Tempu Nakamura

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Tempu Nakamura (Japanese: 中村天風 July 20, 1876 - December 1, 1968) was a Japanese martial artist. He was the first to bring yoga to Japan and founded his own art called Shin Shin Toitsu-do (Japanese: 心身統一道), the Way of Mind and Body Unification.

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[edit] Biography

Born in Tokyo, Japan, his original name was Saburo (Japanese: 三郎). He was the son of Nakamura Yuusuke (born 1853), who introduced the use of paper money in Japan when he served as the bureau director of the Japanese Ministry of Finance. Tempu Nakamura later moved to Fukuoka-shi (福岡市, Fukuoka City), Fukuoka-ken (福岡県) to live with a relative. Once there, he took private lessons from an Englishman and enrolled in the Shüyükan (Japanese: 修猷館, now Fukuoka Prefectural Shüyükan High School in Sawara-ku) school where English was the medium of instruction and where he became proficient in judo. After a violent encounter, he left the school and joined Genyosha ultra-nationalist secret society, forming a friendship with Toyama Mitsuru.

At the age of 16, he joined the Imperial Japanese Army and served as a covert agent in Northern China, which was then the puppet state Manchukuo. He was one of only nine out of 113 military affairs investigators to return to Japan alive from the Russo-Japanese War, after which he suffered a severe attack of tuberculosis at the age of 30.

Seeking a cure for the illness, he studied the autonomic nerves at Columbia University, and traveled to England, Germany, Belgium and France. For a period of time he lived with the family of Sarah Bernhardt. In 1911, on his way back to Japan, he met a philosopher in Egypt named Kaliapa, who took him to Kangchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world, located between Nepal and India. He remained there for two and a half years of yoga study and practice, which incidently cured his illness.

After finally returning to Japan, he served as president of Tokyo Industrial Bank, among other business activities. He established his own medical and philosophical organization, renaming it Tempukai (Japanese: 天風会) in 1940. He taught Shin Shin Toitsu Do to Koichi Tohei, who later founded Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido.

In Japan, Tempu was a prolific writer of philosophy and books dealing with business.

[edit] Published works

Published works by Tempu Nakamura include these Japanese titles:

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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