Karate Kin
Martial arts thrive on legacy and tradition. One Club mother and son are intent on creating their own.
It wasn’t unusual for a parent to poke a head into the Club’s gojuryu karate class to check up on the progress of a child’s strikes and stances.
But on this particular day in 2003, Kay Adam had an entirely different motivation. She was there to sign up herself.
“The class was called Karate for Kids, but I just wanted to go talk to the sensei,” Adam, 55, recalls of introducing herself to the now-retired instructor, Goshi Yamaguchi. “Yamaguchi sensei said, ‘Karate is for everyone. You can join the class.’”
A native of Mumbai, India, Adam had harbored a soft spot for Japanese martial arts since she was as young as the budding students she wished to join. But with few opportunities to learn karate when she was growing up, she had to wait until she first moved to Japan with her family before donning the traditional, heavy cotton uniform.
After years of dedicated practice, Adam earned her black belt at the Club in June 2015. Now, though, she’s not the only martial artist in the family.
“Blue is my favorite color” says Nikko, 14, glancing down at his name embroidered in the black belt he received just last December. “It’s just a very refreshing color. It stands out but not too much.”
At first glance, the Adams seem no different than any other family at the Club. But they easily shed their everyday selves—an amiable mom and ambivalent teen—in favor of the steely-eyed, clenched-fist combatants befitting their belts.
The duality is all the more appropriate given their specialty in the gojuryu school. A portmanteau of the Japanese words for “hard” and “soft,” gojuryu karate, which originated in 19th-century Okinawa, insists its disciples master just as many wide, sweeping blocks and grapples as strikes.
Well before receiving her black belt, Adam was lucky enough to learn the basics from Yamaguchi, the third son of gojuryu legend Gogen Yamaguchi.
“[Goshi Yamaguchi] was the grand master among grand masters,” she says of her first instructor, who retired in 2016. “People came from all over the world to learn from him. And [the Club] had someone like that teaching kids here.”
Mom and son now take Club classes with Anthony Palumbo, a former pupil of Yamaguchi. A second-degree black belt, Adam holds a slight advantage over her rapidly improving son, but Nikko is expanding his martial arts repertoire. He is preparing to take his black belt test in the Club’s taekwondo program when he reaches 16.
Until then, it’s long hours of perfecting form and technique alongside his mother and other fellow karateka. If there’s anything the Club’s martial arts classes have taught Nikko, it’s that there’s no other way about it.
“You’re on a path to going somewhere,” he says. “You’ve got to take baby steps before you get to where you want to be.”
Words: Owen Ziegler
Image: Yuuki Ide
