Bruce Costa began training in Shotokan Karate under Teruyuki Okazaki in 1980 while at Temple University. What made him stay was the depth of content as represented by Okazaki himself, as opposed to what Costa had seen in popular culture. Since then, he opened Granite Forest Dojo in 2002 and has been a consistent and important part of his community. Additionally, his book, Welcome to Karate, was published by YMAA in 2021. Today, Costa took some time to discuss his experiences in running a karate dojo and the future of karate in the United States. All images provided by Bruce Costa. This is the first of a two part interview. Read the second part here.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Hello and welcome Costa Sensei! Thank you for joining us to talk about karate!
Bruce Costa: Thank you for inviting me!
MAYTT: How and when did you first start training karate?
BC: I was a college student, and I was a sophomore, in the fall of 1980 with two credits to burn. I was a Bruce Lee fan and that was the limit of my qualifications to walk into karate as offered by Temple University, wherein I found one of the most respected practitioners in the world, teaching at the head of the class, Teruyuki Okazaki. I would continue to have a relationship with him for thirty-six years until the time of his retirement. To this day, years after his passing, he teaches me. I can imagine things he would say. We lost him in the early days of covid, to covid. He was a formative part of my life; That two-credit elective course was my most career-relevant university experience..
MAYTT: Was it how Okazaki approached the training and teaching that motivated you to keep with karate?
BC: I can tell you, now in hindsight, that Sensei’s (we all affectionately called him that) own personal practice – his own personal level of skill – was so far beyond what human beings are supposed to be able to do. I have heard this from people, whom I consider gods themselves, when they speak of him. For example, I attended my first international camp, and the chief instructors from several countries would be invited, all of whom outrank, and are bowed to by, literally every practitioner in their country. They came to the United States to this magnificent outdoor open-air training center in Green Lane, Pennsylvania. Okazaki Sensei is in the front, bowing to the pictures at shomen between the flags. Behind him are all those instructors who have to fly here to find somebody to line up behind. Okazaki Sensei received that level of esteem from the most respected practitioners worldwide.
It’s ridiculous that I had access to him, that I took him to dinner, that I had him, ultimately, as a visitor to my own dojo, that he would be in a photograph in my book, let alone writing the foreword to my book. Being in his presence, and training with his eyes on me, always took me to levels that I would never have gotten to personally.
I guess the answer to your question is yes, once I think about it that way. It really mattered that he was in front of that room. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that every instructor I’ve ever trained under, it was, in a way, Sensei Okazaki that I was training under. On some level, it’s role-playing the experience of being back training with him. I’ve learned from him what it’s like to try to freaking kill myself by just holding my stance or doing something one more time when I’ve got nothing left and It’s been a half an hour since I had anything left and it’s my fourth time training today and I have to have the best performance of the day right now because he’s watching. It’s next level stuff like that with him.
But in those early days, none of that was in my mind. I was living a tiny, hippie, artsy, happy way of moving through life. I remember one time my parents threatened to send me to military school because I was misbehaving as a teenager, and I was running away before I went to military school because I just couldn’t buy into why you need to walk straight and then pivot ninety degrees and walk straight and pivot and salute. I would never have done well in that environment. Somehow, walking into this course, shutting up, and being told you literally don’t get to have an opinion – you must divest yourself of your humanity, of your personhood; you do well to the extent that you can cease to be as an independent agent – and just turn yourself over to this person in the front of the room who’s causing you pain, I could have never guessed I’d connect with that. It’s still difficult for me to articulate how that would appeal to me. It was like a drying up plant needing water, I just drank it. In any period of my life where I was away from it for any period of time, it’s like a force within me that called me back. I’ve never moved anywhere without looking for a place to train. Seldom have I traveled to places without finding out what dojos are local.
MAYTT: You mentioned multiple times how big of an impact that Okazaki had on you. What was your teacher-student relationship like?
