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Randall Hassell

No Finish Line

By Jose Fraguas

Randall Hassell is a member of the first generation of Americans to pioneer shotokan karate and, along with Sensei Ray Dalke, Sensei Leslie Safar, Sensei Dick Gould, and the late A.R. Allen, was an original founder of the American JKA Karate Association. He is a world-renowned author and authority on shotokan karate. He has written, edited, or significantly contributed to 28 books on karate, and has published more than 100 magazine articles. His work often focuses on the history and underlying philosophy of karate-do as a way of life.

As a teacher, Sensei Hassell is known for concentrating on the fundamental principles of karate and for the application of kata techniques and principles to self-defense and kumite. Additionally, for the past two decades, he has focused on instructor training and has developed a highly successful, nationwide instructor training and black belt development program for his organization, the American Shotokan Karate Alliance (ASKA). In 2001, he was instrumental in founding an international, professional society of shotokan teachers, the International Karate Society. Currently, he is Chief Instructor of the American Shotokan Karate Alliance and President of Damashi Publications, a book publishing and video production company in St. Louis, Missouri. 

Q: What got you interested in the art karate-do?

A: When I was 11 years old, my mother would take me to a big department store and leave me in the book department while she shopped. There I found the book, Karate: The Art of Empty-hand Fighting, by Hidetaka Nishiyama and Richard Brown. It intrigued me from the instant I saw it. I think, in retrospect, that the book appealed to me so much because it said that anybody could do karate, and I sure wanted to do what I saw those men in the pictures doing. I hadn’t had much success in other sports because of my eyes. I was born with eyes that did not focus together, so I had no depth perception at all. This made it very difficult for me to participate in sports because I couldn’t tell, for example, how far away a ball was when I was trying to catch it. As a result, I was always getting hurt. When my family saw my interest in karate, they bought me the book, and I started studying from it in 1960.

It is interesting because initially, I had no regular teachers. There were only two karate dojos in St. Louis at that time, and one of them was affiliated with Matsubayashi shorin-ryu. My friends and I would go to that school as often as we could, but we couldn’t afford to join. Still, the instructors there treated us very nicely and invited us to attend whenever a visiting instructor was coming in, and they invited us to their tournaments. So we got to train with numerous people from goju-ryu, shorin-ryu, and even taekwondo. My primary teachers over the ensuing years, though, once I was able to make contact with Nishiyama sensei’s new AAKF, were Hidetaka Nishiyama, Takayuki Mikami when he was stationed in Kansas City, and beginning in 1965, Shojiro Sugiyama of Chicago. But it was very difficult to obtain regular instruction, so my friends and I self-trained every single day, year after year. It was like an obsession with me, and since the age of 12, my life has been structured around karate.

From 1966 on, we were able to bring many different instructors to St. Louis for two or three-day clinics. Throughout the 1970s, Nishiyama sensei came to teach and conduct grading at least twice a year, and we also learned from Senseis Miyata, Okazaki, Mikami, Koyama, and others. I traveled to seminars all over the country, too, where I eventually met and trained under virtually every JKA international instructor. In recent years, I have hosted numerous clinics with the late Osamu Ozawa, Ray Dalke, and Stan Schmidt. Sensei Schmidt, in particular, has been very instrumental in my personal development.

After more than 40 years and have so many good memories of so many fine sensei that I couldn’t begin to relate all of them here. It would take a whole book to do that, which I might write one of these days. Overall, though, my memories of my teachers are extremely positive. 

Q: Do you think going to Japan to train is highly necessary?

A: Perhaps I am biased because I personally never trained in Japan; but no, I wouldn’t characterize training in Japan as “highly necessary.” Many of my friends, seniors, and students have trained there, though, and they have given me great insights into the Japanese training experience. From what they tell me, I would say that training in Japan is highly desirable but not highly necessary. Some of the most extraordinary karateka I have met have never trained there.

Q: How do Westerners respond to traditional Japanese training?

