Author: Sensei Scott Brown
VIRTUALLY EVERY Martial Artist who has ever achieved any notable degree of success and seniority in the martial path of their choice has had to overcome various hardships and obstacles along the way. But Sensei Scott Brown, successful International Koshiki Contact toumament fighter and 4th Dan Chief Instructor of Shorinjiryu Kenkokan Karatedo in NSW, has had to fight back from devastating leg and foot injuries which would have stopped many lesser men in their tracks.
The injuries which laid Scott low but failed to dampen his indomitable Martial Arts spirit- include thigh muscles “shredded to jelly” by the high-explosive impact of a bullet from a .357 Magnum, the weapon described in Clint Eastwood’s widely-quoted ‘Dirty Harry’ line as “the most powerful handgun in the world”.
The former exclusive private school and agricultural student and world traveller, now fulltime, professional Karate Instructor, describes the circumstances leading to the potentially lethal injuries as ‘a simple accident’; “I tripped on a step, the firearm discharged, and the bullet ended up in my left leg. It’s still there, in fact. Ever seen a kangaroo that’s been shot with a Magnum? That part of my leg, the upper thigh, was just like that… jelly!
“So that certainly slowed me up for a while. Although that was in May, 1982”, Scott recalls, “and in November that year we went to Japan and fought there. So, from almost losing my leg – the bullet just missed the femoral artery – and thinking I would never walk again in May, I was back in Japan, fighting in an international tournament, six months later!”
Scott credits the dedicated assistance of two Karate training partners and good mates, Graham Bowden and Gordon Kliese, for much of the impetus in keeping him going through those painful months of rehabilitation. “Graham and Gordon got me up every morning and we trained. We prepared for that tournament – a World Championship event in Japan and we won. The Australian Shorinjiryu Kenkokan team won that event”. More on th.tt.later. But first, the other crippling accitIent…
“I’m reasonably accident-prone, I guess”, concedes Scott, before describing another bloody incident in which a lawnmowing mishap in Canada cost him three toes off his right foot! He had been hitch-
hiking across Canada from coast to coast at the time – visiting and training at a variety of Karate dojos as he travelled. While staying with friends in Ontario, he mowed their lawn, slipping on a countour bank in the process. “My foot went under the mower, and that was that! It slowed my training down quite considerably for about the next 18 months”, Scott adds. “I kept on training, but it was quite a handicap for a while. When I came back to Australia and started a club here in January, 1981, I used to wear shoes while training”.
Scott says he no longer regards the loss of those toes as a disability now – more of an annoyance. “Shorinjiryu is primarily a lead-leg, lead-hand style and I fight mostly right-foot forward, anyway, and use my right leg for a lot of my kicking”, he explains. “If you only use one side, you are only a 50 percent Martial Artist. You should use both sides to be 100 percent. Some people are exceptions to that general rule, of course. An obvious example is Bill Wallace, who has a bad leg and has done 200 percent training off the one side, so I guess that makes him a 100 percent Martial Artist anyway.
“Hisataka Hanshi” (Shihan Masayuki Hisataka, 9th Dan, World ChiefInstructor of Shorinjiryu Kenkokan) “always says you must develop both sides. But primarily, at that early stage, I was a right-foot fighter. So I didn’t ‘kick-off’, or move forward, off my right leg. I always depended on my left foot for that, so I was still able to move and fight, or perform kata, similarly to what I had previously, before the accident.
“And the upside of it is that it’s good for kicking the bogu” (protective headgear and body armour), “because my toes don’t get in the way. And, as it happens, in Shorin jiryu we use the heel of the foot a lot in kicking, anyway. The heel is much stronger than the ball of the foot, and we use that additional strength in many of our kicking techniques”.
Scott explains that the late Master Kori Hisataka (lOth Dan), the founder of Kenkokan, was a strong advocate of kicking with the heel. Especially when using contact and protective equipment, the heel offers great strength as a striking surface. “And, of course, it enables a bit more hip projection too”, Scott adds. “But I can still kick with the ball of the foot; it is quite strong enough”.
Although each of these accidents was, understandably, quite devastating at the time, it is to Scott Brown’s immense credit that he fought courageously against the painful and disabling obstacles placed in his path, drawing additional strength and spirit from facing and overcoming the challenge. “It was a great lesson to me in realising that, through diligent training and consistent effort you can overcome major problems”, he says.