BC: It’s funny because you’re talking about structures based on Japanese cultural norms. As I learned in Japan, that’s not quite right. Its structures are based on an American interpretation of Japanese norms. We’re all sitting over here kind of pretending that to all do the right thing. For example, I learned that in Japanese, there’s a big standard in Japanese society where how you treat your guests is important – it’s an indication of your capacity to involve yourself with the world. The honoring and treatment of a guest is a big deal. I have been in dojos where there haven’t been chairs for people; you’ve got a parent’s driving their child to be under your influence and the instructors walk around like they’re worthy of this somehow, and it doesn’t occur to them to keep prevent the parent, sometimes the grandparent, from having to sit on the floor. I don’t know if you noticed, but we used chairs in America and not people’s knees. I have built my own dojo so that people can feel comfortable in it.
I tell you all that because for many years, I didn’t know to contradict what examples were being set for me in the treatment of. what relationships were available between a student and a sensei. As that student coming up with just Sensei Okazaki, you wouldn’t ever dream to talk with him like we are here. As I got older, I achieved ranks and ended up in circles where you’re having real conversations with people you respect, and they’re American. I noticed these Americans, who have spent their lives in this paradigm, and I try to ask a question that would be relevant to Sensei Okazaki. They respond saying, “Oh no. Okazaki Sensei isn’t someone you approach like that!” What? How can that possibly be?
I mean, the way we all treat him can’t possibly be his normal day-to-day life experience, right? He does go to the supermarket, he has a wife, and he uses the bathroom, right? Is there not value in understanding he has gotten to the pinnacle that he’s gotten to struggling with all the daily concerns we all have? How does that help me think about my own life? These are all conversations worth having.
As time went on, I was able to joke with him. One of my favorite pictures that I have that I cherish that has nothing whatsoever to do with karate is the picture I have in my book of him sitting in my office laughing and me crouching down next to him and sharing that laugh. To me, that is higher than any dan exam or anything. All the physical training comes with the territory – we all share that interest.
If an elderly woman from South America sits next to me on a plane, how am I going to find respect, joy, and human connection with her and learn the countless things she has to teach me? It isn’t going to be through kicking or punching. No, it’s got to be the kinds of things that Gichin Funakoshi talked about – that humanity and necessary humility of openness.
There are people who have far better stories about relationships with Sensei Okazaki than I do. I never hugged him, but that just shows how far I had yet to go in my capacity because I’m a hugger. I found him to be congenial and of quick humor. He was a bright spark; if her were a person with whom had I never done any karate, and we just somehow in each other’s lives, I would have enjoyed his company. That was a very big deal because I respected him. He changed the world for countless people. How many people do you know in your life about whom you can say, “He changed the world for hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.” And I got to share a laugh with him. Check. Done. Ready to die.
MAYTT: That is amazing! It is unfortunate that some people draw that line between teacher and student. Talking about everyday life and how that applies to different things should not be one of those lines students should not feel they are crossing a line.
BC: Imagine if it was you: Okazaki Sensei’s teacher sends him over just for a little bit of time. That’s the story that he’s told. Here you come to a country without a thorough grasp of English grammar. He was quite young when he came over. It was a huge lift and would have been for anyone if you were sent to a country where you didn’t speak the language and you were representing something from your country. It is like you going out and representing South Philly Cheesesteaks. It was all on you and nobody spoke the language. You’re like, “No, no. This is not – you don’t have that right… No, that’s not gonna be a cheesesteak.” You have to. plow that road.
The bowing, that level of respect, and that level of separation was something that he was raised with, we also know we’re social creatures. Genetically, we do better to the level that we have support. He had nothing if not a world of support – he had all these people that worshiped him. For there to be kind of a required detachment, you could see why he was quick to smile; you could see why when he would walk into a room, and everyone would light up. He would appreciate it.
Obviously, I’ve thought a great deal on this topic. I’d watch him very closely and how he interacted with people. He had a lot on his shoulders, and I can’t imagine I would handle it with nearly the grace and good humor that he did. He was an impressive man, for sure.
MAYTT: What was his karate like? What was the training like under Okazaki like?
BC: His karate? I swear to you, he would hit me and then I would be behind me and keeping my head from hitting the ground. I was too busy flying through the air. There are all kinds of stories, and you see photographs of his superb side thrust kick. He was really gifted.
There were many things he did as an instructor that I felt were very clever. Now, how much of it was just kind of old news to him? I don’t know. I enjoyed the time with him. He had drills that I use as a teacher myself to this day that were challenging. It was like his drills were used as metrics for your personal mind-body connection.
