Kanku Dai. Asai Tetsuhiko
Kanku Dai. Asai Tetsuhiko — Tetsuhiko Asai performing Shotokan kata. Preserved as part of the Asai karate video collection. #karate #asairyu #shotokan #kata
Forget everything and jump
"People should forget everything and jump head first into what they want to do. Although, the average person can't comprehend such a way of thinking, or to be in such an enviroment, it this type of enviroment, however, that is most essential for one's success."
T.Asai
Asai's advice to 'forget everything and jump head first' sounds reckless, but it is really about commitment: most people hold back, weigh every risk, and never fully give themselves to what they want to do. In karate, that holding back shows up as a half-committed technique — a punch thrown while already thinking about the retreat, a step taken while already doubting it. Asai is saying that success requires the opposite: to let go of hesitation and overthinking, and to throw yourself completely into the thing you have chosen. The same principle appears in his kumite teaching, where he urges students to enter without pre-conceived thought and without fear. For a student, the practical version of this advice is simple: when you decide to train, train fully; when you decide to attack, attack fully; and let the result take care of itself.
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Tetsuhiko Asai was born on June 7, 1935, in Ehime Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku in Japan. He began studying karate at the age of twelve, training at a dojo near his home. At high school he also practised judo and earned a second dan grade, so his early years were shaped by two martial arts at once. The combination of judo's throwing and grappling with karate's striking gave his later karate an unusual range. After school he moved to Tokyo and studied at Takushoku University, where he became one of the leading members of the university karate club. He was a flexible, fast-moving fighter, and he developed a distinctive counter of his own: diving low beneath an opponent's kick and striking back before the opponent could recover. He called this movement the "submarine," and it made his name known across the karate world. The video below shows Asai in a kumite demonstration from 1987. Source: the official biography of Tetsuhiko Asai, International J...
Asai karate video collection
http://master-karate.ru/video.html This video is devoted to Asai karate video collection. This video is part of the Asai kata collection, an archive of seminar and training footage connected with Tetsuhiko Asai's school of karate. Asai-Ryu is rooted in Shotokan and enriched with principles of Chinese White Crane kung fu, and the material collected here shows how that approach is taught and practised in the dojo. The collection is updated every week with further kata and seminar recordings. This video belongs to the Asai karate video collection, an archive of seminar and training footage connected with Tetsuhiko Asai's school of karate. The recordings in this collection show the same principles across many settings: basics, kata, kumite, and teaching, all performed with the relaxed power and precise timing that characterised Asai's karate. Watch each recording more than once — the first viewing gives the shape of the performance, and later viewings reveal the details of foo...
