Barrie Ryusei Karate-Do
Westminster Church, 170 Steel St. Barrie, ON, Canada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX5vqxDTvXg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX5vqxDTvXg

Bon 80e anniversaire à Higashi Sensei. Higashi Sensei est un homme d’exception et charismatique qui sait rassembler les gens. Nous avons la chance de suivre les... enseignements d’un homme passionné, loyal et rempli d’humilité. Il nous fait comprendre que la pratique du karaté-do et du budo doit permettre à l’individu de croître et de devenir une meilleure personne. Higashi Sensei est un mentor, un modèle à suivre pour nous tous! Happy Birthday Sensei! Chito-Ryu Isshin!

Presentations of Chito-ryu Jion kata. Note from Sakamoto-Sensei: "Jion is a word derived from Buddhism, and Jion is a form named after Hanagusuku Tyomo. Jion has the meaning of affectionate favor or kindly compassion. "Chitose-sensei told me that Hanagusuku Tyomo Sensei took the name of "Jion-ji (Jion temple)" where near his home.... "I am convinced that Gungfu is related to Buddhism and Shintoism. "That's why I put Jion at the beginning of Gungfu. Jion is explain the way that goes through the Niomon (temple gate guarded by fierce Deva Kings), worships to Shitenno (the four heavenly kings), and enter the main hall of the temple."

Bon 80e anniversaire à Higashi Sensei. Higashi Sensei est un homme d’exception et charismatique qui sait rassembler les gens. Nous avons la chance de suivre les... enseignements d’un homme passionné, loyal et rempli d’humilité. Il nous fait comprendre que la pratique du karaté-do et du budo doit permettre à l’individu de croître et de devenir une meilleure personne. Higashi Sensei est un mentor, un modèle à suivre pour nous tous! Happy Birthday Sensei! Chito-Ryu Isshin!

A picture from Lima, Peru, showing dojo technical adviser Ted Jungblut (second from right, kneeling), winning a bronze team medal at the 1974 Pan American Championships.

Instructors of Chito-Ryu: 5 of 5 It was not too long after we moved the dojo from its location on Madison Avenue to its current location on Morton Street [Yoseikan Honbu] that we were approached by a local sports TV show. The show announcer or host was [professional football player] Bob Trumpy, a Bengals tight end who did this in the off-season. They called and they wanted to know if they could do this segment on martial arts. This was probably the early ’70s, around the time... Enter the Dragon came out. The dojo was packed. Every time a new martial arts movie came out, attendance went up. Okusan spoke to Trumpy ahead of time and said that because Hanshi was a city official, the chief of detectives, he should be called Mr. Dometrich or Sensei. When Trumpy came in and you could tell that he thought things were just silly. As we were sweating through our gis, it was Bill this and Bill that. Dometrich-Sensei was [getting frustrated] trying to tell O-Sensei’s story, which was the point to him, not broadcasting about the Yoseikan dojo. Finally Trumpy says, Hey, Bill, can you break something for us? So sensei looks around and there’s a three-foot section of a four by four that we had used for an upright post, or something. He said, Well, I can break that. Trumpy and his cameraman look at each other and they’re like, Oh yeah, that would be great. I know they’re thinking that’s impossible. I’m standing there thinking it’s impossible. So as another student and I are holding the four by four upright, Dometrich-Sensei is in position to do a shuto with a lot of hip rotation. Then the cameraman says can you break it some other way because I can’t get a good angle to shoot it? So we had to hold the four by four off to his side and he would have to break it with a [more awkward] horizontal shuto. I thought, He’s not going to be able to do it and it’s going to look really bad. But he does the shuto and it goes through the wood like a knife through butter. He looked at Trumpy and said, That’s OK? Trumpy was dumbfounded. He finally responded in a much more respectful tone of voice, Thank you, sensei. Dometrich-Sensei was always full of surprises. It seemed like he went everywhere and knew everybody, and had these great martial art stories that he could tell for hours on end. Chitose-Sensei was his teacher from beginning to end. Dometrich-Sensei’s mission was to bring his teacher and Chito-ryu to the wider world. Jerry Beshears, 7th dan, Yoseikan Honbu, U.S. Chito-ryu Karate Federation, Covington, Kentucky

