Budo international Martial Arts Magazine Jul.-Aug. 2014 | Page 255

Interview
leave the WKF. That was when
Keiichi Hasumi and Toru Arakawa
were in charge.”
I know both of them. Hasumi was
Vice-president of the JKF for many
years and so Sasagawa’s right hand in
karate, while Arakawa is a Wado Kai
ninth dan and ran the technical side
back then.
“Well,
during
the
World
Championships, Arakawa was the
one who spoke up about it. But in
the end the changes were approved
anyway and that was the end of it.”
So there’s no special attitude
towards Japan, then, other than the
kind of courtesy you mentioned?
“Now we no longer see Japan as a
special case, no. In any company or
group there comes a time when you
have to choose between control and
growth. To grow you have to discard
some ballast and lose some control.
Something that we’ve achieved is to
make karate universal by releasing
ourselves from Japanese control.
What we were talking about earlier
regarding Spain.”
But karate is Japanese, so shouldn’t
it have certain values that are related
to Japan?
“We still hold by the values that
have made karate what it is today. In
that respect the Japanese have
done a good job. Yes, Japan is just
another country but it’s an important
one, and they're way up there in the
medals table. They're a major power,
with their ups and downs but still a
major power.”
Indeed, for several years after
International competition began the
Japanese were not surprisingly the
best, but then they went through a
period when they won nothing. Why do
you think that happened?
“The Japanese have struggled to
adapt to change, but they’ve
managed it and done it well. Now
the JKF, with their president
Sasagawa, has a good relationship
with the WKF and that matters to me
a lot. Also, the Japanese culture is
very different. The Chinese too, and
Asian people in general. It’s a
different world. We often don’t
realise it but they’re still a long way
away and that’s an issue that we still
need to resolve, whether it’s to do
business with them or in several
other areas as well. We haven’t
managed to win the Hݙ\