Martial Arts Community Bids Farewell to TERUYUKI OKAZAKI

Teruyuki Okazaki was a bully. That may not be the most flattering way to remember one of the principal leaders of karate in the West, a student of Gichin Funakoshi and a protégé of Masatoshi Nakayama — not to mention one of the art’s most incredible technicians and talented teachers — but he admitted to the bullying himself.

Okazaki told the story — as was often the case when he became excited or particularly involved in one — while slipping sometimes into the from Funakoshi in the late 1950s, after failing the test a couple of times. It was not for lack of technique, he said, but because of his attitude. Most of the other students back then hailed from Tokyo. Okazaki said they looked on his “always ready for a fight” kind of assertiveness and “stubborn” mentality as a sort of two-fisted cowboy roughness. It didn’t go over well with the big-city sophisticates or with the gentlemanly Funakoshi.