Tales of the Dojo Origin: II –The Shinoda Years

Shinoda sensei was before my time, so what I got to know about the beginnings of the dojo were the stories told after practice around some orange juice or beer, depending on who was doing the talking. Shinoda was Japanese and this gave a particular flavor to how he ran the dojo. His goal was to set up a Shoreikan Dojo and do whatever it took to get there. From that initial group of kids that Kimo Wall was training, a half dozen or so were chosen to get a total immersion karate training, and that meant round the clock training that included sleeping over at the dojo. From this half dozen came what was to be the core of the future homegrown sensei: Fornaris, Palmer, González, Gandía, and Rodríguez, and maybe a few others. Shinoda taught the class as he was taught, in the strict Japanese and/or Okinawan fashion. The exercises and formal kata and bunkai training were meted out to take you to the limit, and then more. How Kimo fit into all this, I never got to know, but all my sensei considered him their sensei, so he must have exerted a greater influence than the stories let on. I know it was Kimo that spread the Dojo to the University system and to nearby towns, Caguas and San Lorenzo. But it was Shinoda who marked the psyche of the sensei at the time, especially Fornaris and Palmer. But, like I said, this was before my time. So what I experienced was the Shinoda effect: that all that went before was worse, much worse than anything I would experience. And also, that all who partook of the time were more real karateka for having endured it. Now I know that for what it truly is: the curse of the new practitioner; that all time past was somewhat more real, more authentic. Well, every art has its myths, and this is enduring karate lore. And for whatever it is worth, Tony Fornaris lived it to the core: he was my Shinoda, and I dreaded the days he would come by the Dojo (he wasn’t my official sensei, which was Gusi González, “the soft sensei”). Tony was built oriental: short, stocky, and from what I hear, was as short-tempered and intimidating as Shinoda. That does not mean that I didn’t love the man as I got to know him better through the years, even to the point of practicing with his 19 year old son, but I never stopped fearing him, and he never stopped making me feel like I knew absolutely nothing. No one ever knew what became of Shinoda, no one ever saw him again, stories and legends abound, sightings also. So I feel like I knew Shinoda, channeled through Tony Fornaris, one of the three sensei I learned under when I began; he gave me my green belt.

Tales of the Dojo Origin: I -The Three Sensei

When I began Goju karate the Dojo was run by three young sensei, in their early twenties. How they reached that level so young is a story into itself, and like any story that circulates around a dojo, it was woven in equal strands of myth and truth. They all began in their early teens when they sort of ran into Kimo Wall (who was then a Shoreikan sensei stationed at a local military base) practicing in a park close to their homes…or was it that he put an ad in the paper… well, anyway, Kimo began teaching them and other youngsters the Goju karate fundamentals in more or less an informal way. Although Kimo was called away by his military duties, he promised to send them an instructor to take his place. One of the students could not wait and started practicing with an army buddy of Kimo, but in Isshin-Ryu (later to return to Goju and eventually become my sensei, Jaime Acosta). The rest drifted away until one day the promised instructor showed up on the Island, sent directly by the Shoreikan Headquarters in Japan through Kimo’s and Toguchi’s mediation. He was Shinoda, meaner than a sweaty Gi, a face like a stone makawara, a walking Sanchin kata, in other words, from the tales that flew like night moths around the dojo, Shinoda was a badass sensei. A white belt’s worse nightmare, a samurai in an insurance salesman suit, because that was how they say he appeared one day at their door. As the legend goes, he was a mae geri to the groin. Goju –Ryu came to Puerto Rico to stay and the sweat began.