Presentations of Chito-ryu Jion kata. Note from Sakamoto-Sensei: "Jion is a word derived from Buddhism, and Jion is a form named after Hanagusuku Tyomo. Jion has the meaning of affectionate favor or kindly compassion. "Chitose-sensei told me that Hanagusuku Tyomo Sensei took the name of "Jion-ji (Jion temple)" where near his home.... "I am convinced that Gungfu is related to Buddhism and Shintoism. "That's why I put Jion at the beginning of Gungfu. Jion is explain the way that goes through the Niomon (temple gate guarded by fierce Deva Kings), worships to Shitenno (the four heavenly kings), and enter the main hall of the temple."

A picture from Lima, Peru, showing dojo technical adviser Ted Jungblut (second from right, kneeling), winning a bronze team medal at the 1974 Pan American Championships.

Instructors of Chito-Ryu: 5 of 5 It was not too long after we moved the dojo from its location on Madison Avenue to its current location on Morton Street [Yoseikan Honbu] that we were approached by a local sports TV show. The show announcer or host was [professional football player] Bob Trumpy, a Bengals tight end who did this in the off-season. They called and they wanted to know if they could do this segment on martial arts. This was probably the early ’70s, around the time... Enter the Dragon came out. The dojo was packed. Every time a new martial arts movie came out, attendance went up. Okusan spoke to Trumpy ahead of time and said that because Hanshi was a city official, the chief of detectives, he should be called Mr. Dometrich or Sensei. When Trumpy came in and you could tell that he thought things were just silly. As we were sweating through our gis, it was Bill this and Bill that. Dometrich-Sensei was [getting frustrated] trying to tell O-Sensei’s story, which was the point to him, not broadcasting about the Yoseikan dojo. Finally Trumpy says, Hey, Bill, can you break something for us? So sensei looks around and there’s a three-foot section of a four by four that we had used for an upright post, or something. He said, Well, I can break that. Trumpy and his cameraman look at each other and they’re like, Oh yeah, that would be great. I know they’re thinking that’s impossible. I’m standing there thinking it’s impossible. So as another student and I are holding the four by four upright, Dometrich-Sensei is in position to do a shuto with a lot of hip rotation. Then the cameraman says can you break it some other way because I can’t get a good angle to shoot it? So we had to hold the four by four off to his side and he would have to break it with a [more awkward] horizontal shuto. I thought, He’s not going to be able to do it and it’s going to look really bad. But he does the shuto and it goes through the wood like a knife through butter. He looked at Trumpy and said, That’s OK? Trumpy was dumbfounded. He finally responded in a much more respectful tone of voice, Thank you, sensei. Dometrich-Sensei was always full of surprises. It seemed like he went everywhere and knew everybody, and had these great martial art stories that he could tell for hours on end. Chitose-Sensei was his teacher from beginning to end. Dometrich-Sensei’s mission was to bring his teacher and Chito-ryu to the wider world. Jerry Beshears, 7th dan, Yoseikan Honbu, U.S. Chito-ryu Karate Federation, Covington, Kentucky

Instructors of Chito-Ryu: 4 of 5 Sensei Dometrich treated everybody at the dojo as if they were family. One of my sempai there was Kyoshi [Lawrence] Hawkins, who recently passed away. He came to Covington as [an African-American] teenager. It was a different world back then [in the 1960s]. At karate summer camp Hawkins-Kyoshi once told us once about taking the bus downtown as a kid and needing to pee. There was no place he could stop to pee on the bus line because of segregat...ion. All the restaurants were white only. So he urinated himself before he got home. This hit me hard. I also took that bus but didn’t have an experience like that. It was a different world for someone like me. So [sometime after the bus incident], when [Hawkins] finally decided to walk down the dark alley, in this tough part of town, to check out the dojo, and there was no one else black in the class that night, he fully expected to get turned away. But Dometrich-Sensei told him, I’ll see you next class. This was the start of a [student-teacher] relationship that would last almost 60 years. In Hanshi’s book, The Endless Quest, he recounts the time in the ’60s that a young black man by the name of Willie Stewart came into the dojo and wanted to join. Some of Sensei’s white students told him that they would quit if he let the black guy join. He replied that Chitose-Sensei accepted him even though he wasn’t Japanese, and that at his dojo any American citizen was welcome. So they put it again to Dometrich-Sensei, and you can imagine the language they used, if Dometrich-Sensei accepted Willie Smith as a student that they would quit. So he looked them in the eye and said, I’m going to accept him as a student. So five students quit, which is a lot when your club is just starting out. At the Yoseikan you were and are only judged by how hard you work and how good your karate is. Jerry Beshears, 7th dan, Yoseikan Honbu, U.S. Chito-ryu Karate Federation, Covington, Kentucky

