Kosho Chronicles Issue #12
To The ReaderThe Octagon is not a diagram on the floor. It is not a shape you step around during a drill and then forget about when the drill is over. It is alive. It lives in your body, in your opponent's body, in every joint, every crease, every rotation of every limb...
Kosho Chronicles Issue #11
To the Reader
Every man has a price. That is what people believe. They believe it because, most of the time, they are right. But every once in a while, you meet someone who does not have one. And when you do, it will tell you more about yourself than it tells you about ...
To the Reader
You have been taught to be strong. To overcome. To dominate.
What if that teaching is incomplete?
The Teaching
In weakness there is strength. In strength there is weakness.
This is not wordplay. This is natural law. You cannot have hard without soft. You cannot have soft without har...
Kosho Chronicles Issue #10
To the Reader
In the martial arts, people will do extraordinary things for a piece of paper. They will travel across the country for one. They will lie about one. They will spend years chasing one and then, once they have it, spend the rest of their lives defending it i...
Kosho Chronicles Issue #9
To the Reader
The hardest part of learning from Mitose was not learning from Mitose. It was coming back to my school and trying to explain what I had learned to my students. Every visit to the prison gave me something new. Every class I taught afterward felt like trying ...
Kosho Chronicles Issue #8
To the Reader
You already know everything. That is the problem. You have studied, you have trained, you have built a framework of understanding, and now you filter everything through it. Whatever fits, you accept. Whatever does not, you reject. And you call that knowledg...
To the Reader
If you teach, this will challenge you. If you study under someone, this may confuse you.
Either way, pay attention. What follows strikes at something most martial artists protect without realizing it.
The Teaching
The student is a better teacher than the teacher.
This is not a contr...
To the Reader
Speed is a lie. Everything you think you know about being fast is wrong. If you cannot let go of your obsession with speed, stop reading now. You are not ready.
The Teaching
One visit, Mitose asked me to hit him. Real hard.
At the prison, there was a guard there who knew who I was....
To the Reader
Most of you reading this have spent years learning how to hit. You have practiced strikes, blocks, throws. You have conditioned your body. You have trained your reflexes.
I am going to tell you that the highest level of what you do requires none of it.
Sit with that before you conti...
To the Reader
What I am about to share may disturb you.It may challenge everything you think you know about mastery, perfection, and what it means to be a martial artist.
Good.
If you are not disturbed, you are not paying attention.
The Teaching
There is a saying in Zen Buddhism:
“If you meet th...
The Teacher That Wasn't Dead
To the reader: What I am about to share with you is more than history. It is the beginning of a journey that changed everything I thought I knew about the martial arts. I ask that you read this not just with your eyes, but with your heart. Feel what I am telling you....
TO THE READER
I would like to share my thoughts pertaining to what you are about to receive in the weeks and months ahead.
Much has been said over the years about James Mitose. About the history of Kempo. About what occurred during the period from 1977 to 1981.
Much of it is wrong. Some of it ...
