Choki Motobu, Boxing, and Jen Kentel - 2

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By Graham Noble

Motobu seemed to have regarded karate and boxing as two quite different things and wanted to keep them separate. He did though, occasionally cross paths with boxing. For example, he is quoted as telling students that: “When I was living in Hodogaya, a fellow Okinawan came and invited me out, so I went along with him. He took me to a house in a rather lively section of Yokohama. The owner of the house, as I later found out, was a rather famous crime lord. The owner of the house welcomed me warmly, serving beer and asking many questions about karate. As I was answering the queries, he asked me if I could fight a boxer, to which I replied it was not impossible. He then said that he had a boxing gym next door. When we went over there I saw a tall young man. The crime boss asked me if I’d consider a match with the young men so I answered ‘Sure, but karate techniques do not work with leather gloves on the hands, so I’ll fight bare knuckled. You can come at me with bare hands or with gloves. It’s your choice. Don’t hold back, but don’t worry I won’t kill you.’ The young man said that he would rather wear the gloves. I entered into the first attack from the outside diagonal and pressed his hands down with my palm. Simultaneously I thrust under his eye with my other palm, dropping him instantly. The crime lord was very pleased and took me back to his house and fed me a great feast. “

Hironori Ohtsuka, the founder of Wado style karate, knew Choki Motobu after he came up to Tokyo from Osaka. Ohtsuka recalled that Motobu “could not speak Japanese very well but he was very intelligent. He was definitely a very strong fighter. I once saw a sparring match between Mr Motobu and a boxer called Piston Horiguchi. Every punch of Mr Horiguchi was blocked by Mr Motobu. Mr Horiguchi had been learning kendo in Mr (Yasuhiro) Konishi’s dojo as well.”

Piston Horiguchi: he was mentioned in a 1974 Leo Noonan article on pre-war Japanese boxers in “The Fighters” magazine:

“Takayuki Yamagata, trainer of Misako’s fighters and the youngest looking 50 year-old I’ve ever seen, jogged his memory to recollect a scene of 38 years ago.

“‘In 1936, when I was a 12 year old growing up in Hawaii, I saw a Japanese boxer named Piston Horiguchi, the most courageous athlete I have ever known. Now there was a fellow with a college education who displayed more bravery in the ring than you could imagine.

“Yamagata struck something resembling the legendary John L. Sullivan pose. Then he began pistoning his clenched fists back and forth with blinding speed. ‘That is the way Horiguchi carried on in the ring. He did not have a lot of ability, but those fists always, and I men always, were coming at you. In one fight, both of his eyes had been swollen shut. He went on. And do you know, he won the fight? Today that could never happen, but remember, there was no governing body then.’”

Tsuneo “Piston” Horiguchi was actually a famous pioneer of boxing in Japan and one time Japanese featherweight (125 pound) champion. When I met Choki Motobu’s son Chosei, and his senior pupil Takeji Inaba in 1998, I mentioned that meeting between Choki and Horiguch. Chosei wouldn’t have been present at the meeting because it happened in Tokyo and he was living in Osaka at the time, so he must have got the account from someone else, or perhaps reconstructed it in his mind, but for the record Chosei’s account of the match, as translated by Kiko Ferreira, was that it was Yasuhiro Konishi who introduced Horiguchi to Choki Motobu, and that then “Konishi asked Choki Sensei, ‘Could you teach some techniques to Piston Horiguchi?’ And Choki said ‘You know what, to teach a technique by talking, you will never learn, so get up.’ So Choki made Piston stand up so they were face to face. Choki said to Piston, ‘You can attack me any way you want. Just punch me, kick me, anything.’ So Piston said OK. Boxers usually go like this (round punch), and he tried like that, but by the time Piston’s hand was half-way round Choki’s hand was right on his nose, or face area. So Piston looked like, ‘How the hell did that happen?’ Konishi was watching and said ‘Try again.’ So Piston did another punch and before he hit Choki’s face or body, Choki’s hand was on his nose area again. And that was repeated a few times. But Choki didn’t look like he moved any part of his body. He just stood up, but the hand was already inside Piston’s face. And so Piston said ‘I don’t think I can win. I learned a great deal today. Thank you very much,’ and they left. But they (Motobu and Horiguchi) never had a bad relationship because Piston Horiguchi was a very well-mannered gentleman. That’s what his father told Chosei.

“This is funny. Choki said this man must have a lot of fighting spirit, because he’s the Japanese Champion. But then after that he said to his son (Chosei), ‘You know, it’s hard to believe he’s a Champion.’ Because he couldn’t hit Choki, you know. I mean, Choki was an old man already, and this fighter was young. ‘How could it be that this guy could become the Champion?’ That’s what he said to his son.”

As a kind of side play to this, Kenji Murakawa recalled a time when a team of American boxers visited Motobu’s Tokyo dojo, the Daidokan, in 1937. They were brought there by a Mrs. Morgan from ”The Japan Times.” Unfortunately, Choki Motobu himself was away in Okinawa at the time but anyway the Americans asked if they could come in and train. “Naturally we agreed,” Murakawas remembered. “Right away they asked to do some sparring and two students, Ohno and Hori accepted. Despite Ohno and Hori using their bare fists, the Americans put on boxing gloves. Ohno was about 5 foot 8 and 160 pounds. Hori was only 5 foot 4 and weighed 150 pounds. Both the Americans they fought were bigger in height and weight.

“Ohno wore his kimono and hakama while Hori wore a judogi. Hori was a student of Senshu University and also a 4th dan in judo at the Kodokan. After ‘practice’ the two of them were invited to the Imperial Hotel where they taught kata and kumite drills to the Americans over the next month.”
Unfortunately that account does not say what happened during the sparring, but Charles Goodin’s long article on Choki Motobu in “Classical Fighting Arts” quotes Chosei Motobu as saying that as soon as the matches started Ono dispatched his opponent with a shuto to the side of the neck, and Hori knocked down the other American with a kick to the groin. The story goes on to say that the boxers asked for instruction and stayed in Tokyo one month, although I can’t imagine them being too impressed at seeing one of their team kicked in the groin during what they probably expected to be, by Western standards, a ” fair” sparring match, that is, with no kicking or other foul moves.

I did ask Chosei Motobu whether his father had ever tried out bogu kumite, that is the sparring using gloves and protective equipment that was tested out by some Japanese karate schools in the 1930s, but he replied that, according to what he had heard from Kenji Murakawa, Choki Motobu did not tell students to use bogu, although some students did use it, without approval. Marukawa told Chosei that at the Daidokan “nobody used boxing gloves, for example, because Choki Motobu said that if you use that kind of glove to protect your hands you cannot really use your real power and skill.”

Interestingly, on Chosei Motobu’s “Motobu Kempo” website there is a 1937 photo of karate practice at Toyo University, where Choki Motobu was the sensei. It shows a couple of students practising punches and kicks on the makiwara, and another working on what looks like the kakete-biki, the old-style wooden dummy used for blocking and grabbing training. The other students seem to be practicing blocks and counterattacks wearing protective equipment – body protector, shin guards and gloves. That is an interesting old photo and it seems to show some kind of contact kumite training or preparation. But once Choki Motobu moved back to Okinawa around 1940 that experimentation, and practice at the Toyo University club itself, seemed to have ended.

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