If you were ever injured, you gotta show up anyway and watch. I get injured and I’m watching, and I see what people go through. I’d see other people struggle and I realize that I don’t struggle that much. Some of the people are just waiting for it to be over. I’m doing all of the drills in my head – I’m inside my head, struggling with how much I suck and if I get one thing right, it feels like I’ve achieved something grand. Many of his drills were like that.
There are many ways to find the fault in yourself, which means to me, as a person responsible for my own community now, it helps me to recognize that this practice really is about self-awareness, self-knowledge, and ultimately for your capacity for things like love, and human connection. I have a line I say when I’m teaching sparring, “This is an act of love. Punch him in the head! You’re not loving him adequately!” [Laughs] You have to know what the correct distance is when you’re dealing with someone else. You have to know where that edge is. It’s my relationship with you – that’s you and me really connecting on a profound level. To be able to know yourself to that level was something that I found in the rigors of his offerings and that was a gift from this man.
He also had a way of teaching where he would stand off in the front corner of the room, and he would count. I remember on Wednesday nights, always showing up for those advanced classes with the USA Team, and I’m just getting my ass kicked. No matter what you did, there was nothing you were gonna do that was gonna impress him – you are not fast enough; you are not flexible enough. That’s what we told ourselves. He’s seen it all, man.
One time a senpai of mine and I were training at a satellite school in Glenside, Philadelphia and Okazaki Sensei came and visited the school. He did a class and I think he conducted a kyu exam, but we were all training really hard. My senpai, Scott Pryor, came to me afterward. We would have these very long conversations in the parking lot. I was a purple belt for four years and a brown belt for seven years; it was stupid. I would never let one of my students get away with that. I had to be talked into testing. Scott said to me, “You’re saying it’s not about the belt but you’re making it about the belt! That’s exactly what it is with you. It’s about the belt that you don’t want. You have this bizarre thing where now you’re not allowed to take the black belt exam because you won’t just show up and take the dan exam!” I wanted to be rougher and tougher than the other purple belts. And here comes Sensei Okazaki and when he was leaving, he said to Scott that I was good. When Scott told me that later, I waived it off. Scott said, “Listen, you really need to hear that. It was the same if Michael Jordan showed up on a playground and pointed to a kid and said, ‘That kid’s good.’ You would Take Michael Jordan very seriously.’” It stopped me cold, and I never forgot it.
This is the gravity of Sensei Okazaki. Him being in the corner of the room was enough to push me. All he’s doing is shouting out, “Ichi! Ni! San!” But I’d be scraping every blister off my feet; whatever it took.
MAYTT: It sounds like it. Speaking about karate training as a whole here in the United States, how have you seen karate training change and evolve since you first started?
BC: I guess it’s changed a lot; The ubiquity of information, right? It’s as if a satellite was heading for Earth, broke up, landed all over the planet only in the form of breweries. If you were asking me that question about how has beer changed since you started drinking it? It went from a liquid that we served cold so you could tell it from urine to how can we live in a world that’s that good, right?
Surely, the education that people have about karate is better than before. Even teachers who have been training half as long as I have – twenty years or so – have benefited from the availability of their nomenclature – their awareness of what it means to be healthy, nutritionally, and what it means to develop your body in a way that’s compatible with martial arts. We have this saying: “You don’t get to just do karate; you must build the body deserving of the practice of karate.” That’s so much more available now than it was when I was in my twenties.
It’s amazing that any of us even got away with anything because you get these little glimpses of what karate is from this occasional thing on television, which there was no way of recording, right? You could never watch something again; there was no way to watch a movie again. Even if it was a karate movie on a Saturday afternoon on Kung Fu Theater, you have to show up on time and watch it all the way through, and that’s all you got. That was it. To be able to see the benefit to people just from that element alone is amazing. You would argue this isn’t the first generation of that; people in their forties have benefited from that and those are the senior teachers now.
I would argue two things; one, it has brought great equanimity to the practice. You don’t have to just be a guy between the ages of eighteen and thirty who just wants to get his face pounded in. Now, it’s open to a broader category of people who can now learn more about their own self-awareness and receive the benefits other than just being a tournament winner or just being the guy in the dojo who mops the floor with everybody else. Now it’s a much more beautiful theater in which to explore yourself and learn. That’s a pretty big deal.
