Richard Kim and Kotaro Yoshida


[Edited from a lecture given on February 27, 1971]


Also read Takemura Yukioshi Sensei on Kotaro Yoshida


If Yoshida Kotaro were living today, he would be anywhere between the ages of ninety-six to one-hundred years old. There are no records on him because he was a master spy. He was a man who lived simply, like most zen men, and had few possessions. Others, not knowing any better, might feel sorry for him, thinking he had a poor life, but he was rich in spirit. He taught only those people with whom he got along. When Mr. Kim last saw him, he was about eighty-two years old.


When Yoshida was thirteen years old, he went to a shrine every day to meditate. He did this for one hundred days. On the ninety ninth or one hundredth day he was kneeling down, just about ready to get up and ring the shrine bell signifying the end of the period of meditation, when he dozed off. Someone was calling his name. He woke up and saw an old man standing in front of him. The man looked very old and had a white beard. He was dressed all in white with a medal I-ching symbol sewn on his clothes. He was armed with a stick.


The old man knelt down on one knee in front of Yoshida holding the stick vertically in one hand with the hand about eight inches from the top. He told Yoshida to attack him any way he could. (At this point in his life Yoshida’s hair was not yet worn in the samurai style of having part of the head shaved and the rest tied back. Hair was not worn that way until you became a man by killing another man.) Yoshida drew his sword and tried to attack the old man, but when he did, the tsuba (the top eight inches of the stick representing the hilt of a sword) would grow in size closing the opening. The tsuba grew in size till he could hardly see the old man behind it. Finally the old man said enough, that’s very good. He told Yoshida to think about what he saw.


Then Yoshida’s mother called him. She had a meal all prepared at home to celebrate his one hundred day feat. When they got home, he asked for his father’s sword which was very famous. He took it out of the sheath and examined it, then put it back. He held the sheathed sword in his left hand up against his side and asked his mother to attack him. (Being a martial arts family, the mother had some training also.)


His mother said that there were two ways that she could attack him. One would be to attack his head and the other was to attack his hand that was holding the sword. What would be attacked in a fight would depend on the attacker’s particular style of fencing.


Yoshida said that that was the way his father had died. Then he asked, suppose the tsuba grew so that it was several feet long, then you wouldn’t be able to attack. His mother said that was right. (His father had been killed before he could draw his sword.)


Yoshida’s father thought that all the training in the use of the sword was a joke not to be taken seriously. He studied it only because he belonged to a martial arts family and it was expected of him. He felt that because of the new contact with the west, and the subsequential effect on Japan’s culture and way of life, dependency on the sword as a way of life was coming to an end. He was more of a scholar than a martial artist.


One night the father went to a party where he ate and drank a lot and had several women. When the party was over, the host sent a servant to escort him half way home, as was the custom of the time. By the time the two had reached approximately half way which was near the edge of the forest, mist was forming along the ground. Off in the mist the father saw what he thought was his servant standing in the middle of the road with his arms folded, so he dismissed his host’s servant and went on ahead.


Getting closer to the man, he saw that the man’s clothing was tied back with string in the manner of one about to fight. Then he realised that he had made a mistake. The man was a stranger whom he had never seen before. When the father tried to go around the man (Nitta Dengoro), the stranger stepped in front of him blocking his way. When he tried again, the same thing happened. It was then that the father saw the sword in the man’s right hand that had been hidden by the folded arms. Finally realising that the man intended to attack him, the father made a mistake in strategy. He ran for the forest thinking that when he reached it, his rear would be safe and he would be able to hold off his attacker until his servant arrived. When he reached the forest, another man (Sakagami Shuzen) jumped out in front of him and cut his arm off, and then, giving a big kiai, cut him in the head.


The host’s servant and his own, hearing the shout, ran to where he lay. He was able to tell them what happened before he died. Yoshida was thirteen at this time and this was the reason for his one hundred days of meditation.


