Lesley Jackson talks with new Martial Edge contributor, author Harry Cook; who has studied and taught various styles of karate since the mid 1960s. He has pioneered his own school and method of karate called, ‘Seijinkai’ and Lesley also finds out that they are both fans of a certain television programme.

It isn’t very often I come across someone with the same favourite TV programme as me, but at last I have in the form of Harry Cook. Like me, he is a fan of ‘The Avengers’ and took the sixties Karate chopping action as his first motivation to take up a martial art; although we may have both admired Diana Rigg for slightly different reasons! However, it was in 1966 as a sixth former after an athletics training session in the school gym that Harry saw, “these guys in white pyjamas going through these strange movements.” After annoying them by asking them if they could “break lumps of wood,” they agreed to show Harry some of the basic movements from their style of Wado Ryu, which started a long and successful career in the world of Karate.

Shaky Beginnings

Harry didn’t find learning Karate easy at first, because although he, “wasn’t a bad natural athlete...I discovered I couldn’t do Karate at all. I was hopeless. I was clumsy, and I was annoyed that I couldn’t do these movements that, to me, they made look easy.” Which is probably a relief to us fellow mortals, who mostly all look like a baby giraffe when they first take up a martial art. Yet, with perseverance Harry continued to train and eventually joined a KUGB dojo in Sunderland under Ken Smith, “the first man to get a Shotokan Dan grade in the north-east of England.”

During this time, Harry was sufficiently motivated by his martial arts to, “study Chinese at Durham University and live in Japan.” This visit helped shape Harry’s outlook as the, “Confucian values found in the dojo kun have influenced the way I see things.” Harry’s ability in Karate was clear as he, “was captain of the Durham University team that won the university championships in 1973 and 1974.” Even though he believes that, “tournaments have no real meaning,” nevertheless, despite this he “was quite proud of that.”

Seijinkai Karate

From his long career both studying and teaching karate, Harry has grown his own school and method of karate. But don’t ask him if he has created his own style as he replies, “the answer is no, of course I haven’t; you cannot. You take from the general pool of techniques common to most systems plus the tech­niques that suit you, and then rearrange them to suit your own needs. That’s all a style is, and in that sense I agree with Funakoshi, the idea of styles is feu­dal, it’s not necessary.” As Harry describes his own blended version of karate, his emphasis is on a continuingly evolving martial art as, “Seijinkai will change as new people come in and bring new ideas.”

Although Seijinkai has quite an exotic name, it is actually named after, “the dojo I had in South Sheilds,” and that, “the name simply means ‘Group of Wise or Informed People.” Harry’s school of karate is, “mainly rooted in Shotokan and Goju Ryu.” All of the elements one would expect in a traditionally based martial art are included such as, “kihon, Kata and kumite, with a heavy emphasis on pad work, bag work, grappling and sometimes sparring in armour.” The core syllabus is rooted in the JKA Shotokan of the 1970s and the Higaonna Sensei style of Goju Ryu of the late 1970s, including the kata taken from both of these traditional styles. However, Harry likes to include his own, “training ideas and methods which have grown by the fusion of the two.” For example, “for the higher grades, rather than training in thin air, I'd rather they hit things - a pad, or a bag, or a makiwara, or each other, wear­ing body armour. In a sense, it’s an updated version of what Okinawan karate might have been like in the nineteenth century; more athletic perhaps, and with a bigger range of motion.”

Accomplishments

Nowadays, Harry is lucky enough to be able to make his living out of karate by both teaching karate and writing about the martial arts. He has several titles available, including, ‘ The Precise History of Shotokan Karate’ and ‘The way of the Warrior’ as well as writing for ‘Fighting Arts International’ and of course, not forgetting contributing to Martial Edge! Although Harry has accomplished a great deal in the world of karate, he counts his, “ main achievement teaching a woman who successfully protected herself against what could have been a serious rape.” One cannot imagine how pleased, proud and relieved he must have felt; knowing the skills he taught a student benefited her to the point of virtually saving her life. Despite having realised some tremendous goals in martial arts, his focus remains resolute as he determines, “to keep training, write a few more books and pass on what I think is the core of the traditional values found in the older systems.”

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