A: It depends on what you mean by “traditional” and to what time period you are referring. When I started training in 1960, a lot of what we now call “traditional” was actually just brutal. Training was often a macho thing in some dojos then, and people routinely got teeth knocked out, broken bones, and worse. I don’t call that “traditional,” though. I call it stupid. But society was different then, so a certain amount of gung-ho brutality was accepted as part of the training. Thankfully, people in general won’t accept that kind of training today, and I think that shows progress. It was not necessary, and it drove a lot of people away from karate. To be very clear on this, though, many people today think of that period as brutal Japanese instructors beating up on Americans. That was not the case. The instructors certainly set the tone for the training, but it was gung-ho Westerners, in my opinion, who always pushed the envelope and competed harder and harder against each other. The instructors did not, by and large, willfully injure their students. The students did it to each other.

Q: What is your perception of changes in the art throughout the years?

A: It has become a more accessible art for a broader spectrum of society. Good principles of fitness and physical training are now apparent in almost all shotokan dojos, and people of all ages and both sexes can now benefit immeasurably from karate training, which was not the case when I first started. It is a much safer art to practice than it was in 1960, primarily because of the incorporation of scientific principles of physical education.

Technically, the changes have been very few and far between. I have seen changes in performance of various kata, and it seems to me that, for the most part, these changes have been implemented to make the kata more appealing to competition judges. That’s not true in every case, but in many. Free-fighting looks a lot more like boxing, in terms of distancing and application, than it did when I first learned it, but that’s a natural progression to make the sport aspect of karate more appealing to the spectators. It used to be that free-fighting was much slower and much more serious with the intention of theoretically killing the opponent. Because of that, the contestants stood farther apart and moved less, waiting for that one, split-second chance to deliver a decisive blow. Of course, this made it extremely boring to the untrained eye, which is why it has evolved the way it has. Fundamental techniques, though, have not changed much at all. Overall, I would say that there have been major improvements in the art, rather than major changes. 

Q: Do you think it is necessary to engage in free-fighting to achieve good fighting skills in the street?

A: I think it is important in terms of timing, distancing, and experience, but not absolutely necessary. There are many styles of karate that do not engage in free-fighting, and they have produced a number of people that I would consider to be very formidable fighting machines in the street.

Q: How important is understanding Zen, to fully absorb the meaning and essence of budo and karate-do in particular?

A: I think it is beneficial for a person to have an intellectual understanding of what Zen is about, to better understand the nature of Japanese martial arts in general; but I don’t think that practicing Zen is necessary for success in karate. Studying the history and development of Zen and how it has influenced Japanese martial arts will give the student a better understanding of how their art developed and why certain things are done in certain ways - but it is not necessary to go farther than that.

Q: When teaching karate – what is most important: self defense, sport, or tradition?

A: To me, they are all the same. I don’t teach “self-defense karate,” or “sport karate,” or even “traditional karate.” I just practice and teach shotokan karate, and all of those things are part of it. Daily purposeful training will sharpen all of those things, naturally. Your question is phrased in a way that makes each of those elements sound like a different pie. As I see it, karate-do itself is the pie, and those things are slices within it.

My advice for the beginner is to find a good teacher and to stick with that teacher. Don’t be distracted by others’ claims of superiority, and don’t focus on your teacher’s personality. Focus on what the teacher has to teach you, and try to learn it every day. Also, try to see your karate training as a pleasant respite from the problems of everyday life. Being challenged by the art is fine; but if it becomes a chore, it’s probably not worth pursuing.

I understand that keeping the motivation going throughout the years is hard, but any dedicated practitioner needs to find their own way to keep training. Karate has been the focus of my life since I was a child, so I don’t really think in terms of “motivation.” It simply is what I do - and I enjoy it. It has become a natural part of my everyday life, like brushing my teeth and combing my hair. It doesn’t require any special motivation. The student needs consistency of practice and an unwavering dedication to learning what the sensei is trying to teach. 

Q: What is your perception of full-contact karate and kickboxing ?

A: I think it’s wonderful for people who want to do it and for people who like to watch it. I think the point has been made pretty clearly that full contact and kickboxing have nothing to do with budo or the development of the human self that we strive for in karate-do. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them - certainly not. They are sports where the youngest, fastest, and strongest win, and that’s fine. That is not the case with karate-do, though, which is an art in which we keep trying to develop physically, mentally, and emotionally until the day we die. I think most people understand the difference between sport and art.

Q: Do you think that the West has caught up with Japanese quality standards?