Yoshida decided to try to find a spy school to study at. This was not an easy thing to do, for while every town has a least one martial arts school, there are few spy schools, and they don’t advertise. Eventually he found Takeda Sokaku’s school which taught Daito-Ryu Aiki Jujitsu, including the art of being a spy. Sokaku agreed to accept Yoshida as a student. When he heard Yoshida’s story about his father’s death, he told him that the man who did it must have been very skilful because of the kind of stroke that he used. Sokaku also told him to forget about his revenge for the present.


Takeda Sokaku taught Yoshida principles rather than techniques because a technique will only work under certain conditions whereas a principle can be applied to many different situations.


Yoshida had to learn to press out with his ki in order to be able to compete with the man who killed his father. The first thing that must be mastered for this is breath control. You must breathe in such a manner that if the teacher held a feather in front of your nose, it would not be moved by your breath. You must breathe with these syllables: a, um, aum. When you breathe in this manner, a certain part of the cosmic rays that are always penetrating your body can be absorbed and their energy sent to the skin. Being able to do this results in some physical changes to your body. These changes start from the marrow of your bones and proceeds outwards. The first change is an increase in the density of your bones.


To illustrate this Mr. Kim told the following story. In 1948 an incident occurred to Mr. Kim which resulted in him being cut to the bone by a two foot bread knife. The doctors who examined him were amazed when they heard the story of what had happened because a normal man’s bone would have been cut throughout, but his was merely nicked. Further tests revealed that his bones were on the average of three times denser than other men his age.


Misc.: The following incident concerning Mr. Kim and Yoshida occurred in the winter of 1953. It had been snowing and the tree in Mr. Kim’s courtyard was barren of leaves. It had five branches pointing up at the sky like fingers of a hand. When Yoshida saw this, he said that it was good luck and that they should go out and practice catching the cosmic rays. After a while they went inside and Mr. Kim was pressing a 220 pound barbell to see if he could use the cosmic energy to help lift the weight. As he was pressing the weight several times, his second wife’s mother entered the room and when she saw what he was doing, she commented on what would happen to the floor if the weight fell. Mr. Kim lost his concentration and not being a weightlifter per se, dropped the weight. It didn’t hit the floor, but was suspended above the floor by Yoshida. When his mother-in-law saw that, she was no longer a skeptic.


Part 2


When Yoshida was eighteen, he developed a sophisticated theory of values. Simply, Yoshida’s theory is as follows: Of the three great sufferings of mankind, namely desire, disease and death, desire comes first. Yoshida answered the question: Do you live to eat or eat to live? The man who works nine to five, five days a week, at a job he hates to do, to earn money to buy material things he desires and food to eat, lives to eat. The free man one who works if he wishes, at a job he likes and doesn’t have many desires for material things, eats in order to stay alive.


Yoshida decided that the “ultimate” that everybody seeks is happiness. According to him, happiness has three prongs: gain, beauty, and love. Gain consists of material things, while beauty is the sensual pleasure derived from your gain, i.e. enjoyment of gourmet food or of a beautiful woman. Gain and beauty lie in the material world. Love is in the spiritual world and is your sharing of your gain and beauty with someone else. Few people can love. You must love to be able to protect yourself.


You must relax when you fight or else your muscles and tendons lock up the skeletal system with their tenseness. This will impede your strength. To relax you must relax your stomach and then your joints. This gives you true strength so that when attacked, you can explode from your stomach.


When you breathe out, imagine that the breath settles down to your stomach and that any excess goes down to your big toe. Then when you hit, at the moment of impact, you explode, relaxing immediately. In the kata you explode into the movements and relax between them.


All the above is what he developed at the age of eighteen years.


