My Visit to Japan…….Gichin Funakoshi
Gichin Funakoshi, as we know, was the founder of modern karate and the teacher of Masutatsu Oyama in the early part of his training. I have read several books on Gichin Funakoshi and was interested to find out if a shrine or memorial to him existed in Japan. I knew he grew up and studied on the island of Okinawa, which is south of Japan, and that he moved to Honshu when the American forces moved in to Okinawa at the end of the Second World War. After this time his story becomes vague and it is unclear where he went.
By doing some research, I found out there was a shrine in Kamakura which is a one and a half hour train ride south of Tokyo. I was up 6.00am for my search to find the shrine. Tokyo’s Shinjuku railway station is huge and positively bustling with tens of thousands of Japanese going about their daily business. Luckily, there are duel signs in Japanese and English to help foreigners negotiate the enormous labyrinth. I manged to get the right train that took me all the way to Kamakura which was a great start.
On arrival at Kamakura I started to look for a cemetery or graveyard. All street signs and directions were, as I expected, in Japanese. Communicating became a series of pointing and gesturing to local Japanese people where I wanted to go. The Japanese are so helpful and I soon found myself in the cemetery. The grounds were beautiful, filled with huge temples and shrines, many of them hundreds of years old. With flowers and trees in blossom everywhere and well off the beaten track of ‘tourist’ Japan, it was so quiet and peaceful and completely the opposite of Shinjuku station. I spent some time in total solitude looking for Funakoshi’s shrine. Unlike Oyama’s shrine; I had no clue what I was looking for. I must have looked a puzzled, western tourist as a Japanese man with near perfect English asked me what I was looking for. He knew exactly where the shrine was and started doing karate moves on our way to the shrine (!?). What a stroke of luck that this man had approached me. My new friend was great, he knew Funakoshi’s history and when we arrived at the shrine he translated all the Japanese writing for me.
The shrine was very plain and was put there in 1968 by Shotokan karate students to celebrate what would have been his hundredth birthday. It said he was a Bishop of Karate and instructed this art until he died. There may be other shrines to him around, I am sure his ashes are not at the shrine in Kamakura but have been unable to find out where he is buried (possibly on Okinawa).
My trip had been worthwhile; I had succeeded in finding the shrine. I am sure many karate practitioners have done this …. all with their own thoughts and reasons for doing so. History is one of my great passions; I wanted to go as far back as I could and this was probably it. I did enjoy the search it was quite an adventure!
Kamakura Cemetery & Sensi @ Gichin Funakoshi’s Shrine
Leave a Reply