Choki Motobu, Boxing, and Jen Kentel - 4

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By Graham Noble

A few years ago “Hiden”, a Japanese magazine devoted to traditional martial arts, carried a series of articles by Junichi Ikemoto, “Meiji Taisho Ishu Kakuto Ketoh Roku” – Record of Mixed-fighting Matches in Meiji-Taisho Era. This was a very well researched series on matches between Japanese martial artists and foreign fighters - contests of judo vs boxing - in the early part of the last century. In a kind of addendum in the May 2018 issue of the magazine Junichi Ikemoto wrote about the Motobu vs boxer contest.

He noted firstly that “the actual facts and the circumstances surrounding this event have never been clear.” For information he went back to the anecdotal accounts in the August 1925, “Kingu” magazine; the June 27, 1925 issue of the “Asahi Shinbun” newspaper; the 1936 Ryukyu Shinpo round table discussion with Choki Motobu himself; the interview with Chozo Nakama by Seijin Jahana, and Shosin Nagamine’s reference to the match in his book. Here again Ikemoto mentions Nagamine’s comment that the boxer was not Kentel: “Incidentally according to Mr. Nagamine, the rumor circulated that the boxer was the then well-known Russian strong man whose name was John Kentel. However this was was incorrect. In reality, the boxer was an unknown.”

The interesting thing about his series (it was subsequently published as a book) was the terrific amount of research Junichi Ikemoto did for his series in the newspapers and publications of the time, including the "Kyoto Hinode Shinbun”, "Kyoto Nichinichi Shinbun”, "Osaka Asahi Shinbun”, and so on. In his Motobu article he included a table listing judo vs boxing events from Taisho 9 (1920) to Showa 5 (1930) mainly in Kobe and Kyoto, with a couple in Osaka and Tokyo. Ikemoto was able to identify the names of some of thes boxers who took part: George, Johnson, John Kelly, John Hayger, Jackson, Hood, although the actual names are uncertain because they were written in the Japanese katakana script. In response to a reader’s question, the “Kyoto Hinode Shinbun” (newspaper) of October 20, 1923 stated that “The most number of foreign participants were from Russia,” which ties in with the traditional stories. Bearing in mind the dates, Ikemoto hazards a guess that Choki Motobu’s opponent could have been either “Johnson”, or more possibly “George”.

However, and importantly - there was no mention anywhere of a Jan Kentel, or “Jon Kentaro” – and Ikemoto also wrote that “Unfortunately, we were not able to locate the name, ‘Motobu’ in the actual Shiai records of the Judo-vs.-Boxing promotion events.” That is, there is no contemporary evidence of either Kentel or Motobu taking part in boxing vs judo -or karate - matches . . . . and actually, that doesn’t come as a surprise.

The probable reason for this, as Ikemoto mentions, is that Choki Motobu was not one of the scheduled fighters on the programme; rather, he was likely to have been one of the “tobiri”, that is, participants who had decided to take part on the spur of the moment. Although most of the contests were scheduled between matched opponents, the tobiri were a fairly popular part of these events, and in fact such participation was often encouraged by the promoters. If Motobu was a tobiri – and again, this ties in with the traditional accounts – then it’s unlikely that his name would have been recorded. And also, going through Ikemoto’s article it’s surprising to read how many contests there were in these mixed fighting promotions and how they often ran over several days. (Maybe to assure a successful promotion some contests may even have arranged (fixed)) In the second Kyoto event (June 1920), for example, there were a total of 43 matches of which 15 were tobiri, and in the third there were 28 matches, (14 tobiri), so it’s unlikely that one particular contest featuring an unscheduled fighter would have attracted much attention. Ikemoto speculates that “It was perhaps not so important to Motobu himself for the same reason.” It was only later, with the increasing awareness and popularity of karate, that Motobu’s fight against the boxer seemed significant.

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