I don’t remember Tadashi Yamashita from the film I watched recently, though I’m very familiar with him more generally.
Never been hit with a shinai (though I have one). Been hit with plenty of olisi (“eskrima sticks”).
The movie I watched followed the American team to that kyokushin tournament in Japan. Showed matches between various countries through the course of the movie.
Interesting to see the point matches you’ve referenced pre-foam dipped pads.
Yamashita could seriously rock.
We were training in a black belt seminar and Yamashita was explaining something we were about to do.
And there’s a big guy who’s shaking his head as Yamashita is talking.
Yamashita looks at him and says “You shake head. Why?”
The guy says, “Well, that might work with a lightweight, but it’s not going to work on a guy my size. There just isn’t any way.”
And I’m thinking to myself, “Dude, you signed up for this seminar, you obviously knew who he was. And now you’re being disrespectful and contradicting him? Are you nuts?”
Yamashita says, “Come, you show.”
So the guy walks up to him. And Yamashita is not a large man, the guy is dwarfing him.
They square off and the guy comes at him. Yamashita hits him with the technique that wouldn’t work against a big guy, a body shot so fricken fast all of us there went from hating the guy to honestly feeling sorry for him. The guy’s body is suddenly in shock. He can’t breathe in, he can’t move, he can’t even fall.
Finally he crumbles to the ground. Yamashita stands over him and says. “You show why not work. I wait.”
The guy eventually breathes in. And crawls away to the sidelines.
But to give the guy his due, about fifteen minutes later he asks permission to approach. Yamashita nods.
The guy bows to Yamashita, then to the whole group and apologizes to everyone. Then rejoins the seminar.
He didn’t have anymore questions.
Later that night, Yamashita did a breaking demo using certain principles and techniques taught in the seminar. One of which was not squeezing your fist hard when punching someone. “Use proper technique, not squeeze fist hard.”
I swear to God, he did a punch break to a nasty bunch of cement slabs, shattering them.
Then he holds up the
hand he used in the break and slowly opens it.
A Japanese White Eye (a small bird) flew out of his hand and went up to the rafters.
There’s a lot of Japanese White Eyes out here. I see them nearly every day. They always make me think of Tadashi Yamashita.