Instructors of Chito-Ryu: 3 of 5 By the time I had started with him, Dometrich-Sensei already had a relationship with Tsuruoka-Sensei in Canada. It had been 10 years since he had trained with Chitose-Sensei in Japan, and he felt he was getting rusty. He had tried to get hold of Tommy Morita, in Hawaii, who was supposed to be the head of Chito-ryu in the United States, but never received any correspondence back. So Chitose-Sensei advised him to contact Tsuruoka-Sensei and trai...n with him. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two. He would go up to Toronto to train whenever he had a free weekend. He also went down to Philadelphia to train with [senior Shotokan instructor Teruyuki] Okazaki-Sensei and later up to Chicago to train with [senior Shotokan instructor Shojiro] Sugiyama-Sensei. He was always trying to find the best instructors in the area. At that time, in the mid-60s, I would have to say our karate looked an awful lot like JKA karate, with deep stances. We were doing the JKA Heian katas then. So in 1967, Dr. Chitose came to the United States before going to Canada for its national tournament. We held an examination and a table was set up for O-Sensei. Somebody got up for their test and did a Heian kata. O-Sensei picked up his chair and turned 180 degrees away from the test. As you can imagine, the Heians were thrown out the window and from that point on it was Chito-ryu kata only. The more interaction we had with Japan, the more things began to form around what we recognize as Chito-ryu today, particularly the signature stances like seisan-dachi, shiko-dachi and kage-dachi. We got more into the Henshuho and kaisetsu the two-man sets, which really separates Chito-ryu from so many other styles. Looking back, what I realize is if you took up Chitose’s challenge to study his style, you are going to be exposed to a lot of martial arts. It may encompass judo, Takenouchi-ry jiu jitsu, Daito-ryu Aiki-jutsu, or have the connection that Terry Valentino has shown to the internal Chinese martial arts all of these things are in his art. I’m so happy to still be practising this because I learn something new all the time new principles and new ways of moving. I’m as excited today as when I first walked down that alley so many years ago. Jerry Beshears, 7th dan, Yoseikan Honbu, U.S. Chito-ryu Karate Federation, Covington, Kentucky

Instructors of Chito-Ryu: 2 of 5 We steamed up the mirrors of the dojo every night we trained. Every class consisted of kihon, kata and kumite. Dometrich-Sensei was a pretty stern taskmaster. Each month we would have a dojo shiai, and on Friday nights we’d often hop into Dometrich-Sensei’s Volkswagen camper van and go to tournaments in St. Louis, Florida, Alabama, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Canada and elsewhere.... Back then a tournament was like a street fight in white pajamas. The only time I was ever in Black Belt Magazine was for a fight with a guy in the Indiana state championships. We were both brown belts and faced each other a lot sometimes he would win and sometimes I would . As the magazine reported, he won this time for a mae-geri to the groin. We were a very competitive dojo. I was once in line to sign up at a tournament. The two guys behind me saw my Chito-ryu patch and asked if I was from Covington. I said I was. They asked if there were many of us here today. I said there’s a few. So he and his partner turned around and left. I should say in passing that [Dometrich-Sensei daughter] Debbie Dometrich was the first United States women’s karate kumite champion, which she won at what might have been the first US championship open to women, in Washington DC, in ’64 or ’65. And she was only a white belt. Our dojo would sometimes go up and compete at the Canadian National Exhibition tournament run by [Masami] Tsuruoka-Sensei. In the late ’60s, Dometrich-Sensei had received from O-Sensei, in the mail, his promotion to fifth dan, I think, or it could have been higher. He threw it into a drawer and didn’t tell anybody but his wife. So they went up to Toronto for the CNE tournament. Even though he was pushing 40, Dometrich-Sensei decided he wanted to compete. He didn’t know that Okusan had his new certificate with her and a big presentation was planned at the tournament. Tsuruoka-Sensei and others tried to talk him out of fighting, because of the presentation and because he was a senior instructor. But he was hellbent on competing. He wound up facing [Canadian champion] Wally Slocki. Dometrich-Sensei had a great reverse punch but for some reason he used shutos to run Slocki out of the ring a couple of times and didn’t get points for them. Then he made a move and Slocki round kicked him to the face and broke his nose. Match over. It was a tremendous technique. So Dometrich-Sensei finally accepted his promotion certificate with blood over the front of his gi, tissue stuffed up his nose and a big smile across his face. Jerry Beshears, 7th dan, Yoseikan Honbu, U.S. Chito-ryu Karate Federation, Covington, Kentucky