A: Absolutely, but it is more than just “catching up,” in my opinion. I agree with my friend, the late Osamu Ozawa, who said that today there is absolutely no difference, technically, between Japanese and Western practitioners. What he predicted would happen next, though, is that each country or each area of the world will develop their own karate, just as the Okinawans did and the Japanese did again when they imported karate from Okinawa. I think he was right about this, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, as long as the essence of karate as a martial art is not lost. 

Q: What’s your opinion about mixing karate styles?

A: I have practiced shotokan karate for more than 40 years, and I am still challenged by it every day. I have never felt a need to study another style and cannot imagine that I would have the time. Of course, I have studied various aspects of other styles of karate, and have gained a better understanding of them as a result, but to actually enroll in a dojo to seriously study another style is beyond me. I am very happy with the effectiveness of shotokan karate. 

Q: Modern sport karate is moving away from the bunkai in kata practice. Do you think understanding bunkai is necessary to learning kata and karate-do in general?

A: I think that understanding bunkai is very important to an understanding of kata. However, I disagree with the statement that modern karate is moving away from bunkai. Bunkai simply means “analysis,” and it has always been a part of karate training, both inside the JKA and outside. Mr. Nishiyama’s International Traditional Karate Federation, for example, has two complete kata divisions that require powerful demonstrations of bunkai. I’m not a member of that organization, so I can’t speak with authority about their competition, but that’s hardly moving away from bunkai. I don’t believe I was ever taught a kata without being taught the basic meaning of its techniques. Further, I was always taught to think about the movements of the kata and to try to devise applications of them in as many ways as possible. I have always taught this way, too. I teach that applications of kata movements are limited only by the limits of one’s imagination.

It seems to me that what has happened recently is that bunkai has become a faddish way of re-arranging karate training to make it more appealing as a self-defense system. If one subscribes to the notion that shotokan karate is not an effective form of self-defense using only punches, blocks, kicks, and strikes, then this idea makes sense. I personally do not subscribe to that notion at all. I was taught, and I always teach, that the techniques of shotokan karate should be practiced within the framework of “ikken hisatsu,” which means, “one-punch death blow.” That is, every movement hinges on life and death, and practicing the basics and kata are what prepare you for that eventuality. Rather than relying on intricate applications of each technique in the kata - which may or may not prepare you for a fight - the concept of ikken hisatsu teaches you to develop a punch and kick so strong that they cannot be blocked and a block so strong that it cannot be penetrated.

In my view, practicing the kata as art forms that symbolize and develop the fundamental principles that prepare the individual for any eventuality, is the most productive way to practice them. Breaking them down and applying each technique in as many ways as possible is physically and intellectually stimulating. But when we do this in my dojo, I tell the students that no matter how many ways you practice a single technique, a real attack will always come in a way that will not be covered by individual practiced responses. Real attacks are thwarted by mastery of the core principles of awareness, timing, distancing, conditioned reflexes, strong technique, and stable emotions under attack, among other things. Kata are excellent for developing these things.

In my early days of training, we often practiced responses to specific attacks, such as grabbing, choking, shoving, tackling, arm twisting, headlocks, and so on. We learned how to defend ourselves against such things using techniques from the kata. This, as I understand it, is what some teachers are emphasizing again now. I applaud that, because it is a move away from an emphasis on competition and toward an emphasis on self-defense - and I think that’s good. But I worry that some will emphasize this bunkai training over actual practice of the kata itself, and I think that’s bad. A balance between the two is very important.

I say this because trends often become fads, and fads often lead away from the original intention of the trend, and things get confused. The interest in kyusho - vital points - in recent years is illustrative of this. From my very first day of karate training, I was taught that vital points on the human body were the targets of karate techniques - both in blocking and counter-attacking. Aside from the obvious points such as eyes, solar plexus, testicles, and the like, I was taught to attack areas of the body where nerves were exposed, and particularly nerves that crossed bones. I was also taught how to generate shock against arteries, such as the carotid artery on the side of the neck. My teachers were very specific about where these points were and how to attack them.

So it came as somewhat of a surprise to me to read in martial arts magazines in the 1990s that kyusho was a “lost art” and was being “rediscovered.” As the trend progressed to a fad, it got intertwined with the old idea of vital points lying on energy meridians in the body and that energy flow could be interrupted with taps to specific points. This, of course, led to the old idea of harnessing ki and using it as a special force against opponents. A further extension of this was that an opponent’s ki could be intercepted and used against him. The final stage of this trend/fad was the declaration that any of us old timers who weren’t teaching this way had learned inferior karate and just didn’t know what we were doing.

