The Question That Won't Go Away

A Statement from the Sei Kosho Shorei Kai on the Transmission of Kosho Ryu

There is a question that has followed Hanshi Bruce Juchnik for over forty years. It surfaces in forums, in magazines, in whispered conversations at seminars, and now across every corner of the internet.

How could anyone learn a martial art inside the walls of a maximum security prison?

It is a fair question. We have never treated it otherwise. If you are someone who has asked it with sincerity, seeking to understand, this statement is written for you. If you are someone who has already made up your mind, we would only ask that you consider, even briefly, whether your conclusion was reached through research, or through repetition of what someone else told you.

We are not interested in attacking anyone. We are not interested in defending ourselves through anger. We are interested in the truth, and the truth requires something that many in the martial arts world find uncomfortable: intellectual humility.

What We Mean by Intellectual Humility

History is not a courtroom where verdicts are permanent. History is a living discipline where the best conclusions are the ones drawn from the available evidence, examined without ego, and held with the understanding that new evidence can always emerge.

There is a concept in academic scholarship called historiographical reflexivity. It simply means examining your own biases when you look at history. Ask yourself: Did I arrive at my position through personal investigation? Or did I inherit it from a teacher, a lineage, or an internet post that confirmed what I already wanted to believe?

Psychologists call this confirmation bias, the tendency to seek out only the information that supports what you've already decided. There is also a related phenomenon called belief perseverance, the stubborn human habit of clinging to a conclusion even after the foundation beneath it has crumbled.

We share these ideas not to insult anyone's intelligence, but because they describe something we have all experienced. Hanshi Juchnik himself has been wrong about historical details over the years and has openly corrected them when research revealed the truth. That willingness to be corrected is the mark of someone pursuing knowledge, not someone protecting a story.

The Question Itself Contains an Assumption

When people ask, "How could Juchnik have learned martial arts in prison?" they are revealing something about their own understanding of what martial arts knowledge actually is. They are imagining a dojo. They are imagining two people in gi, throwing techniques back and forth across a mat. And they are correct that this did not happen at Folsom Prison.

But this assumption exposes a gap.

If the highest levels of martial arts knowledge could only be transmitted through physical repetition in a training hall, then no classical Japanese art would have survived the centuries. The greatest teachings of the Japanese warrior traditions were never written in scrolls for anyone to read. They were whispered.

Kuden: The Tradition of Oral Transmission

In the Japanese martial tradition, there is a practice called kuden (口伝). It means, literally, "oral transmission." For hundreds of years, the deepest principles of a ryu were never committed to paper. They were spoken directly from teacher to student, from mouth to ear, in a private exchange that no outsider could access.

This was not a workaround. This was the design.

In the old scrolls, a technique might be listed by name. The movements might be described in general terms. But the actual key to understanding the technique, the breath pattern, the mental intent, the principle that makes it alive rather than mechanical, was transmitted through kuden alone. These verbal teachings were considered the heart of the art. They were reserved for those the headmaster deemed worthy of receiving them.

Think of it this way. If you handed someone the sheet music to a complex piece of piano music, they could learn to press the keys in the right order. But if they sat beside a master pianist who explained the emotion behind each passage, the breathing, the dynamics, the intention, they would play the same notes in a completely different way. Kuden is the master pianist sitting beside you and telling you what the sheet music cannot.

Kosho Ryu was, at its highest levels, a conceptual art. It possessed what the Japanese call a ryugi, a central teaching philosophy, something that could be compared to a Kabbalah in Western traditions. It was the organizing principle behind everything else. And it could be spoken. It could be drawn on a piece of paper in diagrams. It could be demonstrated with the placement of two fingers on a student's body to show how weight and energy shift.

This is exactly what happened at Folsom Prison.

"We Were Never Behind Any Piece of Glass"

Before addressing what was taught, we should address a persistent myth about the setting itself.

Many people imagine a prisoner visiting scene from the movies: two people separated by a thick pane of glass, speaking through a telephone handset. This image has shaped the skepticism surrounding Juchnik's study with Mitose for decades. It is also completely wrong.

Eugene Sedeno, a martial artist who holds master ranking in multiple Kempo systems and who personally visited Mitose at Folsom, addressed this directly in a recent independent podcast interview on Social Gelo with Angelo: Link - https://youtu.be/xipj-hqbEfs?si=Srzp7Pu87zNx7Mgb

"A lot of people used to ask me, well, how could you learn anything if you're behind that big piece of glass? I said, we were never behind any piece of glass, first of all."

