Going out on Top
George Kotaka retires from competition after winning his second world karate championship, bringing him closer to his legendary father. Thirty-one years of age is rather young to retire. But when you’ve spent the better part of your life fighting and preparing for such encounters, the time quickly comes when your body says enough is enough.
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Del.icio.uswar. Sometimes my dad would tell me stories about how hard life was. Just life in general was so hard when he grew up. I think that kind of hardened him a lot, too.”
Food shortages weren’t the only hazard the young Chuzo had to deal with.
His Osaka neighborhood also was home to a population of yakuza, whose younger members often harassed their weaker neighbors.
Unlike some of his school-mates, however, the young Kotaka wasn’t afraid to mix it up with his less-than-law-abiding neighbors.
“He used to tell me about how he used to get into fights all the time, every single day, and that’s why he knows so much yakuza,” the son says. “The syndicate respected him because they used to get beaten up by my father all the time. Before high school they would have somebody waiting for him all the time.”
From such hard-scrabble beginnings came a friendship of sorts between the elder Kotaka and his former instigators. George is careful to point out that his father was never a gangster, but that life in his father’s neighborhood required a certain level of respect paid to the underground power brokers. It was a relationship that continued even after his father left Japan to begin teaching in Hawaii.
“I think the first time I went to Japan we went to a yakuza headquarters,” the son recalls. “There was this gated thing, cameras all over the place, the head boss gave me this huge Sony stereo, a boom box. I was surprised he gave it to me, but it was very cool.”
The Kotaka legacy of karate in the United States is well established, and both generations have had an important impact. The father planted the seed, and the son was the fruit that grew from his father’s initial efforts and helped make the United States a serious contender in international karate.
“The U.S. was really considered a weak country at the time,”
George says. “Right now we are making a much bigger stand. But in the 1980s, ‘90s we were really looked at like a scrub country. If you had the U.S. in the first round, you knew you’d be getting by them - no real threat.”
That is no longer the case. With George, his sister Mari Kaneshiro, a five-time AAU/USA national champion; Elisa Au, a three-time World Karate Federation world champion, and now, 19-year-old Eimi Kurita, who earned bronze at the 2008 Pan Am Championship, the United States in general and Hawaii in particular have become an important factor in international competition. All have come out of the same dojo, the International Karate Federation in Kaimuki.
Known as Kotaka-ha Shito Ryu, the family’s karate enterprise encompasses schools in Hawaii, California, Washington and Chicago. The dojos are franchises that do not pay fees to the Kotakas, but that do teach Chuzo’s style - and do so only with the master’s permission.
“I’d say our standards are more difficult, a lot higher than typical karate schools,” the champ says. “That is not to say other schools are not good, but I truly believe that our standards are at a very high level and that my father has maintained that since coming over from Japan. It may take a little bit longer, but when you do achieve a certain level I think it’s worth more.”
Another thing that separates their students from others is that his father’s signature is on every promotion. Chuzo, a ninth-degree black belt, was awarded by his master in Japan the right to promote students. Many schools on the Mainland create their own certificates, which George says dilutes the standards as the schools have little or no connection to and understanding of the roots of the sport.
For all the importance placed on rank in the world of martial arts, it’s interesting that George has relative disinterest in the sport’s most-recognizable system of achievement. To him, a black belt is not the end of the journey but, in fact, is the beginning of real knowledge.
“For our school, the black belt is really just an intermediate step - and it’s very huge step and it’s very vigorous and there is a lot of commitment to that, but there is way more capacity to learn,” he says.
“For me, it really doesn’t matter about how many degrees you have, it’s really about what you know, the knowledge you have and if you’re able to pass down that information. You could be a tenth degree, but if you don’t know how to teach and pass down the knowledge, you’re really doing a disservice to yourself and to anyone else.
“A black belt just means you’ve just mastered the basics.”
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