Kotaro Yoshida

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Kotaro Yoshida was an 19th to 20th Century Japanese martial artist and member of the Amur River Society (also known as the Black Dragon Society), an ultra-nationalist organization of disenfranchised ex-samurai who promulgated "pan-Asiatic ascendancy" in line with the rise of Japanese imperialism. While by all accounts a prolific martial artist and teacher, there is little surviving documentation of Yoshida's life that has been translated into English. Because he was known to have lived an extremely ascetic lifestyle, and possibly as a result of his political activities and connections, most information on Yoshida today has been passed down through oral transmission by primary sources.

In relating a speech given by one of Yoshida's top students, Richard Kim, Don Warrener (himself a student of Kim) notes that Yoshida came from a family that had held Samurai rank during the pre-restoration period of feudal Japan. At a young age Yoshida apprenticed himself to Sokaku Takeda, head of the Daito-Ryu AikiJu-Jitsu school, which would soon become popular throughout Japan as part of the public revitalization of the martial arts. Yoshida would become Sokaku's top student, and there is some disagreement as to whether mastery of the art of passed down to Yoshida himself or another Sokaku pupil. What is known is Yoshida's status as a top student of Sokaku's is undisputed, and he is in fact credited with introducing Ueyshiba Morhei, founder of Aikido, to Sokaku.

Settling down after the war, Yoshida lived with and instructed his student Richard Kim, a member of the Kempei-te and founder of the Shorinji-Ryu school of Karate-do, in the Daito-Ryu, eventually certifying him as the designated heir to the style (this does not mean Kim was designated heir to the entire Daito Ryu, only to Yoshida's version of it). It is also claimed Yoshida had an estranged son who emigrated to the United States and eventually passed on a form of Aikijujitsu to a US military serviceman named Don Angier, who currently teaches in California.

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