Sedeno described the actual setting: a large covered area with picnic tables, guards stationed along the walls at a distance, and face-to-face seating where visitors and prisoners sat together at the same table. Dave Kovar, a well-respected martial artist and industry leader who visited Mitose eight to ten times as a young student of Juchnik's, confirmed the same:

"We used to be in a room with a picnic table, so it wasn't behind a glass wall. You were actually in the same room with him."

The environment was relaxed enough for conversation, for the exchange of written materials, and for small physical demonstrations. It was not relaxed enough to stand up and throw punches. As Sedeno explained:

"Anything we did would be slight, like slight movements, because we're close to each other. If you stood up and started doing that, the guards would have come right over."

George Santana, the correctional officer who introduced Juchnik to Mitose and who knew the prison environment better than anyone, described his first encounter with Mitose in the main yard. He expected to see a hardened criminal killer. Instead, he saw, as he put it, "a little Yoda." A small Japanese gentleman sweeping outside the yard shack, quiet, unassuming, and completely at odds with the image his conviction would suggest.

This was the setting in which transmission occurred. Not a glass partition. Not a Hollywood visiting room. A picnic table, face-to-face, close enough to talk, to demonstrate, and to transmit the kind of conceptual knowledge that defines the highest levels of Kosho Ryu.

What Mitose Actually Transmitted

James Mitose did not need to teach Bruce Juchnik how to punch. He did not need to teach him how to kick. By the time Juchnik walked into Folsom Prison in the late 1970s, he was already a seasoned martial artist, holding advanced rank, operating successful schools in the Sacramento area, and training under multiple respected instructors. He had studied the Filipino Arts under the renowned Angel Cabales. His close friend Rick Alemany, one of the top tournament fighters in the country, had introduced him to Remy Presas. He had trained in Chinese Kung Fu in the Bay Area. He had experienced competitive kickboxing. He was not a beginner. He was a man who had already spent years searching for the deeper roots of Kempo.

This point is critical, and Sedeno, himself a holder of high-ranking black belts in Kajukenbo, Shaolin Kempo, and other systems, made it clearly when speaking to the podcast host:

"You got to understand that you're talking to higher ranking martial artists. You're not talking to beginners. So, you can understand more conceptual ideas."

Mitose recognized this immediately. As Michael Brown Sensei, one of the foremost researchers of Mitose's history, explained:

"Bruce Juchnik was all that and more when he met Mitose. And I think Mitose knew that. He knew he didn't have to take this man by the hand. Maybe that's the reason why Bruce was chosen. Because in this unfortunate situation that James Mitose found himself in, he didn't have the time or the opportunity to be starting someone from scratch."

What Mitose transmitted was something far more significant than technique. He transmitted the conceptual framework of Kosho Ryu.

Hanshi himself has acknowledged both the limitations and the reality of the prison setting with characteristic directness. Speaking to his students, he said:

"You couldn't learn that way in prison."

He was referring to the physical curriculum of calligraphy, throwing, striking, and locking. But then he explained what did happen:

"When we had time to sit down and do it, Mitose explained a couple of things to me."

Those "couple of things" were concepts and principles that took decades to fully unpack.

Consider just one example. During one visit, Mitose took a piece of paper, folded it, unfolded it, and handed it back to Juchnik. He asked him to fold it. Naturally, Juchnik folded the paper along the existing creases. Mitose said:

"That is your body. Every joint in your body creases."

Then he told Juchnik to go back to his school and throw himself.

This is not a technique. It is a principle. And from that single principle, an entire understanding of throwing, joint manipulation, and body mechanics unfolded. Juchnik took it back to his students, applied it to kata and forms, explored the creases and folds of the human body in motion, and developed a complete understanding of how to break balance. The principle came from Mitose. The years of study and application came from Juchnik.

This is how kuden works. The teacher gives you the seed. You grow the tree.

On another visit, Mitose corrected Juchnik's understanding of striking:

"You hit the wrong side of the body."

Then he demonstrated. Seated at a table, he touched Juchnik at a specific point and asked him to rotate slightly. One finger went in and Juchnik dropped. Not to his knees, but enough to understand that everything he thought he knew about striking was incomplete. Mitose was teaching the principle of striking to the furthest point of rotation to affect the center. This became one of the foundational concepts of Kosho Ryu as it is taught today.