At the age of eighteen Yoshida was training in the mountains when he was approached by two men dressed in common clothes. One of them stood off to his left side while the one in front said: “Hey boy! We notice by your dress that you are a samurai. Give us some money.” The man then applied nami-jujishime to Yoshida. (At this time in Japan’s history samurai were forbidden to carry their two swords because the emperor feared they were likely to use them, which he didn’t want. However most samurai ignored the order and carried at least a knife in their waistband. Yoshida, who was dressed in fine samurai clothes, had on a silk waistband in which he carried a small knife.) As soon as the hold was applied to Yoshida’s neck, he used the Daito-ryu escape of pushing the elbow to the ear and shoved the man to the side. Then as he was shoving the man, he drew his knife and slashed his stomach. Slashing the first man and turning in one movement, he attacked and killed the second man to his side.


At first Yoshida experienced a terrible feeling for it was the first time he had killed, but soon there was an exaltation for he had killed in seconds two men who were going to rob him. His exaltation was short lived however, for when he dragged their bodies to the bushes at the side of the road, he was shocked to discover that the wooden swords they were carrying had extra long hilts like his. He thought that he was the first to discover that style.


Yoshida decided to stop for the night as it was getting late. He was near a farm house so he approached the gate and handed the attendant his letter of introduction. The letter, besides stating who he was and asking for hospitality, said that he had developed a completely different sword style. Although the farmer, his son, and his daughter had never heard of him, they decided to let him in because it was a dangerous area (mountain bandits).


When they saw him, they were shocked to find him so young. They wanted to know if his style worked and asked him if he had ever killed anyone. Yoshida replied that he had (the two he killed that morning). They then told him of the danger of being robbed by the mountain bandits in the area. It was then that Yoshida told them the story of what had happened earlier that day. They turned pale when they heard the description and the style of sword found on their bodies. It was a notorious gang and the farmer knew that they would seek revenge so he rounded up all the outlying small farmers and stationed them in his compound.


The gang decided to attack that night rather than wait. There were fourteen of them including their leader. They approached the front gate of the compound very late at night and nine of them scaled the wall and crept up to the main house where they found the lights out and the door open and apparently unguarded. They decided that one man at a time would sneak in at three minute intervals. The first man entered and three minutes went by without a sound uttered except for a small hiss like a man breathing heavily. So the second man entered. Same thing. No sound except for the hiss. Finally all had entered except the sub leader in charge. After a while he got very suspicious because there were no sounds of fighting nor any light or signal. He went up to the door and smelled. He could smell blood in the air but no fear so he ran out and told the leader that something was funny. The leader didn’t think it too strange. He said they must have killed someone and were probably enjoying themselves with the women. He told the sub leader to go inside and check on them.


He went back to the door but got a very strange feeling so he didn’t enter but instead felt the floor inside the door with his sword. There was a large hole just inside the door. He ran out to report it. (Yoshida had removed several floorboards just inside the door forming a deep pit. He stood to the side and cut the heads off the gang members as they entered and fell into the pit). As the sub leader reached the wall, he was met by Yoshida standing in front of it with his sword in his sash and his left hand on the sheath. The sub leader cut for his left arm and Yoshida blocked with the extra long hilt knocking the sub leader’s sword to the side and in one continuous motion drawing his sword with his palm (right) underneath and cutting the sub leader’s stomach.


Yoshida put on the sub leader’s clothes and went outside where he surprised the leader and his men killing three of the remaining five including the leader. The other two escaped (to fight another day) and spread the story of his skill.


The farmer invited Yoshida to stay a while, probably hoping to marry off his daughter to such a skilful man, but Yoshida had things to do.


The most important thing is complete relaxation before any exertion. There are two steps: (1) relaxation and softness, then bursting out from softness (explosion): (2) subconscious - if you tighten up your subconscious won’t come out.


You must face your opponent as if you were in the gym practising. In the gym you know you won’t get hurt so you are relaxed. Then the moment you go into action, your subconscious will come out.


Yoshida eventually killed Sagakama Shuzen but not Nitta Dengoro because he was Nitta and was blown up while trying to sabotage a train.


Doihara Kenji was one of the greatest spies of all times. Unfortunately he was captured and executed by the Chinese.


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