Masutatsu Oyama, born in Korea in 1923, began studying Korean kempo at the age of nine. After graduating from middle school in Seoul, he came to Japan to study at an aviation school in 1938.
Although he first undertook to master Kodokan judo, he later switched to karate, in which he made such amazing progress that at seventeen he was second dan and at twenty-two forth dan. While enrolled at the Takushoku University, he was drafted into the military. In 1947, immediately after World War II, Oyama won the All-Japan Karate Championship and, after resolving to devote his body and soul to karate, retired to the mountains where, living alone, he practiced the strictest psychological and physical discipline. After he returned to the ordinary world, he began a career of teaching the true karate to people everywhere.
During his flrst trip to the United States, in 1952, in hundreds of exhibitions he proved to thousands of people how astonishing the power of karate is. In those days, his amazing ability to rip the horns from living bulls caused a tremendous sensation, but gradually, as his fame spread, his true aim of teaching the essential spirit of the martial arts came to the foreground as his students and followers began to establish Oyama-karate training halls all over the globe. Oyama himself, in his frequent trips around the world to research the military techniques of other nations, has expanded the bonds ofkarate to the extent that today over ten thousand students in five hundred Oyama karate training halls in over forty nations are carrying on his work.
Language: English
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