These were not gymnasium lessons. They were encounters with a man who could transmit a lifetime of understanding through a folded piece of paper, a single touch, or a few carefully chosen words. As Juchnik himself has described it:

"Mitose taught me things in an abstract manner, an abstract way. He would make little inferences to me on things. Some of the conclusions that you come to, because of the fact that you're seeking those conclusions, grow and grow and grow."

Mitose's verbal teaching style was spare to the point of severity. His vocabulary during lessons often amounted to grunts, a "yes," a "no," or bluntly calling his student stupid when he missed the point. The communication tools, the language to explain the concepts and principles Mitose was transmitting, those were developed by Juchnik himself over decades of study and teaching.

Mitose also transmitted the Octagon, the understanding of angles and body alignment, the principles of the escaping arts, meridian alignment, the philosophy of "true self-defense" (which, in Mitose's own careful distinction, meant no body contact whatsoever), the interrelationship of ki and body movement, the importance of the restorative arts, and the direction to pursue the cultural studies that comprise a complete martial education.

The Power of Concepts Over Techniques

Why does this matter? Because a concept is not a technique. A technique is a single answer to a single problem. A concept is a key that unlocks a thousand doors.

Eugene Sedeno, speaking independently and in his own words, captured this perfectly:

"You can learn a technique, but if you don't understand how that thing worked, you just know one technique. But if you understand the concept, you can turn that into all kinds of different techniques from all kinds of different attacks."

Sedeno described his own experience at Folsom with Mitose the same way:

"It was talking. It was talking about how you do things and how you should do things."

He explained that his interactions with Mitose centered on philosophy and concepts of movement, the Octagon, how to evade, how to use angles, how to find targets on the body, how to think differently about confrontation. And it enhanced everything he already knew. As he put it:

"It didn't change what I was doing. It just added to it."

This is the testimony of a man who trained under Walter Godin, Brother Abe Kamahoahoa (the highest ranking active student of Professor Chow), Adriano Emperado himself, Ed Parker, and Ralph Castro's Shaolin Kempo lineage through Rick Alemany. He personally knew Professor Chow, Thomas Young, Simeon Eli, Paul Yamaguchi, and virtually every major figure in the history of Kempo. When Eugene Sedeno says that conceptual learning took place at Folsom Prison, he is not speculating. He is reporting what he personally experienced, and he is doing so with a depth of credentials that spans nearly every branch of the Kempo family tree.

Even Dave Kovar, who was only nineteen years old when Juchnik first brought him to visit Mitose, experienced this same dynamic. Kovar recalls coming to Mitose with the kinds of questions a young fighter asks: What's more important, a front kick or a sidekick? How do you throw a punch like this? Mitose would patiently answer, and then redirect:

"But you know what's most important?"

And he would talk about true self-defense. Even with a teenager, even with the simplest questions, Mitose steered every conversation toward the conceptual and philosophical heart of the art. As Kovar reflected:

"I kind of knew at the time this was something special that I'd be able to refer to later on, but I really didn't understand the significance."

Mitose's Own Words: "It Is My Duty to Train You"

James Mitose's intentions were not ambiguous. They were documented in his own hand.

In a letter dated January 5, 1980, Mitose wrote to Juchnik:

"I did not have a student master in America before, but now I have a good student and master in you. It is my duty to train and teach you what I know about Kosho Ryu and true self-defense. True and pure Kempo, Karate and Kempo."

The letter continues:

"I can teach you through correspondence. But there are some very important arts that one cannot teach by correspondence. And I do want to teach you these things."

Sedeno was shown this and other original letters. He verified the signatures against his own correspondence from Mitose and confirmed their authenticity.

In Mitose's own words, three things are confirmed. First, that teaching and learning were actively taking place. Second, that correspondence and verbal instruction were accepted methods of transmission. And third, that Mitose himself recognized the limitations of the prison setting while still committing to teach what he could within it.

A Journey Built on Doubt

It is worth noting that Juchnik's path to Mitose was not one of blind faith. It was marked by confusion, resistance, and doubt.

When Juchnik first wrote to Mitose in prison and received a reply, he ignored it for nearly two months. Why? Because what Mitose described did not match anything Juchnik understood about martial arts. Mitose's emphasis on "no body contact" and on philosophy over physical combat made no sense to a man whose entire career had been built on punching, kicking, and competitive fighting.

