Densho Digital Archive - Roy Murakami Interview (denshovh-mroy

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RP: Your father, yeah, was here about two years and then your grandfather left. Did your father attend high school?

RM: Yeah, he went a couple years. I think he's eleventh grade. He finished eleventh grade. He used to like to play football. Them days were all pull down stuff, you know. None, no padding or anything like that. [Laughs] But he always remembered that.

RP: B-class football?

RM: Yeah. He went to... he got to know Howard Jones from SC and he was always a SC fan from then on.

RP: That was his idol?

RM: Uh-huh.

RP: Hmm. So did your father begin his judo career in Japan or...

RM: No, here.

RP: He started training here?

RM: Yeah, training. I mean he did a little bit, but mostly here. Training in the Rafu Dojo. Rafu Dojo is the downtown, first downtown dojo, school.

RP: Roy, maybe you could give us just a brief background of how judo began in America. Maybe just how judo was created. It started from another martial art, didn't it?

RM: A long time ago it was... Kano Sensei was the president and he was very thin, and he started doing martial arts. He did first karate type things, you know. And he learned, they call it, jujitsu. And the jujitsu, he went to five or six different schools and learned the different phases of that martial art, jujitsu. Then he thought about it and he developed judo, which would be less lethal and more sports type. And then he started teaching that. And he started in, I think it was 1882 or something like that. I don't remember the exact dates. But he started in an old Buddhist temple. The monks gave him a place so they, they started there and he went out. And then they had a competition between the police that was doing jujitsu type and the Korokan, which is the school of Kano Sensei. And he had 'em, they had teams, both teams played each other. And I think judo won by two points, I think it was. Then that became the national sport then for the policemen.

RP: And you mentioned that Professor Kano was a thin, frail man.

RM: Yeah. He's very small.

RP: And he... I seem to recall he also was being bullied, too, wasn't he, in that --

RM: Yeah. That's right. That's why he wanted, they took... it became Korokan and then they won the judo contest and it became, oh, what is it? Minister of Education. So you see sometimes he's in a formal uniform with Japanese medals and stuff like that. But it was not military. He was given that for the administration of education.

RP: So judo took in more of the mental and the spiritual aspects of the body and mind?

RM: Yeah, well, it was more sportsman like, too. They wouldn't break arms and legs and things like that. They made it so that it could be used as a sport.

RP: Anybody could use it.

RM: Yeah, in the ring, and not be hurt too much. And, and it came a part... he came over here in '31, '32. And as I understand he tried to put in Olympic then but they wouldn't take it. Because the votes were against it yet.

RM: Yeah, in the ring, and not be hurt too much. And, and it came a part... he came over here in '31, '32. And as I understand, he tried to put in the Olympics then but they wouldn't take it. Because the votes were against it yet. And he went back sort of brokenhearted that they couldn't get it in.

RP: So the first dojo that was established in southern California was the Rafu Dojo...

RM: I believe it is. Rafu was the... then there's lot of other ones that came up. Sawtelle and there used to be this one in west L.A., down toward Orange County. I don't remember it because I can't remember that...

RP: Who was your father's teacher when he first began?

RM: Ito.

RP: Ito?

RM: Ito Sensei.

RP: And he came, he was originally from Japan or was he living in the United States?

RM: Uh-huh. He toured, I believe they put, put a book out of him. But it's, I think he toured the United States and South America, putting on demonstrations and stuff like that. And doing contests like you said before, against the wrestler.

RP: Right.

RM: He was a big man, my father said.

RP: Ito?

RM: Yeah. He was in, here for a while and then he left I think about '29, '30. Anyway, there's a lotta students down there that took over Rafu. And he was one of them and he helped out there.

RP: Your father?

RM: Yeah. There was a lot there. I don't know how many. Because there's, that was what their... judo, I mean not judo, but Japanese machi. You know, a gathering place. First gathering place around.

RP: Oh, the Tokyo Club.

RM: Uh-huh. Yeah. That became, Tokyo Club, Jackson Street. Then it went, then it went across the street where the police station is now.

RP: And the Rafu Dojo began in the basement of a union church?

RM: Yeah, I think so. I don't remember, but something like that. And then it went Tokyo Club because it outgrew itself. And then it went to across the street again where the police station was.