windbreaks—a row of yellow sea hibiscus planted on one side, and a twisted banyan on the other. A stream bubbled by along the back of our house, so we had no need of a well. The sweet water continued even during the frequent droughts, and there was always enough for our needs.
Inside, the house was separated into three rooms by moveable panels. Unlike Japanese houses, each room had a sliding door to the outside, so any part of the house could be entered from the outside. Like every house in Okinawa, we had a partition set aside with a small shrine for ancestor worship, the main spiritual practice on the island.
In the evenings, father would play the three-stringed samisen, an instrument of Chinese origin, and mother cooked. Our wood-burning stove was covered save for two holes just big enough for two pans—once the pans were in place, the stove was entirely sealed to retain the heat. Mother would cook rice or sweet potato to eat with the fish that father brought home, and every so often she would make miso. Each household in Okinawa made its own, and mother’s miso was renowned.
When father brought home a catch of bonito, she would dry it and store it to exchange for pork and eggs with the local farmers. I was often sent to make these exchanges, and spent hours walking through the patchwork fields of sugarcane and sweet potato that hugged the craggy landscape. On the higher ground, I would pass the estates of rich landowners. Their grand houses were surrounded by ornate terraced walls, and the stepped gardens contained trees that had been tied as they grew to create beautiful shapes.
The hard-packed roads were just wide enough for two carts to pass. Sometimes I would be lucky enough to hitch a ride on a cart, but most of the time, like most of the people in Okinawa, I walked. The richer folk on the island would sometimes take a rickshaw to spare themselves the sun-baked climb. I’d watch the rickshaw men go by, marveling at their strength in pulling such enormous loads up the hillsides, their sun-blacked bodies as sinewy as the rope that gave our island its name. Very occasionally, a car or truck would go past and I would stop and stare, wondering what it felt like to travel as fast as the wind.
Once I’d visited the farmer and exchanged the bonito, I’d go home by a different route, exploring off the beaten track, following narrow goatherd’s trails to see where they led or climbing a new hill to see what was on top. On the higher ground the trees had also been bent into curious shapes, not by human hands, but by the invisible hands of typhoons, while below, the domed roofs of the traditional Okinawan family tombs resembled giant turtles, moving with infinite slowness toward the sea.
Over the years, I have learned a lot about Chojun Miyagi. Most of it, I will tell you at the appropriate time in my story, but some of it I will tell you now, so you can know something of the man and his background before we begin our journey in karate together. He was the head of the Miyagi family, a family of Shikozu (Okinawan nobility) that owned an import and export business with two ships and traded goods between China and Japan. Chojun’s grandfather had been the head of the family, but Chojun’s father, Chosho, was the third son, so he could not become head of the family. This changed when the first son died without leaving an heir. At the age of five, Chojun was chosen to take the position of first-born son and went to live with his newly-widowed aunt, who became his new mother. How this affected him as such a young child I do not know. While I was close to my sensei, we never spoke of such personal family matters. All I know is that in those days, it was more common for families to do such things than it is today.
The young Miyagi took over this position of responsibility in a period of uncertainty, with relations worsening between China and Japan, and Okinawa a tiny island in the middle. His new mother decided he could do with toughening-up by sending him to train with a local to-te instructor called Ryuko Aragaki. Fortunately, the young Miyagi was naturally strong and gifted, and he took to his training eagerly. He was also boisterous and often got into scrapes with other boys. He hated to lose a fight, even against bigger boys, and if he did, he would keep challenging the same boy until he won. Ryuko Aragaki’s to-te was powerful but rather simple—he concentrated on punching power and body conditioning—so when he saw the immense potential in Miyagi, he sent him to train with a true master, Kanryo Higaonna. Higaonna had trained in China for many years and was one of the foremost masters on Okinawa. Miyagi thrived under his strict tutelage, and Higaonna succeeded in bringing the boy’s wild ways under control, at least most of the time. In later years, when Miyagi reminisced about his own training, he would say that the austerity of Higaonna’s methods would be too much for the youth of today to bear and complained that after many hours of moving in the low squatting stance of shiko dachi, his training would leave him too weak to even squat over a toilet.
Miyagi grew into an accomplished athlete and gymnast, and excelled in sport. He was restless and looked into all aspects of combat that he could find on the island. He trained in judo, which was very popular at the time, and learned tegumi (Okinawan wrestling) from a local champion. He experimented in new ways of training, like sparring with protective armor and using full-power blows, and he introduced new equipment into his program like the kongoken, a heavy oval iron ring used to develop wrestling strength that he came across in Hawaii.
Unfortunately, Miyagi’s talents as a martial artist did not extend to business. This is understandable when you consider that with most great men there is only room for one passion, one driving obsession, and Miyagi’s was karate. He took a job in a bank to gain some business experience but it didn’t work out and after a year his family urged him to stop, saying he should devote all his energies to the martial arts instead. This allowed Miyagi to dedicate his life to karate and plumb the depths of his art without constraint. Again, this was not as strange in those days as it might seem today. The martial arts were held in high regard in Okinawa, and Miyagi’s noble dedication to their pursuit brought honor and renown to the family. He became a figurehead for the family, while other, more level heads concerned themselves with the day-to-day running of the business.
Unfettered by financial constraints and limited only by the hours in the day, Miyagi was able to dedicate himself body and soul to the art he loved so dearly. The whole island became his dojo. He visited the north of the island, with its thick forests and clean mountain air, and came south, away from the built-up area of the capital, to climb the hills and train on the rugged cliffs of Cape Kyan.
The next time I saw him, I had stopped at the beach to dive and hold my breath as he had instructed, but the sea had been too rough for swimming, so I had sprinted up a nearby hill instead. While recovering at the top, I noticed a strange sight below: a man was running on the dirt track that led down to the sea. On either side of the track was a stone wall, and the man, running in a zigzag, was hurling himself against one side and then the other. It could only be one person, and sure enough, as he passed directly below me, I recognized Miyagi. I watched him, unseen, as he made his way down to the beach, and there he began to exercise on the shifting pebbles. These were not the slow, deliberate movements I’d seen him perform before—these were fast punches and kicks, blocks and strikes, punctuated every so often by a fierce battle cry that carried above the roar of the surf.
Next, he entered the ocean up to his neck. I knew how hard it was to battle the fierce rips and currents in the water at that time of day. He remained among the waves for twenty minutes, and when he emerged, he seized an enormous stone and raised it countless times over his head, then stood before a boulder and struck it with his bare hands. The heavy slap of flesh on stone rang out, loud enough for me to hear on the hilltop.
I didn’t approach him. Instead, I simply watched, as I’d done during the typhoon, to see how the great to-te master trained. I saw the same fierce intensity I’d witnessed on the cliff-tops. Miyagi seemed locked in a struggle against the elements that made up our island. He was fighting a hopeless battle—no man could tame the ocean or the wind, or smash the coral rock of Okinawa—but I sensed something noble in Miyagi’s struggle, a desire to engage with the elements, a desire that I myself shared.