As Juchnik has told his students:

"My journey with Mitose was a lot of doubting."

It was only after being encouraged by others to follow through that Juchnik finally made the trip to Folsom. He walked in expecting to see a hardened criminal. Instead, the door opened and out came what he described as "a little Yoda-type guy that cocked his head to the side and looked at me." Mitose walked over, had Juchnik hold out his hand, touched his hand to his own forehead, and said:

"Mitose Sensei. I'm a peaceful man."

In that moment, Juchnik was confronted with a reality that contradicted every assumption he had carried through the prison gates. He was a young, brash fighter known for breaking noses. Mitose told him flatly:

"You think you fast, you slow. You hit the wrong side of body. You don't know what you're doing."

Juchnik went back to his school, looked in the mirror, and in his own words, felt like a clown. He had the humility to accept that feeling rather than dismiss it, and he returned to Folsom again and again. Each visit was, as he described it, "life changing."

This is not the story of a man constructing a fraud. This is the story of a man being dismantled and rebuilt, one concept at a time.

The Witnesses Who Were There

George Santana was a correctional officer at Folsom Prison and the man who introduced Juchnik to Mitose. He was present through the entire period of Juchnik's study, from the first meeting until Mitose's death. He carried verbal messages between the two, watched the exchange unfold over years, and knew every person who visited Mitose during that time. His testimony has been consistent and unwavering for over four decades.

Roger Clark, one of Juchnik's senior black belt students, described what he witnessed: a fundamental transformation in how Juchnik understood and taught martial arts. Clark watched Juchnik move from the Chinese Kempo approach, what he candidly described as "the overkill in the self-defense" and the "macho approach to karate," to something entirely different. The introduction of the Octagon. Meridian striking instead of simply hitting the face and body. Techniques that worked because the practitioner now understood why they worked.

Clark was asked directly whether he believed Juchnik simply made everything up. His answer was unequivocal. He specifically recalled a kata called Mitose No Kehoe, given to Juchnik by Mitose, and stated that this form "would be impossible to make up."

Trenton Ingles and Greg Ford were students of Juchnik's during the period he was visiting Mitose. They remember receiving classes built from the information Juchnik was learning and, as Juchnik himself describes with characteristic honesty:

"The confused face I had. I still have the confused face."

These are not the memories of a man confidently fabricating a system. They are the memories of a man struggling to understand what he was being given.

Dave Kovar, now one of the most respected martial arts educators and business leaders in the industry, was a teenage student of Juchnik's when he first visited Mitose at Folsom. He went on to visit Mitose eight to ten times, sometimes with Juchnik and sometimes on his own. His testimony is significant not only because of his current standing in the martial arts community, but because he experienced Mitose's teaching directly. Mitose physically demonstrated techniques with him at the visiting table, including grabs and the rolling of the toes for front kicks. But above all, Kovar recalls that Mitose consistently redirected every conversation toward true self-defense, toward the philosophical and conceptual foundation rather than the physical technique. Kovar's observations carry the weight of someone who went on to build one of the largest and most successful martial arts organizations in the country, and who has no organizational affiliation with the Sei Kosho Shorei Kai.

Eugene Sedeno stands apart as a witness because of both his credentials and his independence. He has spoken publicly about his experiences at Folsom not only within the Kai's own recordings, but to outside interviewers with no affiliation to the organization. In his interview on the Social Gelo with Angelo podcast, Sedeno confirmed that Mitose officially gave the Menkyo Kaiden to Bruce Juchnik. In his own words:

"Mitose did give Menkyo Kaiden to Bruce Juchnik. He gave the system to him officially. He had one of those things typed out with all the words, telling him I'm giving you full control of the Kosho Ryu, and he got his signature and the whole nine yards on there. So officially, he did give it to him."

This was not said on a Sei Kosho Shorei Kai production. It was said to an independent podcaster in a conversational interview, by a man who holds rank from Emperado, Parker, and Castro's lineages, who personally knew Mitose's original black belts, and who has no organizational reason to confirm anything he does not believe to be true.

The Folsom Prison staff themselves are part of this record. Despite Mitose's first-degree murder conviction, the prison warden wrote letters concerning Mitose's welfare. Mitose was respected and well-liked among prisoners and staff alike. He was allowed to work as a houseboy around the warden's residence, as both Juchnik and Sedeno have independently confirmed. The visiting arrangements allowed face-to-face meetings at tables, not through glass or screens.