The facts of the matter, though, was that 1) There was absolutely nothing new about any of this “rediscovery;” and 2) the majority of people in my generation who were not teaching that way simply did not believe in the foundational premises of the “new” kyusho - ki malleability, energy meridians, and so on. So what began as a good trend ended up expending its energy on secondary arguments rather than purely on the study of vital points. I hope this doesn’t happen to the current trend of bunkai-based kata study, but I’m pretty sure that it will. It’s the nature of trends and fads. It would be as bad for the trend as those who say that only a specific application is acceptable for a particular kata technique. That notion is utterly ridiculous. 

Q: What is the philosophical basis for your karate training?

A: It’s rather simple, really. I believe that shotokan karate-do is a very valuable and beneficial activity for human beings to engage in, so I practice it. I also believe that it is worth passing on to others, so I teach it. It obviously is not for everybody, but it is just right for me.

I see karate-do as an art of virtuous people and a tool that people can use to become better human beings - physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s important to note that I use the word, “tool,” because I don’t believe that karate training, in and of itself, can make people more virtuous or improve their character. On the contrary, I see it as a tool that virtuous people can use for those purposes. Karate training won’t guarantee, for example, that kids who study it will get better grades in school. But it can be a very useful tool to encourage kids to concentrate and be more self-disciplined. Sometimes good grades follow from that. I don’t think that teaching karate to a criminal will make that person a model citizen, but I do believe that if that criminal sincerely wants to change, karate-do can be of great benefit in helping them focus on change, responsibility, and disciplined thinking. 

Q: Do you have a particularly memorable karate experience which has remained with you as an inspiration for your training?

A: I remember exactly when I decided that I was going to abandon other martial arts and karate styles and concentrate on shotokan. It was in the mid-1960s, and I witnessed a demonstration by Taiji Kase, Keinosuke Enoeda, Hirokazu Kanazawa, and Hiroshi Shirai. Those men gave the most astounding demonstration of advanced karate that I had ever seen, and by the time Kanazawa had finished demonstrating the kata, unsu, at the end of the demonstration, I was hooked. More than anything else in my life, I wanted to be able to do what those great men had just done. In my mind’s eye, I still can’t do it the way they did it, and that will challenge me for the rest of my life. 

Q: How do you think a practitioner can increase their understanding of the spiritual aspects of karate?

A: I prefer to use the word, “spiritful,” rather than “spiritual,” because I don’t believe there is anything inherently spiritual about karate-do. The spirit resides inside the human being, and disciplined training can polish and improve that spirit according to the individual’s personal beliefs. The staunchest atheists and the most devoted ministers can benefit equally from karate-do. 

Q: How much training should a senior karateka be doing to improve and get better at the art?

A: As much as possible. But “possible” varies greatly from person to person, and individual lifestyles really dictate how much time a person can spend practicing. Also, training comes in many forms. Teaching is a form of training, and after a person has been training for many years, the simple act of walking becomes training, too, because everything the human body does can be seen through the filter of karate training and thought of in terms of body mechanics, posture, awareness, and so on.

Q: Is there anything lacking in the way karate is taught today compared with the way it was taught in your day?

A: I can only speak for shotokan karate, but I would say no, nothing is lacking. In fact, the training today is much better than when I started. Understanding of body mechanics is better, physical conditioning is better, and karate athletes are much more sophisticated in their movements, coordination, and agility. I know some of us old-timers rue the loss of “spirit training,” which supposedly forged an indomitable spirit, but I don’t think that has really been lost. I think that fewer people seek to find it in modern society, and that makes it seem like it’s been lost. But I see extraordinary young karate-ka all over the world dedicating themselves to forging strong spirits, so I’m not worried. 

Q: What advice would you give to students on the question of supplementary training?

A: I teach my own students that the best way to improve an individual technique is to practice that technique itself. There is nothing at all wrong with supplementary training for strength and conditioning. In fact, it is very beneficial to the body. But I always stress to practice the karate techniques more than anything else. 