Scott Brown’s initiation into the Karate world came -like many beginning country Karateka of the early 1970s – via the rugged Kyokushin style of Master Mas Oyama. He was a 16-year-old agricultural college student at Maitland, NSW, and joined up with Kyokushinkai during the period when the Japan-based organisation in that area was headed by Aubrey Brooks. The initial 24 students dwindled down to about 12, he recalls, and the club lasted about 10 months.
Upon returning to his family’s country property at Coolah, in central NSW, Scott was able to continue his Karate training in Dubbo – driving 100 miles each way to each weekly class-with one Bob Speechley, who was associated with two Malaysian Budokan Instructors, Chin Peng Wah and Koh Beng Soon. (The latter, Sensei Koh Beng Soon, is now Chief Instructor for Hayashi Sensei’s Shitoryu Karate in Sydney). This continued throughout 11)’/5, along with playing representative Rugby Union, until Scott began studying a Shotokan style with Sensei Pat McKean, then 3rd Dan, in February 1976. This, too, was in Dubbo. “Pat McKean had about 100 students and a very, very good standard of Karate”, Scott recalls, of their training in the local RSL.
“I trained there through 1976, ’77, until August ’78, when I went off on a ‘search’ for a club with an affiliation to Japan. Because, by that stage, I had decided that I wanted to train in Japan”. After visiting several Sydney clubs – where says he encountered a somewhat ‘cool and distant, sceptical’ attitude … which he concedes he now understands, after many years of fulltime teaching – he travelled north to Queensland.
At the Brisbane YMCA, the enthusiastic young ‘seeker’ met the then Chief InstructorofShorinjiryu Kenkokan, Sensei Laurence Vanniekerk. “Laurie Van was a real gentleman, who had just begun teaching the Shorinjiryu style in Queenslandafter meeting and training with Hanshi Hisataka in Japan the previous year (1977). Laurie put a telephone book op my chest and hit me. I was very impressed with the power. I thought, ‘If any man can make me feel like that, I want to learn how he does it…’ It involves a bit of a trick, of course, but it certainly woke me up! So I started training there. He had a nucleus of about six Black Belts there at the time Richard Bryant, Graham Bullpit, Paul Bulford, Chris and Gordon Kliese, Brian Hayes – who were all very, very good. They’d come with him from Renbukan, which he had started in Australia. Prior to that, he had set up Shukokai in this country. Of those Black Belts, the most influential, to me, was Graham Bullpit, then 3rd Dan, who was the chief instructor at the Windsor YMCA. I had a very good rapport with Graham and he helped me a lot.”
After two months’ full time training in Brisbane, Scott returned to his family’s NSW farm, where he resumed training with Pat McKean, and continued working on developing the techniques and methods he had learned from Messrs Bullpit and Vanniekerk. He returned to Brisbane 12 months later (in late 1979), where he trained fulltime for another two months. “That’s all I did, five days a week. I’d train in the morning, run and stretch in the afternoon, and train again in the clubs at night”.
Scott’s first trip to Japan was in October, 1979, accompanied by another young Shorinjiryu Karateka, Richard Bryant (1 st Dan). “I was still a Brown Belt at that stage – ready to test for Shodan, but having decided to test for my Black Belt in Japan – with an appropriate recommendation and letter of introduction from Laurie Vanniekerk. In Japan, we trained six days a week. We were in the dojo for six hours each day – from 4pm to lOpm. We did the children’s class, had a 3D-minute break, then did the senior class. After the seniors’ class, we stayed back to train with Hisataka Sensei. We trained at two different dojos each Saturday morning – one at Shinjuku and the other near Shinjuku and had Sundays off.”
Scott was successfully tested for Shodan (1st Dan) on November 18th that year, although part of the jiyu-kumite (free-fighting) component of his testing had already been assessed, having included competing previously in two tournaments, the All Shinjuku Championships and an inter-club Kenkokan tournament.
After six months’ training in Japan, Scott visited and trained in the United Kingdom – where he was one of the first Australians to experience the zany personality and innovative training methods of Bill ‘Superfoot’ Wallace, meeting and training with the American Contact KaratelKickboxing pioneer at one of his popular British seminars. From there he toured Switzerland, training and teaching at a local Shorinjiryu club for one month, from whence he flew on to the USA and Canada, training at various Shorinjiryu, Shotokan and American Freestyle dojos in Montreal.
