In today’s Kyokushin world, it sometimes seems that every year brings another organization, another split, or another debate about who is right and who is wrong.

It can be easy to lose sight of what we should all be focusing on.

What should we be focused on?

Let me answer that by sharing a story with you.

Hawaii, 1995

When I was a young nidan, I traveled to Hawaii to train at Shihan Bobby Lowe’s annual summer camp. It was 1995, the year after Sosai had passed away. Kancho Matsui was the special guest, but my recollection is that the camp was taught mainly by Shihan Lowe and his black belts. There were karateka there from all over the world.

It was a great camp, and as Kyokushin camps often did in those days, it wrapped up with a Sayonara Party on the last night. There was laughter, good food, and of course, plenty of drinking.

At some point, I slipped away to the restroom to get rid of some of the beer I’d had. Who should walk in but Shihan Bobby Lowe himself.

I gave him a nod and said, “Osu.”

We were both standing there—I think he’d had a few beers too (I know I had)—when, out of the blue, he said to me:

“Never get involved in politics!”

He paused.

“Just focus on the training, that’s the most important thing.”

Then he said more quietly, almost to himself, and with what seemed to me, looking back, like a bit of sadness:

“But I seem to get dragged into it whether I want to or not.”

We finished what we were doing, washed our hands, and went back to the party.

Texas, 30 Years Later

That conversation has stayed with me for more than thirty years.

At the time, I was a young nidan and probably didn’t think much about it. Looking back now, more than three decades later, I suspect there was more behind that conversation than I understood at the time.

A need to get rid of some beer may have only been part of the reason for our chance conversation. Looking back, I’ve often wondered what prompted him to say that. Politics certainly wasn’t on my mind that evening, yet it was clearly on his..

Looking back now, I recognize that his good friend of 42 years had been gone barely a year. I sometimes wonder if he sensed changes coming that most of us could not yet see.

Here we are now, three decades later, and we are more splintered politically than anyone could have imagined before Sosai passed away.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

You could argue it either way.

But regardless of where you stand on that question, the older I get, the more I know this to be true:

We should be focused on the training.

Osu!

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