations in the world.  The anecdote was told by C.W. Nicol, then a student of Sasaki, in his book "Moving Zen". Nicol said the beggar, whom he did not name, "left very soon after and went to India".

Shortly thereafter, masters of the JKA dojo (gym) called on the young black belts to spread out to various parts of the world as missionaries.  They were to propagate the shotokan (knife-hand) style of the martial art developed by Master Gichin Funakoshi, the Father of Modern Karate.

Sasaki was assigned to the Philippines where, in the early ‘60s, he opened a training program for police officers in Manila.  He then came up to Baguio and established a gym, initially at La Trinidad, Benguet and then at the YMCA of Baguio.

Among those who sweated out and bled in his training to earn their black belts were the late James Brett, Jun Bawingan and Ambrose Sagalla, insurance man Roger Garcia, lawyer Ricardo Pangan of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), former Holy Ghost Proper punong barangay James Mastinggal, and fifth-dan Edgar Kapawen, chief instructor of the JKA'-Orient based at the local Y.

Sasaki, now 77, remains true to his missionary order. He never quit teaching and never left the Philippines. His predecessor here quit after a year and returned to Japan.  Unlike his peers who had established themselves in developed countries, Sasaki never became rich -- materially, that is.

He remains faithful to the dojo kun, the oath that JKA students recite after every training session: Seek perfection of character. Be faithful. Endeavor. Respect others. Refrain from violent behavior.  Wearing his old, mothballed maroon sweater for the cold, Sasaki was back in Baguio  three days before Christmas eight years ago.

That time, he and his now fifth dan student, Julian Chees, were to preside over the promotional examinations of two brown belts to black and five black belts to second and third dan at the National Irrigation Administration office in La Trinidad.

While quick in correcting flaws in their execution of advanced kata (formal exercises), the master was kinder to the black belts than he was to his original students seeking their own koro obi (black belt). 

To aspiring first dan Julio Balisong and Kevin Cabading, he and Chees were almost merciless. They set the two up for a series of non-stop, full-contact individual sparring against six black belts. 

Training was, perhaps, hardest for Chees, now the head of the Shoshin (The Beginner's Mind) karate school in southern Germany. Then a brown-belt under Kapawen, he moved to Sasaki's dojo in Manila where he stayed for three years as a live-in student - and servant.

Advanced students  from Manila, perhaps smarting from the fact that their Baguio-Benguet counterparts were dominating JKA tournaments, occasionally turned him into a punching bag. "I almost quit, but now regret training under sempai (teacher) Sasaki for only three years," Chees said.

A model of restraint, Master Sasaki was also sparing in heaping praises on his students.  When he came up to Baguio Christmas of 2007, however, he spoke his mind.  "Many Filipino students who go abroad have a lot of blah, blah, blah, but not Julian; he is a true champion," the master said.

Julian, a native of Maligcong, Bontoc, Mountain Province, gained the distinction of being the only foreigner to join the German national karate team.  The shortest in the squad, he did justice to the offer by winning the individual kata in numerous international competitions, including the World Championships in Saarsbrucken, Germany in 1993. In 2007, he ruled the event in the World Karate Confederation tournament in Bergamo, Italy.

My son Johann, who trained under Kapawen and now raising his family as a hotel  porter in Italy, would have wanted to see Sasaki when the master visited Germany in  April of ’97.

Johann wanted to read "Moving Zen", so my boyhood buddy, Camilo Candelario, retired from the U.S. Navy and now chasing golf balls in Fallon, Nevada,  sent him a copy.  “I read it the moment I unwrapped it,“ Johann later e-mailed.   Please have Masters Sasaki, Kapawen and Chees autograph it, he advised.

Master Sasaki obliged, writing Johann’s name in Japanese characters on the book’s inside cover  when he  came up to Baguio  to conduct a promotional exam that yuletide. (e-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments.)