History of Kyokushin

The founder of our system, Masutatsu Oyama was born in 1923 near Seoul in South Korea. He studied Chinese Kempo at 9 years of age. When he was 12, he went to Japan to live and enrolled at University. After mastering Judo, he became a pupil of Gichin Funakoshi himself making such rapid progress that at 17 he was 2nd Dan and at 24 became 4th Dan.

Deciding he would spend the rest of his life spreading the knowledge of Karate, he spent the next year in seclusion from human society, living in temples and in the mountains;subjecting himself to the physical rigors of martial arts, training day and night and meditating on Zen precepts, seeking enlightenment. In 1951 he returned to civilization and started his own training hall in Tokyo.

Kyokushinkai karate first came to Britain in 1965 when Hanshi Steve Arneil, then a 3rd dan, settled here and began the British Karate Kyokushinkai (BKK) with Shihan Bob Boulton (now resident in Australia). their first full time dojo was located in Stratford in London and students travelled from all over the country to train there.

Hanshi Arneil began his Karate in Japan under the instruction of Sosai Mas Oyama the founder of Kyokushinkai and was the second man after Sosai Oyama to complete the 100 man Kumite (100 full contact fights one after the other). Hanshi was later "adopted" by Sosai Oyama so that he could marry a Japanese girl.

From 1968 to 1976 Hanshi Arneil was team manager and coach of the All styles English and British Karate team, the first non-Japanese team to win the World Karate Championships in 1975/76.