Terry Lee: The Most Unexpected Confirmation

Perhaps the most remarkable piece of evidence comes from the most unlikely source.

Terry Lee is the man who committed the crime for which Mitose was convicted. Years after Mitose's death, Juchnik tracked him down and recorded a conversation with him. What emerged was extraordinary.

Terry Lee independently demonstrated the same conceptual principles that Juchnik teaches as Kosho Ryu. The Octagon. Tanden breathing. Peripheral vision training (elevating the head to expand the visual plane). The hand signs and their spiritual meaning, the left hand representing moral conscience and the right representing knowledge. The animal forms within the Octagon (Monkey, Bird, Frog, Dog). The 7/10 principle. The distinction between conscious and subconscious development. The understanding that the art is, at its foundation, about character development, not destruction.

Terry Lee was Mitose's student for approximately six months, seeing him once per week. Yet in that brief period, he absorbed the same foundational concepts that form the core of what Juchnik teaches today. The methods were different. The depth was different. The setting was different. But the principles were the same.

This matters enormously for one reason: it confirms that what Mitose transmitted was conceptual and philosophical in nature, and that he transmitted it through conversation, demonstration, and verbal instruction, even to a student he saw far less frequently than Juchnik. 

Terry Lee also revealed something else. Mitose took his belt away. Why? Because, as Mitose told him:

"The belt would be all the ego. Most students were chasing the black belt instead of chasing the true knowledge of Kempo."

This is entirely consistent with everything Juchnik has taught for decades. Kosho Ryu, as Mitose explained it, is not a style. It is self-study. The word "Kempo" itself, he taught, means the study of the self through the integration of the physical and the spiritual. The moment you turn it into a style and declare yourself the authority, you have lost the path.

What Juchnik Did After Mitose Passed

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of authentic transmission is what Bruce Juchnik did after James Mitose died.

He did not rest on the authority of the Menkyo Kaiden. He did not simply repeat what he had been told and build a career on a prison story.

He pursued every discipline of study that Mitose told him belonged to the complete art of Kosho Ryu. He studied shiatsu. He studied shodo (Japanese calligraphy). He immersed himself in Japanese culture. He traveled to Hawaii to connect with the roots of the art and its early practitioners. He brought Professor Thomas S.H. Young, Mitose's first and most senior black belt, to the mainland and recorded extensive interviews with him. Senior students, including Michael Brown Sensei, independently traveled to Japan to conduct primary-source research, locate the family temple (Shaka-In), and obtain the Kosho family records. Juchnik funded the publication of Mitose's manuscript, "What is True Self-Defense."

Brown Sensei's research was exhaustive. He obtained the passenger manifest from the SS Shinano Maru showing four-year-old James Mitose traveling to Japan in 1920. He secured 270 pages of documents from the headquarters of the Hawaiian Department of Military Intelligence. He located the koseki (family records) confirming the Kosho lineage. His conclusion, based on years of documentary evidence:

"My research has shown that James Mitose did intend on you continuing his teachings."

And, true to a warning Mitose had given him, Juchnik eventually closed his schools. He walked away from a thriving martial arts business and required students to seek him out. This was not a business decision. It was the fulfillment of a teaching that Mitose had given him years before: that one day he would understand why Mitose himself had walked away.

Consider this. A man fabricating a story for personal gain does not close his schools. He does not spend decades researching an art across continents. He does not bring in outside witnesses and researchers who might contradict him. He does not openly admit when he has been wrong about a historical detail and correct the record. He does not seek out the man who committed the very crime that condemned his teacher, and sit across from him with a camera rolling, risking whatever might be said.

A man preserving a lineage does all of these things.

Self-Defense vs. True Self-Defense

To understand why prison walls could not contain what Mitose had to teach, you must understand the distinction he considered most important in his entire body of work.

Mitose wrote two books. The first, What Is Self-Defense?, dealt with the physical arts, the science of combat and body contact. The second, What Is True Self-Defense?, dealt with something else entirely: the escaping arts, the art of no body contact.

This was not a subtle distinction to Mitose. He wrote entire chapters on the significance of adding the word "true." Self-defense involved contact. True self-defense involved none. Self-defense was what he taught in Hawaii during World War II, when he believed a Japanese invasion was imminent and civilians needed practical fighting skills. True self-defense was the higher art, the complete art, the art he had never fully shared with the public.

