Masaru Shintani

Fool on a Hill

In 1968, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated and the world was crazy.

It was an unsettling time that set in motion the roots of the political gridlock which plagues our country today.

Students from the school where I taught, Eisenhower High School—our friends—were being sacrificed in Viet Nam. I wept at the news.

I was 23 years old, young and untested, new to the world, and lost within it. But the world of Northwestern Pennsylvania was nestled far from Martin Luther King's murder in Memphis, the student riots of Kent State, and the illusion of Woodstock. It was quiet, pastoral, green, and calm. I kept low and practiced karate with a vengeance at Tom Handest's hardcore school.

Occasionally we wandered north on two-lane, blacktop country roads, through green New York fields, past the sooty city of Buffalo, then through Niagara Falls across the Peace Bridge to early karate tournaments in Canada.

That's where I met Masaru Shintani.

My memory of the day is as clear as an Arizona morning. I planned to enter a tournament for the first time at the Grimsby Ice Arena in Grimsby, Ontario, a hockey arena thoughtfully cleared of ice for the occasion.

In preparation, in a makeshift basement dojo in my house in Warren, PA, I had practiced my kata ad nauseam, down to standing up when my name would be called, strolling to the center of the ring, and nonchalantly announcing the kata name. I actually practiced all that by myself in my dank basement on an old carpet next to shelves filled with fruit preserves and hand tools. Strange, huh?

Problem was, when the tournament day finally came, I was so nervous sitting on the bench among the other competitors that my feet were oozing sweat like your underarms on a first date. I managed to rise at the sound of my name with no problem and started my stroll across the cold, ice-free, concrete floor like a novice gladiator entering a chilly Coliseum. But I suddenly realized I was leaving nervous, squishy, sweaty footprints in a trail behind me.
I looked back at them, let it fluster me, and when I finally found myself standing in the center of the ring, I couldn't even remember the kata name. I stood there, mute and immobile, for an eternity of seconds, then bowed, turned around, strode back, sat down, and tried to act casual.

No one laughed (at least not out loud).

Later I became even more nervous, botched my sparring match, and lost in about 30 seconds. I did enjoy the ride to Canada, however, and got to see Niagara Falls.

Later that morning, I was eating a sack lunch sandwich in the back of the bus we had rented to haul us there, when the door breathed open. Sensei Masaru Shintani stepped up, looked around, and read my name from a list.

Eyes wide, I jumped up in disbelief, then collapsed back down just as quickly in fear, head low, like a broken jack-in-the-box. Not certain what fate was in store, I figured I must have been banned from karate forever, or at least from Canada. Maybe I was being condemned for stupidity—or excessive sweating.

It turned out he just wanted to tell me I would get another chance at sparring, which I am sure I also botched.

That was my introduction to Masaru Shintani, sensei number three, and it was the beginning of 12 life-changing years under his guidance.

Masaru Shintani was unique. Of all the pretenders of karate mastery, all the faux Masters, self-proclaimed Grand Masters, and Great Grand Masters that prowl the bright lights and back alleys of our arcane martial world, Shintani Sensei was the only one I have ever met in 50 years to whom I felt the term "Master" might apply, and he was the last person on earth who would claim it.

It wasn't Sensei's fighting ability, depth of knowledge, karate experience, nor syllabus of kata that set him apart. His knowledge of karate was not really that broad. It was his simple, direct way of dealing with the world—the proverbial "fool on the hill" who sees the world for what it is and what it isn't—and smiles.

It may have been because he walked in two worlds, the Eastern one and the Western one, but belonged to neither. Born in Canada, he was as Canadian as anyone could be—pleasant and polite, just like the rest of them. But he was also Japanese, come to manhood in the Second World War years while relocated to a British Colombian internment camp.
He studied judo, kendo, and karate but was never really Japanese—not like most of the Japanese teachers I have known. Sensei’s demeanor was quiet and gentle and he laughed easily, never taking himself too seriously. He liked to play baseball.

He first stumbled onto karate in that internment camp sometime before 1945. Karate wasn't well known anywhere yet, even among the Japanese. It was thought of as an Okinawan thing, or Chinese—foreign to the Japanese eye—and things foreign in Japan were shunned. In Japan, the word for "different," chigau, also means "wrong.” In early Japanese movies, the bad guy did karate, the good guy judo.

Sensei often talked about the internment camp but harbored no hard feelings. He said it was like summer camp all the time, with cabins, dirt roads, and woods in which to play.
He and friends were looking, by a river, for frozen water to play hockey one day when they stumbled on an old guy shouting and banging his hand against a tree. They thought he was crazy—kichigai, Sensei called it—and left him alone, at least for the day.

But young Shintani and a couple friends figured there was more to it and went back another day. This time the crazy guy snuck up behind them, grabbed Shintani by the collar, and dragged him into the open. At first, Sensei was frightened but quickly came to realize that the old man was a teacher, a sensei in the classic sense. That was the day he learned how to punch a makiwara (in this case, a birch tree).

The old man's name was Kitagawa, and he would hit the tree to harden his knuckles until he started wearing through the bark, then change to another tree. He became Shintani's karate teacher that day. Sensei would study with him in secret and smash the tree until his knuckles were raw but tried to conceal it from his parents and his other teachers. (I doubt it worked.)
The years drifted by and old Kitagawa passed on. Sensei was well positioned for the karate excitement of the 60's and 70's.

