BALLARAT Karate Club members have been graced by the presence of the world leader of one of karate’s oldest and toughest fighting styles.
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Grand Master Kise Fusei, from Okinawa in Japan, is in Ballarat all week as part of the club’s massive 50th anniversary celebrations.
The Grand Master, who is effectively the highest-ranked leader of the Okinawan Shorin Ryu Matsumura Seito style of karate, will be in the city all week.
On Tuesday, he held a special training session at the Ballarat Dojo on Moyle Street, strictly for the blackbelt contingent of the club.
Also known as the 10th dan, Kise is the leader of about 50,000 worldwide participants of the discipline of karate.
Only two people in the world sit below him as ninth dans – his son Master Kise Isao and Ballarat’s own Barry Packham.
Packham, the Ballarat Karate Club director, said it was a huge honour to have the grand master in the city for the entire week.
It his sixth time he has visited Ballarat, but the first since 2009.
“It’s a focal point, it is bringing members back from throughout Australia,” Packham said.
“Everybody looks up to him so highly and he is a great friend of our dojo.”
The Ballarat Karate Club is one of Australia’s longest established karate institutions and the oldest in Ballarat and district, established in 1965 on a not-for-profit basis.
Over the 50 years, 37 members, male and female, have gained black belts and a dozen have gone on to master ranks which are also known as fourth dan and above. Chief instructor Wayne Reddrop holds a seventh dan rank.
On Monday night, long-term members Lachlan Howard and Troy Wakefield both achieved master rank, undergoing a gruelling 12-round full-contact sparring session in front of the Grand Master.
Of the more than 6000 members to be a part of the Ballarat club, just 12 have reached such a level.
Grand Master Kise, aged in his early 80s, will continue to train blackbelts throughout the remainder of the week, as well as a number of other levels of members.
A formal dinner will be held at the Barkly restaurant on Main Road in what will be the climax of the Grand Master’s visit.
The club runs six days a week with programs catering to juniors, seniors, old warriors, women’s self defence and general unarmed combat. A standout program is its long-running juniors section founded in the 1980s by Graeme Howard, a fifth dan and now led by fourth dan Vaughan King.
