“You’re okay.”
Was it a statement or a question? I couldn’t tell. I nodded dumbly.
“Now you know why we don’t do more sparring,” he said with a grin. ‘Someone always gets hurt.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen him smile. “Yes,” I replied with a grin of my own, eager to show I didn’t bear a grudge.
At this, it seemed Shinzato felt his duty had been done and he turned to leave. Mrs. Miyagi entered the room with a tray, ignoring Shinzato very deliberately to make her displeasure very clear. There were tea and sweets on the tray and she insisted I drink a cup of sweet tea.
Shinzato murmured a polite good-bye to Mrs. Miyagi but she didn’t reply. I tried to sit up but she would have none of it, and I dared not disobey. Several times I tried to get up and leave, but Mrs. Miyagi continued to make polite conversation and I couldn’t get away. I haven’t even the slightest recollection of the topics we covered, though I imagine it was about the health and wellbeing of my family. A good hour must have passed before Mrs. Miyagi was finally satisfied that I was ready to make my way home.
Miyagi clapped his hands loudly and waited for silence. For an awful moment, I feared he would admonish Shinzato and me for sparring without his permission and make an example of us in front of the whole class, but he had something far more important to say. The very name of our art was about to change.
He explained that despite being a small island, Okinawa had many styles of to-te (or simply ‘te’ as it was often known). In Naha there was Naha-te, in Shuri there was Shuri-te, in Tomari (a port just a mile up the coast) there was Tomari-te. Every village had its own style. There were even styles kept within a single family and passed down in secret from father to son. This reinforced the opinion of the premier martial arts federation of Japan that ‘te’ was a local and somewhat primitive native art of Okinawa compared to the classical martial arts of kendo, jujitsu, aikido, and the newly popular judo.
A group of senior Okinawan masters had formed a committee to set certain standards across all the different styles of Te. Miyagi was the chairman of this committee, and a meeting had taken place the night before, when Shinzato had been giving me my painful introduction to sparring. At this meeting, the name of the art itself had been discussed and a momentous decision had been reached. The written characters for to-te, traditionally written as China Hand, would now be written as Kara-te: Empty Hand. Miyagi sighed before continuing. The committee had decided a more united image of karate would be useful in making it more acceptable on the Japanese mainland. Also, since many Okinawan instructors had no background in Chinese martial arts, it made little sense to call it ‘China Hand’. And understandably, some instructors were keen to lose the association with a country that we were at war with. Others, like Master Funakoshi who was teaching in Tokyo, believed the idea of Empty Hand carried a deeper meaning than simply weaponless. The concept of emptiness is an important one in Zen, and in Miyamoto Musashi’s classic samurai text, The Book of Five Rings, the highest form of all is known as ‘The Void’.
All this made sense when Miyagi explained it. Nevertheless, I sensed his regret in forsaking his connection with the Chinese martial arts, a connection that his master had worked so hard to bring to Okinawa. A few days later, I asked Miyagi in private what he thought of this change. He simply smiled and told me it would take him some time to get used to writing the new character for ‘karate’ in his notes and articles. He seemed reluctant to say more on the subject, and for once, I didn’t press him.
Shortly after the renaming of our art, another important name was decided upon. Jinan Shinzato had been in Tokyo, where he had performed a demonstration of our karate to the crown prince of Japan. When he returned, he reported that his demonstration had been well received and had created considerable interest in Miyagi’s art, but he’d been asked by the prince which style of karate he was demonstrating and hadn’t had an answer. Miyagi’s personal brand of karate did not have a name.
A few days later, Miyagi called our class together once more and announced that our school needed a name to be known by. He recited a poem from the Bubishi—a book of martial strategy from China that he called ‘The Bible of Karate’––which read, ‘Inhaling is softness, exhaling is hardness.’ He’d decided to take his inspiration from this line, calling his karate the ‘Hard Soft School’ or Goju Ryu—‘Go’ meaning hard, ‘Ju’ meaning soft, and ‘Ryu’ being school or association.
Over the weekend I made a wooden sign and painted the words ‘Hard Soft School’ in lettering that I was proud of and presented it to Miyagi on Monday.
“What’s this, Kenichi?” he asked in surprise.
“A sign, to hang above our door. It will tell everyone about our school.”
“Why would I wish to do that?” he asked.
“To attract new students, Sensei. Lots of schools are doing it now. It’s called advertising.”
Miyagi held the sign at arm’s length and regarded the lettering carefully. “It is a nice looking sign,” he said at last. “Thank you very much, Kenichi.”
He put the sign aside, by the wall, and later took it home. It never hung outside the dojo. Miyagi never advertised his karate, he never courted students, and to do so now would have been one change too many for him.
It was the monsoon season and the water was running ankle-deep in the streets. Giant puddles had pooled in Miyagi’s yard and I brushed the excess water away and laid planks over the mud, so he and his family could come and go more easily. I’d just finished when Miyagi emerged from the house and asked if I would like to accompany him to the cemetery in Tsujibara. I agreed, happy for any chance to spend time with my sensei, and we set off down the hill together. Miyagi was carrying a bag on his shoulder that I offered to take for him, but he declined. I knew he was going to pay his respects to his former teacher, Kanryo Higaonna, who was buried in Tsujibara, and understood that he didn’t want to share that duty with another. I didn’t insist, despite feeling awkward walking beside my master empty-handed.
At the cemetery, Miyagi set about cleaning the gravestone methodically. I found a second brush in his bag and began to help. Miyagi didn’t object. We removed old offerings of fruit and rice from the grave and replaced them with new ones, and when it was immaculate once more, Miyagi lit incense and prayed while I stood silently by. He held his silent discourse with his former master and I sensed a heavy burden of grief in him.
By the time he’d finished, the rain had abated and the sun shone through the clouds, casting a patchwork of light and shade across the cemetery. Miyagi rose from his prayers and looked up at the sky to determine the time of day. It was still early, and he seemed in no hurry to leave. He sat on a low wall near the grave and I sat beside him.
“Master Higaonna was the type of martial artist who only comes along once every hundred years,” he whispered, his heart heavy with sadness. “He was Kumemura, like you, did you know?”
“I didn’t,” I said, filled with joy that Miyagi should mention me in the same sentence as his great master.
“His family was descended of the thirty-six families. As a young man he worked as a sailor. His father was killed in a fight when he was fourteen. Higaonna was consumed with grief and wanted revenge. He’d heard of the powerful martial arts of southern China and got himself a passage on a boat to Fuzhou. There was a large Okinawan community in the city and an Okinawan innkeeper helped him find his feet. He told the owner that he wanted to learn the martial arts, and the owner arranged an introduction to one of