Who was Masatoshi Nakayama?

Masatoshi Nakayama (1913-1987) was a Japanese Shotokan karate master, a student of Gichin Funakoshi, and chief instructor of the Japan Karate Association from its founding in 1949 until his death.

What did Masatoshi Nakayama write?

His best-known books are Dynamic Karate (1966) and the eleven-volume Best Karate series (1977-1990). He also co-wrote the Practical Karate series with Donn Draeger.

What happened to the JKA after Nakayama died?

It split into factions that fought in the Japanese courts for control. The Supreme Court ruled for the Nakahara faction in 1999, and other senior instructors founded separate organizations.

Masatoshi Nakayama, 1913–1987: The Man Who Built the Instructor Pipeline

Masatoshi Nakayama turned Shotokan karate into a system that could be copied: a standard syllabus, a professional instructor course, a national championship and a shelf of textbooks. Then he sent the course’s graduates around the world to build it. He died in Tokyo on 15 April 1987, aged 74, as chief instructor of the Japan Karate Association. Within a few years the association he had held together was in court over who controlled it.

Full name: Masatoshi Nakayama
Born: 13 April 1913, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan
Died: 15 April 1987, Tokyo, aged 74
Art: Shotokan karate
Trained under: Gichin Funakoshi and his son Yoshitaka (Gigō) Funakoshi, at Takushoku University, from 1932
Organization: Co-founder and chief instructor, Japan Karate Association (JKA), 1949–1987
Books: Practical Karate series, with Donn Draeger (1963); Dynamic Karate (1966); Best Karate, 11 volumes (1977–1990)
Rank: 9th dan in life; 10th dan posthumously

Takushoku and China

Nakayama came from a family of kenjutsu teachers and physicians. He entered Takushoku University in Tokyo in 1932 to study Chinese and, by his own often-repeated account, walked into the karate club after misreading a timetable. He trained under Gichin Funakoshi, the man who brought Okinawan karate to mainland Japan, and under Funakoshi’s son Yoshitaka. After graduating in 1937 he went to China, where he spent the war years, working as an interpreter, and returned to Japan in 1946.

The Japan Karate Association

On 27 May 1949 Funakoshi’s senior students, among them Isao Obata, Hidetaka Nishiyama and Nakayama, founded the Japan Karate Association. Funakoshi was its formal head; Nakayama was chief instructor, and for the next thirty-eight years he ran the technical side of the organization. He also taught physical education at Takushoku, where he later became head of the department.

Three things he built at the JKA are the reason his name belongs in this archive.

The instructor course. In 1956 the JKA started the kenshusei programme at its headquarters dojo in Tokyo: an intensive course that trained full-time karate professionals, with Nakayama and Teruyuki Okazaki combining traditional training with what they took from modern sports science. Its graduates became the JKA’s export.

The championship. The first All-Japan Karate Championship was held in 1957 and has been held every year since. Nakayama made kata and kumite separate competitive events, and the JKA’s tournament results in the 1950s and 1960s did much to build its reputation.

The books. Dynamic Karate, published in English in 1966, and the eleven-volume Best Karate series that followed from 1977 gave instructors and students everywhere the same photographs, the same terminology and the same standard. For thousands of students outside Japan, those books were the syllabus.

Sending the graduates abroad

The instructor course made expansion possible. Its graduates and the senior instructors around Nakayama were sent to open JKA branches across the United States, Europe, Africa and South America: among them Hidetaka Nishiyama and Teruyuki Okazaki in the United States, Hirokazu Kanazawa, Keinosuke Enoeda, Taiji Kase and Takayuki Mikami, with others including Keigo Abe, Tetsuhiko Asai and Shojiro Koyama. Much of the Shotokan taught around the world today descends from that one programme.

In 1972 Nakayama also opened a small private dojo, the Hoitsugan, in the basement of an apartment building in Ebisu, Tokyo, close to JKA headquarters, which for years housed and trained visiting foreign students.

Death, and the split

Nakayama died in Tokyo on 15 April 1987, aged 74. We have not found a reliable published cause of death and do not give one.

He left no settled succession. By 1990 the JKA had divided into two factions, one around Tetsuhiko Asai and one around Nobuyuki Nakahara, which fought through the Japanese courts for control of the name and the organization. On 10 June 1999 the Supreme Court of Japan ruled for the Nakahara faction. Asai’s group and many senior instructors formed organizations of their own, and today several international bodies trace their Shotokan to Nakayama’s JKA.

What a school owner should take from Masatoshi Nakayama

Nakayama’s lasting achievement was turning instruction into a system that could be reproduced. A written standard, a formal instructor course and a public test of quality (the championship) meant a JKA school in Philadelphia or London taught recognizably the same karate as the headquarters in Tokyo. Any owner who wants a second location, or a school that runs well when he is not on the floor, needs the same three things: a documented curriculum, a way of making instructors, and a way of checking the result.

He also shows that the instructor pipeline is the growth engine. The JKA grew exactly as fast as it could produce teachers it trusted to send away.

And his death shows what that system still lacked. An organization that can reproduce its instructors but has not agreed who leads it after the founder is one death away from a lawsuit.

Quick answers

Who was Masatoshi Nakayama?: Masatoshi Nakayama (1913–1987) was a Japanese Shotokan karate master, a student of Gichin Funakoshi, and chief instructor of the Japan Karate Association from its founding in 1949 until his death.
What did Masatoshi Nakayama write?: His best-known books are Dynamic Karate (1966) and the eleven-volume Best Karate series (1977–1990). He also co-wrote the Practical Karate series with Donn Draeger.
What happened to the JKA after Nakayama died?: It split into factions that fought in the Japanese courts for control. The Supreme Court ruled for the Nakahara faction in 1999, and other senior instructors founded separate organizations.
When did Masatoshi Nakayama die?: He died in Tokyo on 15 April 1987, aged 74.

Sources, and what we could not confirm

Sources: the English Wikipedia biographies of Nakayama and the Japan Karate Association and the sources they cite, including the JKA’s own records, for his life, the founding of the JKA, the instructor course, the first championship, the Hoitsugan, his ranks, his books and the post-1987 split and 1999 ruling; Black Belt magazine’s profile of Nakayama for the instructors sent abroad and his books; and The Martial Way (Australia) for his death date and ranks.

Conflicts printed rather than smoothed over. Lists of the instructors he sent abroad differ from source to source; we have named only those given by more than one. His role in China is described as interpreter by some sources; others are vaguer.

Not independently documented. His cause of death; the timetable story, which is his own; and his precise role in each instructor’s posting. The JKA’s own history and those of the successor organizations are partisan on the split.

Corrections. See our editorial policy. If you trained under Nakayama or in the JKA instructor course, we want to hear from you.