Traditions: Essays on the Japanese Martial Arts and Ways (Tuttle Martial Arts) by Dave Lowry

Author:Dave Lowry [Lowry, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Published: 2002-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Death by Appointment

There is one bit of karate esoterica which has never particularly appealed to me as a training goal, I must admit. Yet it is one which is fascinating, nonetheless. It is the arcane skill known by names like sannen goroshi or gotsuki goroshi, the science of dispatching an opponent with a blow not immediately fatal upon contact, but which works its deadly magic in three years (sannen) or five months (gotsuki) or some other specifically stated period of time. Collectively, this mystical power is known in Japanese as okurasu goroshi, literally “delayed killing.”

Stories of the Chinese martial arts are the most fertile ground for these accounts of delayed death. As an occult relative to the more pedestrian arts of tien hsueh or “striking at vital points,” the art of inflicting a wound that would in time prove to be fatal is one said to have been perfected by many kung fu adepts. Some of those possessing these skills, the tales from China have it, did not even need to strike their adversaries with any great physical force; simply a light touch was enough to do the trick.

Several explanations have been advanced to explain the mysterious power of these strikes with their postponed effects. According to Chinese philosophies and theories, channels of energy, chi, or, in Japanese, ki, flow through the body at regular intervals and when manipulated correctly the resultant imbalance in the flow results in death at a later date or time that is predictable. Other authorities of various reputations (there is no lack of opinions or those offering them on this subject) insist it is not so much the vital point being struck that’s important, but the way in which it is attacked. They cite the concussive vibrations inflicted by karate and kung fu blows as the real power behind the art, attacks which may do little damage at the surface, but devastate internally. Still others scoff at the whole notion, and attribute a voodoo-like power of suggestion to the morbid effects of the delayed death.

Japanese and Okinawan karate tales lack the macabre and spectacular claims of the more fabulous stories of the delayed death touch in Chinese lore. Even so, karate has an abundance of such reputed incidents. I once put the question of their veracity to my two karate sensei, who had been born and raised on Okinawa. Both were reasonably pragmatic men; both had graduate degrees in economics, and neither put too much stock in ancient superstitions. Yet both men expressed a belief in okurasu goroshi. One of them gave me an example of it that he had heard while a child on Okinawa, and he gave me a possible explanation. I pass them along for you to consider.

Near Yonabaru village in Okinawa was a karateman named Kaneshiro who was reputed to possess the skills of okurasu goroshi, although he had never put them into actual practice. It was in the closing months of the Second World War, when Kaneshiro was forced to utilize the art.

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