Of course, there’s also MMA. I’m a man of peace for sure but there’s no doing this without wanting to know if it really matters like this. I worry about that every single class because now I’m older. I actually caught myself last year for the first time; I went out with some of my students, and we sat in a restaurant, and I never sit in a restaurant without facing the door. I’m going to be the one that’s losing my life to whatever goon is coming in the door trying to ruin everybody’s evening. My students beat me, and they both sat facing the door and I had to sit with a chair with my back to the door. I realized, “Well, I’m the one that got these guys to black belt. I guess I’m OK with this because is it really going to be the sixty-two-year-old to save the day?” I got these two freaking amazing people to take down this guy. It was this, “Oh no,” moment. I have no idea how I got there but the reality of the application of our practice is a valid concern.
I’m arguing that watching MMA is awesome . There are times when it’s worrisome and we could go down a whole rabbit hole. I’m actually not a fan. I don’t know the players. I don’t know a lot about it. It seems to be a very fair activity; there’s no being someone’s son or daughter, having more or less money in the bank, or anything about that. People are going into that cage and one of them is gonna be on top. That’s gotta be earned. It really does have my attention from that point of view. I would argue that MMA couldn’t really have happened in an earlier era. It’s an indication of the refinement and the understanding specialists have of what’s available and what’s possible. There are still rules. It’s not like we brought 500 people into a theater and said, “Fight!” It’s still one-on-one.
Two on one changes everything. I do pay attention to the FBI database, and I think eighty-six percent of the time two on one, no matter who the one is, is not happening. All of us have this fantasy in our heads about our training and our awareness and all that. Dude, it’s not a good idea to think you could just take out two guys, let alone a whole group of people.
That whole sophistication of understanding, of conflict in the information age, has really mattered to the practice of karate. However, I’ve noticed, concomitant with that, a stepping away from the tradition. I can give you chapter and verse on my concerns about our tradition, but I’ve also seen the people senior to me who have acquiesced to those concerns and have organized their dojos around what they would argue is either a more modern or more efficient or more realistic practice in the systems they place around their training. I never like it as much; I never find that it’s as beneficial as the tradition I experienced.
You gotta call me sensei; it helps to call me sensei because sometimes I’ve got to tell you things you don’t want to hear, so it helps for you to support the office that I represent in giving you the information you need. I don’t want to care if your feelings are hurt. That’s not right. I want to care about you having the most transformative experience possible, and there’s no way I’m doing that in the scope of your comfort. You’re going to sweat and you’re going to bleed, and you’re gonna have regrets. And we’re going to do it; we’re going to do it together. We’re going to bow to each other at the end.
The practice of bowing on to the floor and bowing off the floor, it’s huge. There’s silence before and after class, and silence during class. All of that stuff, I don’t want to give that up. Looking at the photographs of our ancestors – our conceptual ancestors – and understanding we are part of a chain. We have to be a strong link to the past; there’s a lot there that throwing it away I think would cause a loss. That has changed as well. There’s a lot of American interpretations of karate that, somehow, aren’t as good. I don’t know why. people in my realm will argue that, “Well, you can’t be commercial. You can’t be a thriving school and be a real school.” I’ve noticed a lot of karate instructors have six black belts and one unhappy white belt who’s soon to quit and they keep saying that, “We’re a real school and we’re doing all the tradition.” I don’t understand why that can’t be true and treat people well and know how to design an ad for them; how to be respectful to people who walk in your door for the first time; how to say please and thank you; how to encourage their support and be supportive of them. But for whatever reason, many commercially successful dojos have substandard training – the quality of the black belts is not what it should be – yet if you ask any of those students what they think of their experience, they’re thrilled. They love their sensei, that they’ve done so much for them. They love it. Now that’s really important; that’s exactly the thing that I’m saying Funakoshi would point to as the sign of success. But I want to be able to freaking tear somebody’s head off too, I want them to be able to hit hard and get along afterward. I insist that balancing those two concepts is possible.
This is the first of a two part interview. Read the second part here.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 