The Wisdom of Inoue Yoshimi: Legendary Japanese National Team Kata Coach

noue Yoshimi sensei is not your ordinary grey-haired, chain-smoking Japanese gentleman. Well, he is a gentleman, and he does smoke a lot, and his hair seems pretty grey… but he is by no means ordinary. Far from it. This man is probably the last person you would ever want to mess with, especially if you’re one of those guys who think “kata is useless for self-defense” and/or serves as nothing more than “a pretty karate dance”. Believe me, Inoue sensei wouldn’t hesitate to promptly, yet respectfully, tear you a new asshole in two secs if he could just refrain himself from smiling and laughing (his two main characteristics) for a while. Because, as you’ll soon see in the videos below, Inoue Yoshimi is a man who truly seems to have found his ikigai (meaning of life) in teaching Karate (with [tournament] kata as his specialty), having such world-class athletes as Mie Nakayama (4 times female kata world champion back in the 80′s), Rika Usami (soon-to-be female kata world champion) and Antonio Diaz (current male kata world champion) as his personal disciples. In other words, this guy has magic fingers. And every dedicated Karate athlete he touches seems to jump to a new skill level in the blink of an eye.