Back in Australia in January 1981, Sensei Scott Brown opened his own Shorinjiryu Kenkokan dojo in his ‘hometown’ of Coolah, NSW. From there, the fledgling NSW division of Shorinjiryu Australia expanded to two other central western country towns, Binnaway and Coonabarabran, forming a solid nucleus for future growth. Scott was assisted in the style’s modest, but determined, growth by one of his students, Graham Bowden, who had recently returned from training in Brisbane and Mackay.
“The following year we were invited to a freesty Ie tournament at Gunnedah”, Scott recalls. “It was organised by a local Kyokushin instructor, Doug Hawkins, and a Jujitsu instructor, Phillip Hinshelwood. We participated, did a demonstration, and they were reasonably impressed. They both started training in Shorinjiryu. So that led to another dojo, in Gunnedah, followed later that year, or early 1983, by a Shorinjiryu club in Tamworth”.
The Australian branches have always maintained close and fruitful links with the style’s headquarters in Japan, with quite frequent visits by Aussie Black Belts to Japan for advanced training, and a number of teaching visits Down Under by the organisation’s charismatic Chief Instructor, Hanshi Hisataka, 9th Dan.
An Australian team travelled to Tokyo in November, 1980, to contest the Premier International Koshiki Karatedo Championships. While Scott Brown was not able to make that trip, he returned to Japan in 1982, heading an Aussie team which competed with great distinction in that year’s international tournament. The three-man team (Scott Brown, Phillip Hooper – now Queensland Chief Instructor – and Gordon Kliese) competed against the fired-up national teams of II other participating countries – and won!
“That was quite a thrill, for all of us”, Scott reminisces. “We were the first Australian team – as far as I am awareto win an international Karate tournament held outside Australia. As well as the team victory, Graham Bowden won the middleweight division and Phillip Hooper finished 2nd in the heavyweights. I made it through to the heavyweight quarterfinals, where I lost to Tadashi Kondo instructor of Holland – who went on to win the heavyweight division”.
Following their tournament successes, the Aussie team toured widely around Japan for the next month, visiting and training at a broad cross-section of Karate dojo(s). “In the last 14 days we were in Japan”, Scott relates, “we trained II nights in II different dojo. A fantastic trip and a great learning experience!”
His next training trip to Japan came three years later, in 1985, after continued solid teaching efforts throught the rest of 1982, 1983 and ’84, which saw NSW Shorinjuryu expand further into Tamworth and Walca. “This time we travelled overland to Japan – I was accompanied by a student – and spent another five months training in Japan. Once again, I trained five times a week, although not quite as severely as on the previous extended visits – 7pm to II each night. This trip, too, was very beneficial as I had the opportunity to participate in Karate demonstrations at many events, which helped in my development. And by this time, my relationship with my instructor, Hanshi Hisataka, was becoming stronger”.
Sensei Scott Brown is quite clearly a very positive-thinking Martial Artist, and one who believes strongly in the immense benefits of Martial Arts training for children and the youth of today. “And it’s important that those benefits are also available for people with disabilities; people who are not top athletes”. And, overall, he is encouraged by the quality of the people training in Martial Arts – as good human beings. “Because I do happen to believe that, generally speaking, Martial Artists are good people!”
Scott does hold views on several of the inescapable negatives of the Martial Arts scene too, of course. For example, he expresses a firm dislike for those instructors and students who are quick to criticise and attempt to undermine other styles and stylists. “This is often based on ignorance of what that other style is all about, or maybe based on their interpretation of what they have read in magazines. If they were only to speak well of other Martial Arts styles, factions, or instructors, they would be speaking well of themselves and their own styles … because that would help develop Martial Arts in general. There will always be personality clashes, conflicts of interest, political problems _ which are rife in the Australian Karate Federation, and which are also present in the Koshiki system. But this is inevitable, because you have people with different opinions and philosophies. But what we strive to achieve in Koshiki, is to try and keep everything above the table. Ifwe don’t like someone or what they’ve said, or we don’t like some specific criterion, then we state it. Then we come to an agreement – or agree to disagree – as opposed to saying something to someone, and then t …
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