I got a call from one of my father's former branch chief who now, also carries the title of kancho, for a quick meeting.
By tradition because of his age ( I am his junior by far), I offered to go to his dojo and have coffee instead of him traveling to Honbu.
I listened to him for about 1 hour, he was not really getting to any point so finally I asked him what his problem was.
He said he was signing for bankruptcy and could not pay for royalty dues to Honbu. Mind you, he never paid anything to begin with, even though his "new" karate (after being expelled from his former org.) included to word "Kyokushin". Naturally this move made himself a target from lawyers but his thinking has always been very self- centered and "old school"so he never really listened to any advice we gave him.
His personal life style did not help either. So I asked his accountant to show me their book so I can detect what was going on. I am no accountant by any means but just from looking at the numbers, it was staggering how unmanaged everything was. They had about 7000 members and charged fee per member etc and always received substantial "donations" from all over the world. But unscrupulous management of the finances led to hell for this group.
It is so sad to see this. Because it is obvious people pay to learn Kyokushin from this person- who changed the basic and tournament rule anyways but insists on calling it Kyokushin b/c it attracts members. And yet, he could not humble himself of his kancho position.
He broke away from his former group and caused much upset with legalities, using tremendous amount of money on lawyers that in the end, turned on him. His original concept was to "be the Sosai after Sosai" claiming this with no back up from both legal and moral standings. And now, he wanted help but was still arrogant and quite uninformed. And worst of all, he could not let go of his sense of entitlement.
I looked around and his secretaries knew he was going off the wrong way. Sadly, they could not give their piece of mind since in the karate world, they are not allowed to.
I left the office, smelling like cigarette. But sadder and annoying than this was the after taste of the meeting.
I felt deeply the lesson to be learned here. I don't know how to quite articulate it yet but it left an impression in my mind of some lesson to be said to everyone how Sosai's karate is handled today. And how it really should be handled.
