Sensei Ota, in his typical soft spoken and quiet demeanor, says that he realized that training in Master Shima’s and Nagamine’s dojo was not enough. He links this to academic studies as well. A student should attend classes, Ota asserts, to acquire knowledge, but must do homework and continual exercise outside the regular classes to hone and retain the knowledge, and martial arts is no different. Contemporaries of Ota in the Naha City dojo remember the story of how one evening a senior instructor went to Ota’s parents home because Ota had refused his promotion to Sho-dan (first degree black belt). Instead Ota was found practicing in nearby sugar cane fields in complete blackness. This was the first time people found out about Ota’s private training. Mr. Ota explained to his senior that he did not intend any lack of respect to his contemporaries or seniors at the dojo, rather it was his desire to achieve a higher potential. Mr. Ota explains that the wonderful thing about karate is that you can never fully reach a state of perfection. That is, training is a process, an evolution of knowledge and technique where the practitioner can always keep improving. As soon as you achieve a goal, there is immediately a harder one that the student must strive to achieve.

 

Ota tells his students that complacency or the belief that you have maximized your potential or ability is the first step in your downfall. Mr. Ota constantly reminds his students of the importance of striving for more. According to Ota, getting to black belt level is relatively easy. However, most people stop there, even in Okinawa. Very few continue to develop their skills and can improve enough to move to the next level. Students of Ota’s attest that his speed and skill continues to improve over time, despite growing older, and that is what differentiates him from ordinary athletes. Whenever people complain that they are too old, they are reminded that master Nagamine is 90 years old and still trains for hours every day. Nagamine can easily throw students half his age to the floor with ease. Sensei Ota encourages students to make karate a way of life. The dojo in Okinawa is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even holidays. When Ota left Okinawa to pursue electronics degree at Tokyo University, he was forced to work during the days to pay for tuition, and devote evenings to study. He did not have time to join a dojo, but it did not deter him from practicing karate. His five feet by seven-foot apartment in Tokyo became his new dojo. It is said that he would practice so hard that other residents thought there was an earthquake outside. In Okinawa, karate men tease that it is safer to be in an earthquake then to have to face up against Ota in a sparring match. In 1969, Ota moved to the United States. Yet he always kept training.

 

His students remember that even following a motorcycle accident; Ota never missed a day in the dojo. Students when they found out about their teacher meeting with an accident replied, “we didn’t even know, it is impossible to tell from watching him train!” Often Mr. Ota tells injured students, if you hurt your right side, then use it as an opportunity to train with your left and build up your weaknesses. Always make yourself stronger by working on your weaknesses.

 

In 1973, Ota opened his first dojo in the United States. Still, he remembers the training as more serious in Okinawa. Classes in Okinawa would continue until students would get blood in their urine from training so seriously. The difficult part, however, according to Ota, it wasn’t the pain, but building up the toughness to go and do the same thing again the following day!

 

 

Mr. Ota married in 1975. His wife owned a sake bar for fifteen years in one of the roughest areas of central Los Angeles. It was such a tough neighborhood; police officers have been quoted as saying that the only times they felt safe was in Sensei Ota’s bar. One neighborhood police officer that later became a student at the dojo recants stories of how assailants armed with firearms would unsuccessfully attempt to hold up the bar. But, they just weren’t fast enough to handle Ota’s lightning speed. Currently one of his senior students is an instructor at the Police Academy.

 

Mr. Ota is an expert in all the traditional Okinawan weapons of self-defense, which at one time were used in the fishing and farming industries: Nunchucks, Bo, Sai, Tonfa and Kama. Ota believes that Kobudo, the study of weapons, is an integral part of karate training, and he encourages students to practice the various weapons. Ota says that weapons training present an opportunity for students from different styles to train together because the techniques needed for weapons are the same, regardless of stylistic variations or a student’s background. Always however, the student must first learn how to take care of the weapons, because in this way they develop respect and appreciation for the weapons, and, moreover, the responsibility and control to use it. Perhaps even more than his lightning speed or the forcefulness of his techniques, what differentiates Ota from all other sensei is his mastery of distance. Ota explains that when opponents engage, they are already at a very short distance from one another.

 

But, the secret is learning to control that long distance before engaging an opponent. Students must work on their combinations in order to achieve a higher level of skill. Once Ota was challenged to a life and death fight by a champion kick boxer from Japan. Yet, after watching Ota execute several combinations while warming up before the duel, the Japanese fighter bowed out of the contest, thinking it better to loose face than his life. Ota explains that students who concentrate on techniques for short distances may indeed develop deadly blocks and punches, but can easily be defeated because they `have not developed a strategy to cope with combinations, fakes, feints, and shifting movements.

 

Ota quickly overwhelms many senior students once they encounter his lightning fast combinations, shifting stances, and movements. Ota is frequently invited to Okinawa to conduct sparring courses because of his mastery of these strategies. Indeed, more karate masters on Okinawa feel he has taken the art of karate to levels last seen in the 18th century.