I struck again.
“Harder!”
I struck a third time.
Miyagi shook his head in disappointment. “The first and last weapon of a to-te fighter is his punch,” he told me. “One punch, one kill. That is our motto. Again!”
I hit the board as hard as I could. A sharp pain shot through my hand.
“Grip your hand tightly when you strike,” he told me.
I did.
“Again!”
I struck again.
“That is how you must punch,” he told me.
I stopped, eager to leave the painful striking post and move onto the next exercise, but Miyagi didn’t move, and it dawned on me that the exercise wasn’t over.
“One hundred times, with each hand,” he said.
I stared at him dumbly, hoping he was joking. “We’ll do it together, since it’s your birthday,” he said. I realized he wasn’t.
Miyagi readied himself before the other striking post, then waited for me to do the same. I placed my trembling fist against the pad. He nodded for me to begin. I drew my hand back and struck. At the same moment, there was an explosion beside me. I jumped away in fear, the pain in my hand forgotten. Miyagi had hit the post. He smashed it again. The plank bent back at an impossible angle, then righted itself, only to be driven back by another tremendous blow. Each time he struck, there was an ear-splitting crash and the groaning of wood as the plank bent back. The pounding went on and on until, after perhaps fifteen strikes, he stopped and glared at me. There was a look in his eyes that can only be described as predatory—he was ready to tear me apart like some savage beast from the jungle. I took an involuntary step back. He held me in his gaze, until I realized he was waiting for me to punch and returned to my position.
We struck up a rhythm together. With the sound and fury of Miyagi’s punches, I couldn’t concentrate on the dreadful pain in my hand. To my astonishment, Miyagi’s punches got harder and harder, until the plank began to split and soon broke in two, leaving only a jagged stump sticking up from the ground. Miyagi turned and went back inside the dojo without a word.
I continued tapping my pad, the blood from my torn knuckles adding fresh color to the old brown stain. When I reached one hundred punches, I checked to see if Miyagi was watching. I couldn’t see him, but I didn’t dare to cheat—he had a sixth sense, after all. I placed the front two knuckles of my left hand against the pad and punched as hard as I could.
When I’d finished, I took a leaf from a nearby tree and dabbed at my bleeding hands to avoid getting blood on my clothes. Mother would be angry, or worse, she might prevent me from training.
I went back inside the hall and watched the older boys. Their training didn’t resemble fighting. Jinan Shinzato was holding a heavy earthenware jar in each hand, fingers splayed around the rim, and was walking in slow deliberate steps. Another tall slim boy was training with the stone-hammer known as the chiishi. Squatting low with his arm extended, he turned the chiishi up and down to build strength in his wrist. Another boy was moving the giant oval ring called the kongoken around his body. Beside him, an older boy was practicing with heavy iron rings on his forearms, while the last of them held a barbell across his shoulders and, leaning forward, rolled it down the length of his back, controlling it with his arms.
Miyagi saw me and came over to inspect my knuckles. Without a word, he led me to a tap and ran cold water over my hands until all traces of blood were gone. Taking a clean cloth from a cupboard, he dabbed my hands until they were dry. He reached for a bottle of dark liquid and splashed a little into his palm before rubbing it gently into my shredded skin. I clenched my teeth to avoid making a sound. Finally, he cut two strips of bandages and wrapped them slowly around my hands, securing them with a neat knot. I could hear his steady breathing as he did so and felt a little ashamed that he was forced to spend so long on my injuries. When he’d finished, he clapped his hands twice and each student took up a new piece of equipment.
“Jiru!” he called out, and Jinan Shinzato stepped forward, “Sanchin.”
Jiru was Miyagi’s nickname for Shinzato. No one else called him by that name. I watched as Shinzato began to perform the same movements I’d seen Miyagi do in the typhoon. This was Sanchin. Miyagi took up position behind Shinzato and began to probe the muscles around Shinzato’s shoulder and back with his fingers, testing their condition, searching for weakness, muttering as he did, “Yes, yes.” He continued down Shinzato’s spine to his hips and onward, down his legs to his feet. All the while Shinzato continued his performance, punching slowly and with tension. Suddenly Miyagi clapped his palms across Shinzato’s shoulders and the slap of skin on sweat-soaked skin rang out around the room. He struck Shinzato’s sides and his stomach in the same way, and Shinzato kept these areas tense to withstand Miyagi’s blows. When Shinzato had finished, Miyagi nodded, but it seemed he wasn’t completely satisfied. “Again,” he demanded quietly, and Shinzato began once more.
I went to try my hand at the strength training, eager to develop a physique like Shinzato’s. The earthenware jars were sitting unused on the floor and I bent to lift them. To my surprise, I found they had been filled with water and were impossibly heavy. I planted my feet firmly between the jars and tried again. I succeeded in raising them off the ground, but when I took a step forward, I felt the jars slipping from my grasp. The thought of broken jars and water over Miyagi’s floor was too frightful. I put them back down. Just then, Miyagi clapped his hands and ordered the equipment to be cleared away.
“Kata!” he said loudly, and each student began to practice a sequence of punches, blocks, kicks, and strikes. Sometimes they struck with open hands, using the palm, fingertips, or edge of the hand. I looked on, bewildered, until Miyagi came and put his hand on my shoulder. “You can go home now,” he said. “It is getting dark and your lesson is finished for today.”
I wanted to stay and watch the other boys, but I dared not contradict him. Instead, I bowed and thanked him for instructing me. I offered to pay but he shook his head and told me I’d already paid. As I left the training hall and followed the long road home, I wondered what he meant by that. It would be some years before I understood.
The next evening when I returned to the dojo, Miyagi wasn’t there and Jinan Shinzato was teaching the class instead. They had begun early, and I was left to wait in the doorway for five minutes until Shinzato beckoned me to join in. He led us through the same warm-up exercises that Miyagi had done, then ordered us to begin our strength training with the weights and jars. I looked to Shinzato for instruction, but he shook his head and led me outside saying simply, “Makiwara.”
I didn’t know what a makiwara was and expected to find some new training aid waiting for me outside, but Shinzato sauntered over to the striking posts, one smashed and broken in two, the other darkened with my blood from the day before, and waited for me to join him. Each step was a step filled with despair. Shinzato glared at me, daring me to contradict him. I looked into his hard eyes, wondering if he really didn’t know that we went to the same school, then placed my raw knuckles against the red-brown stain and got set to punch.
“No!” he said.
I waited, expecting him to correct some aspect of my stance, but instead he pointed to the broken makiwara. “You need to replace it.” I must have looked at him dumbly because he spoke as if talking to an imbecile. “Master Miyagi said that if