Q: Why do many students start falling away after two or three years of training?

A: My experience has been that many students quit shortly after starting training because the training is not what they expected it to be, and they don’t like it. Another fallout occurs around brown belt level - I think because the black belt looks so far away. Those students consciously or unconsciously decide that they don’t want to put in the extra effort to get there. A major reason people fall away, though, is that at the shodan (first degree black belt) level, they really have to come to grips with the fact that karate training requires a lot of time, effort, and dedication. It is a never-ending process, and that sometimes seems like too large an obstacle to overcome. Really, though, I think that the majority of people who quit just have other things going on in their lives and don’t feel that they can devote enough time to training to do it the way they want. 

Q: Have you felt fear in your training?

A: Yes, many times, and I think fear is sometimes a good thing. Facing fear is a valuable tool in developing stable emotions under attack. If we never feel fear in the dojo, how will we know how to respond to it in a life-and-death situation? What we learn in the dojo is that the violence there is controlled, and although we are sometimes fearful, we are going to come out of it OK on the other side. We also learn how our systems respond to fear, and we can learn to adjust our systems to that. I still feel some fear when I face some of my seniors, or perhaps “trepidation” would be a better word. I am not afraid that they will hurt me, but I’m afraid that I will get hurt if I don’t concentrate properly and move correctly. These are people with an extraordinary amount of power, and it is not easy to go toe-to-toe with them - even in a controlled atmosphere - without experiencing some butterflies. My job is to become more skillful and, therefore, less vulnerable to injury. I teach my students this, also. Become more skillful to conquer fear. 

Q: Do you have any general advice you would care to pass on the karate-ka?

A: Cling to your roots, no matter what style you practice, and work together with your classmates and friends to create a good atmosphere in your dojo. I believe that people who train together, sweat together, experience fear together, and experience achievement together will be stronger people than those who do not. Strong, well-adjusted people will make society better for all of us, now and in the future. In other words, please use your training today to create a better tomorrow.

Q: What are your thoughts on the future of karate-do, and your personal plans for the years to come?

A: First, I believe that any art changes day by day as people continue to practice it. This is natural and not a bad thing at all, as long as the essence of the art is not lost in transition.

Second, I believe that any great movement must go through the process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Using my own experience as an original JKA karateka in the 1960s, I believe that I, and my seniors and peers, were part of the great thesis of shotokan karate for America. In the beginning, we were all together and all going in the same direction. We thought we had a perfect karate world. As time went by, though, we started to drift apart. First we left the Japanese organizations, and then we left each other and went in our own directions. This was the antithesis of what we originally thought we had. We developed our own organizations and pretty much ignored each other. Now, in the new millennium, and after attaining mature ages, we have started to come back together again.

We are not starting any new organization, or anything even resembling that, but we have gotten together and decided to work together for the benefit of shotokan karate-do. We have agreed to freely and mutually recognize and support each other’s efforts. In addition to any alliances we have with anybody else, we have come back together personally. This means that my American Shotokan Karate Alliance (ASKA) now fully recognizes and is recognized by Ray Dalke’s American JKA (AJKA), Leslie Safar’s AJKA Hungarian Federation, and Richard Gould’s American Shotokan Karate Federation (ASKF), among others. We mutually recognize each other’s rankings and technical qualifications, and we get together as a group to conduct clinics and camps.

This, I believe, is the first step toward synthesis in the JKA shotokan structure among American pioneers of the art. As time goes by, I suspect that others will join us in this movement toward synthesis. My personal energies are being spent on this, on teaching my own students in my own dojo, and on developing the next generation of shotokan instructors in the U.S. Beyond the U.S. borders, many top-level shotokan instructors worldwide are in the process of coming together in the same way in a professional society - the International Karate Society. We are starting to share with each other on an international basis, and we are mutually recognizing each other’s efforts, rankings, and qualifications. In time, we plan for the society to publish an Internet journal where we can share our knowledge, experience, and ideas with the rest of the world.

Finally, I believe that karate will continue grow and change, and that there will still be many political wars before the dust settles - if it ever does. I believe that the antidote for this is for people to communicate with each other, train together, sweat together, and keep their thoughts focused on being the best they can be in their art, regardless of style. Politics and organizations come and go, but karate training is for a lifetime, and that’s where we should put our energies.