Hideyuki Ashihara
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| Hideyuki Ashihara | |
| Born | December 5, 1944 Hiroshima, Japan |
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| Died | April 24, 1995 (aged 50) Japan |
Hideyuki Ashihara (December 5, 1944--April 24, 1995) was a Japanese martial artist who founded the Ashihara karate system in 1980. This Karate style is based on Kyokushin Karate.
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[edit] Early life
He was born near Hiroshima and raised by his grandparents in the small village of Nomicho. He began studying Kendo at the age of 10. In 1960, when he was 15 years old, he moved to Tokyo where he worked for the next six years at a gas station. In September 1961 he began the study of Karate at Oyama Dojo, which would eventually become the Kyokushinkai Honbu Dojo under Kyokushin founder Mas Oyama. He was impressed by the style's hard and realistical training, and earned his black belt there on March 26, 1964, at the age of 19.
[edit] Career
Though he as appointed an instructor in 1966, a street altercation in which he reportedly beat-up several yakuza led to his being suspended from the organization by Mas Oyama himself. Oyama's strong reaction to the incident may because the yakuza that Ashihara beat-up were personal friends of Oyama. [1] After two months the suspension was lifted, and he was sent to Nomura (on the island Shikoku) to teach. He later moved to Yawatahama where he opened a large Kyokushin Karate school.
By the mid-1970s he had begun to form his own style, more circular and less linear than Kyokushin, which would eventually be called Ashihara Karate. He moved to Matsuyama where he taught the system. One of his students, Joko Ninomiya, won the 1978 All-Japan tournament. Later, tensions with other Kyokushin instructors led to Ashihara being formally expelled from the Kyokushinkai in late 1978 to early 1979. In 1980 the Honbu Dojo for the new system was completed, and the New International Karate Organisation (NIKO) was founded to govern the system. Hence, the date of the true beginning of the system is often taken to be 1980. The basic principle of his new system was "sabaki", which means to move to the side, to angle, and reach the opponents blind spot. That way you get out of the line of his attack into a safe position without losing distance so you can easily hit him from his side or back. The linear style of Kyokushin often leads to that the winner is the strongest or maybe the fastest. Ashiharas vision with his new system was that it could be used by anyone regardless of size or physical abilities.
Beginning in 1983, he published three books and three instructional videos for his new style. The first book, entitled Fighting Karate (the nickname for the style), was very popular, even among practitioners of other Karate styles.
[edit] Death
In 1987 he began to show signs of ALS. His condition worsened in the 1990s and he died of complications of the disease in 1995. His son Hidenori Ashihara became the second head of the system. (The head of this style is referred to as Kancho.) He continues to head NIKO.
[edit] Legacy
Hideyuki Ashihara is remembered as an innovator who took the realistic full-contact training of Kyokushin and built a more refined and technical self-defense system from it. Since then, others have created their own variants of his system, such as Enshin Karate or Seidō juku Karate.