Shintani Sensei was from Samurai lineage, Matsumoto, and it opened doors. He proudly showed me a photo of his grandparents in Samurai dress. Because of that lineage and through connections of his mother, he was ultimately introduced to Ohtsuka Hironori, a karate teacher putting together the international Wado-Kai and looking specifically for pedigreed instructors.

Shintani was a natural for Ohtsuka. He already had a large following in Canada, spoke Japanese and English, and had been practicing karate for 30 years by that time. The Samurai ancestry was the icing on the cake.

But Sensei was an outsider to the Japanese, a non-politician, and the Japanese karate hierarchy of the day was very political. Shintani was almost as much an outsider as I, almost like any gaijin—a foreigner. His Japanese language was antiquated, and he had no connection to any dojo in Japan, except through Ohtsuka.

Ohtsuka made a great effort to bring Sensei into his fold. I have hundreds of letters that Ohtsuka sent him, and I was present as the initial years unfolded. But it was a lost cause. Sensei wasn't the kind of guy who could kowtow and kiss up. All he had was a fast, hard punch that could touch you before you could move and the simple belief that karate recognition wasn't all that important.

In 1973 I moved to Prescott, Arizona, on my eternal quest for life's answers—a teacher and the perfect place to live. Like Shintani in Wado, when I moved to Arizona, I was also an outsider. Other Japanese Wado instructors in the Southwest were arrogant and dismissive when I told them who my teacher was. One was so rude and hostile we almost came to blows.

Nonetheless, I managed to surround myself with a few students—some looking for eastern enlightenment, others, fighting skills. Every year I would fly Sensei out for a week or so to teach classes to anyone who wandered in.

Sensei and I were in my dojo one afternoon going over katas on the dark hardwood floor. Open windows lined one side of the white room, and the fresh air flowed quietly around us.
He asked me to spar a little; he wanted to show me something. Sensei was maybe 5' 9", 140 pounds soaking wet. I am 5' 11" and 200 pounds very dry. I jumped up at the request and we faced each other. I stared at Sensei's gentle expression.

Suddenly, the expression turned deadly serious, and he rose up on his toes like some kind of oriental demon. I stood flatfooted, frozen in my movement, stunned, as he charged in and shot three rapid punches at my face, the wind from each flicking the tip of my nose. Then he stopped, returned to his usual gentle demeanor, went to the window, and lit up a cigarette. It was a perfect lesson in zanshin—vigilance—one, as you can see, I have never forgotten.

There is a deep reservoir of power that resides within some karate people, and Shintani Sensei was one of them. I had mistaken his quiet expression and unassuming demeanor for softness, or possibly weakness. I was completely wrong; that's why his attack overwhelmed me so. I had let down my guard.

He had silently pointed out, with three lightning-fast punches, that he could have hurt me if he had wanted to, not because he was that much better than me, although he was, but because I had dropped my shield, was unprepared. And, if I were to ever really be a warrior, even a pretend one, I could never let it happen again.

It was a humbling breakthrough—the gentle smile and soft demeanor hiding a powerful warrior. It could be the definition of karate.

In the evening after class, I would sit with him on my cabin porch, the Arizona breeze and smell of pine whispering through the trees, the clear nights resplendent with endless stars, and we would talk about life and his karate mission.

One night he pulled a pair of parchments from a cardboard tube and laid them on a table. They had Japanese and English writing on them, with Ohtsuka's signature at the bottom. Sensei called them his "mission statements," diplomas awarded him by Ohtsuka with the "mission" of promoting Wado around North America. He was very proud.

I believe Ohtsuka saw in Shintani the same things I did. Ohtsuka called his style Wado, which Sensei translated as the “Way of Harmony”, and Shintani Sensei lived it and believed in it. If Ohtsuka wanted someone to spread harmony around North America, he had picked the right guy.

But power, not harmony, was the goal of the Wado-Kai politicians. As the years passed, Sensei, although remaining close to Ohtsuka, became more removed from the political organization Ohtsuka was building, until he eventually drifted completely away.

Because of the distance between Arizona and Canada and my own quest for karate knowledge, I left Shintani's organization in 1980. I wrote him a letter telling him and thanking him for the years of friendship and training. He wrote back wishing me luck.

I never saw him again.

My friend and Pennsylvania dojo mate, Bob Graham, remained close to him. He said that Sensei eventually stopped teaching much Wado and more or less reverted back to Kitagawa's old version of Shorin karate.

Masaru Shintani had a warrior spirit. It lives on, like his memory, in my dojo today. It is part of everything I do and teach—a part of who I am. If I can be as powerful yet as humble and gentle as he was, then maybe I can touch the understanding that Masaru Shintani had. I'm already a fool—maybe there's an empty hill somewhere . . .

Sensei Shintani died after suffering a heart attack on a plane trip home from a karate seminar in Northern Canada. Bob Graham inherited a section of his mantle and still teaches some Wado as well as Kitagawa's karate around the world based somewhere in Buffalo, New York.

I learned true harmony from Sensei Shintani.

Fool on a Hill​

Fool on a Hill