As Michael Brown Sensei explained:

"The philosophy is the same. The name is the same. But if the arts look different, then when you hear those two definitions, you have to say they must be different. Obviously, you can't do true self-defense on an invading Japanese force."

The art of no body contact. The preparatory art. The art of seeing without looking, of moving before the attack arrives, of understanding the environment so completely that confrontation becomes unnecessary. This is what Mitose transmitted to Juchnik. And this is precisely the kind of knowledge that does not require a training mat. It requires a teacher who understands it and a student humble enough to listen.

Sedeno's description of his own experience mirrors this precisely. He told the podcast host that Mitose would ask questions that opened the mind in unexpected ways:

"If you just started falling off the side of a cliff, what would you do?"

The answer was not a technique. It was a principle: turn around like a cat so you can see and grab something, rather than sliding helplessly on your back. As Sedeno reflected:

"He wanted you to open your mind. There's a lot of ways to do things. You don't always have to hit somebody. And that's what I took out of all of that."

A Word About the Crime

We understand that James Mitose's incarceration is a shadow that falls across everything associated with his name. We have never sought to hide from this. Mitose was found guilty of first-degree murder in the state of California. He did not commit the murder himself, but under California law, if it can be proven that a person directed another to commit a murder, both are culpable, the one who directed it receiving the greater charge.

We do not ask anyone to declare Mitose a saint. We have never done so. Hanshi Juchnik himself has said, on the record, that he always believed Mitose was "either a saint or the devil" and that he felt safe in part because Mitose was incarcerated.

It is worth noting that Mitose's own defense attorney, Daye Shinn, who also defended Susan Atkins in the Manson case, sent a letter stating that in all his years of criminal trials, he had never found a defendant he believed to be totally innocent, with the exception of James Mitose. It is worth noting that the first attorney to review Mitose's case files, Anthony Furr, called Juchnik and said, "You've got to get him out. He's not guilty." It is worth noting that the oath of non-violence Mitose required of the student who committed the crime was never presented at trial and was later recovered by Juchnik from that very student.

But ultimately, if we are to judge every martial art by the personal failings of its founders, then we must be prepared to discard a great deal of what the world has inherited. The founders and headmasters of many traditions, both Japanese and otherwise, were warriors who killed, politicians who schemed, and men whose personal lives would not survive modern scrutiny. The value of what they created and transmitted is a separate question from the quality of their character.

As Michael Brown Sensei put it plainly:

"However bad Mitose might have been, doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of difference to me. As a matter of fact, I would say the worse a person he was, the greater the feat we've done in becoming good people and honest people who just want to train and carry on an art."

What We Ask

We do not ask for blind acceptance. We never have.

We ask only for the same standard that honest scholarship demands: examine the evidence, consider the sources, apply logic and reason, and be willing to update your conclusions when the evidence warrants it.

If your questions are sincere, we welcome them. We have always welcomed them. The Sei Kosho Shorei Kai has never sought to cover things up or claim James Mitose was something he was not. Our official positions have always left room for truth to emerge, wherever it leads.

But if the criticisms are rooted in something other than a desire for truth, if they are driven by lineage politics, personal grievance, or the need to protect a version of history that serves someone's ego, then no amount of evidence will be enough. As Brown Sensei observed:

"Anyone who is being sincere and realistic will listen. And that's all I ask."

The real critics are not the ones asking questions. The real critics are the ones who stopped asking questions a long time ago, the ones experiencing what scholars call presentism, judging events of the past through the narrow lens of their own assumptions, never bothering to understand the context, the culture, or the people involved.

James Mitose once told Juchnik:

"Kempo is not a style, it is self-study."

He said that if you look at the teachings and declare you have bettered them, you are calling yourself God. The path of Kempo is the path of lifelong study. The moment you stop studying, the moment you declare yourself the final authority, you have abandoned the path.

The teachings of Kosho Ryu are alive today because one man walked into a maximum security prison and had the humility to listen. He had the courage to bring what he learned back to a world that ridiculed him for it. He had the discipline to continue studying for decades after his teacher passed away. And he had the integrity to build an organization dedicated not to his own name, but to the preservation of what he was given.

The art speaks for itself. It always has.

The Sei Kosho Shorei Kai was developed for the preservation of the teachings of the late James Mitose. For more information, visit warriorscholaracademy.com, and https://skski.net