Instructors of Chito-Ryu: 1 of 5 I originally started in Matsubayashi Shorin-ryu, in 1964, at the old Cincinnati Judo Club with three other friends. The instructor was a brown belt, Jim Hogan, who called us the North College Hillbillies because we came from North College Hill. I was 15. One day we were suited up and coming onto the deck when we saw a new guy, short with a crew cut, also wearing a brown belt. It turns out that he was Al Johnson, a student of [William] Dometric...h-Sensei’s. He came onto the deck and my teacher stopped class and said we’re going to spar. There were probably 10 people in the class, up to a green belt. So we all lined up and one by one we sparred with Al Johnson. He went through us like a dose of salt through a goose. All of my friends the next day had five black-and-blue circles on both sides of their ribs from his round kicks. I saw everybody getting beaten up and thought that this wouldn’t go well for me. But just as it was my turn, our teacher said, OK, we’re going to do kata now. So I escaped with my ribs. After about nine months, my other friends quit and I didn’t have a car license. So I’d have to hike or walk the 15 miles or so from my house to the dojo. It was winter and often the dojo was closed by the time I got there, so finally I stopped. Later I got my license and remembered the dojo that Al Johnson was from, in Covington [Kentucky]. At that time Covington wasn’t as gentrified as it is now. It was seedy, with a lot of strip clubs. And Newport, the city next door, was wide open as far as gambling, run by factions of the Chicago and New York mobs. So I was 16 and drove over with a friend. The dojo, Kushin Kan, was a refurbished garage down this dark alley, off Madison Ave. We walked in and were greeted by Okusan [Barbara Dometrich] at the desk, with her daughter, Sherry Lynn, about three years old, playing with a doll in the office. Dometrich-Sensei was leading the class. It was my first time to see a karate black belt. I watched the class and said, Yeah, this is where I need to be. So I signed up. Jerry Beshears, 7th dan, Yoseikan Honbu, U.S. Chito-ryu Karate Federation, Covington, Kentucky

Archival footage of Tsuyoshi Chitose, founder of Chito-Ryu, shot in Kentucky and Japan. Copyright belongs to the United States Chito-Ryu Karate Federation.

Kay and Masami Tsuruoka Sensei’s have been laid to rest together. Wednesday the fifth of August 2020. They opened the first Karate Dojo together in Toronto in ...1959, 1499 Queen St. West. Most Canadian martial Artists owe a debt of gratitude to these two wonderful people. Kay Sensei was the first female Black Belt in Canada! Masami Sensei trained in Japan with the famous Dr. Chitose, then moved to Canada! They then became our great fortune! Taihan Arigato Gosaimasita!!! (The highest level of thank you)! Thank you Sensei Monty Guest for the original picture and thank you to Shane Finigan for all the work to produce this memorial of The beginnings of Karate in Canada, resting together forever! RIP please feel free to copy and place this picture to honour this amazing couple in your Dojo! Proudly Canadian Scott Hogarth

Since there is only a small chance of rain at this point, we will hold the karate class in St. Vincent Park tonight. The class will start at 7 pm for both kids and adults. The kids will go 45 minutes and the adults will do an extra 30 minutes oafter this. For karate class members who can’t train outside tonight (or for members who want to do an extra class), I will hold a Zoom class on Friday at noon.