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 second part of a two part interview. Read the first part here.
MAYTT: When did you establish your Granite Forest Dojo? What factors influenced your decision to strike it out on your own?
BC: I had this intuition that it was available to me. It was something I could do, but I didn’t want to do it because I had owned my own business before. I had a comic book store. The thing about comic book stores, especially in the 1980s, they were dark, scary places, filthy, poorly lit and often poorly run – somewhere you would not allow a child alone in. Get this: they were run by specialists who live and drink and eat that world and don’t necessarily adhere to other business practices that would make them relevant to normal people. That description goes exactly with karate dojos very often, doesn’t it? When I opened my store, I used modern business practices. I made it beautiful and friendly and had games and toys and really tried to be a family-friendly place. Marvel Comics hired me then to share that vision, to encourage other comics retailers toward a higher level of professionalism, and I got to travel the world for that company doing so.
The thing about retail is that you’re on the front lines; you’re taking a risk, you’re spending money, you’re dealing with whomever walks through the door and whatever mood they’re in, and you’re hoping that the idea you had to put this stuff out there is going to be shared by them enough to give you money for it. I hated it. I went from loving comics to not caring about them. I went from reading basically everything to reading hardly anything. It became like, “I bought twelve copies of this issue, and I should have bought eight because there’s four still there and I’ll never sell them.” Suddenly, because it’s a business, I had to care about those things.
I didn’t want that to influence my personal relationship with karate. I thought that’s what it was going to be like to own a karate school. In fact, I categorically swore I would never do an end-user business again – a public facing business, where anyone could walk in, and I’d have to deal with them. Fortunately, I was just so wrong, because what I hadn’t anticipated was that the threshold to entry was so high. You need to be a pretty open-minded person to even think about karate training. It’s going to be hard. Whatever else people considering karate are wrong about, they’re right about that. If a dojo is charging correctly and not taking a vow of poverty, as many martial arts schools do, if they want to be taken seriously and have the dojo be a presentable place that people want to be involved with; they have to get the math right in keeping the lights on. Of course, you don’t want to gouge people. Comic book stores would discount themselves out of business in the same way. It really is such an amazing parallel.
Unfortunately, I went through a terrible divorce and one of the things that my wife claimed was that I needed to bring in more money. I was just a full-time writer at the time, and writers don’t make a lot of money. I did this and it ended up becoming the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ve had the joy of so many relationships, and so much philanthropy. If you only looked at the philanthropy, this community has raised over $300,000 for pediatric brain tumor research. My little karate school is in this small town of Perkasie, Pennsylvania. I didn’t know how blessed I would become, having these standards, opening these doors and the absolute rainbow of humanity that would come through them. I was wrong about what I thought it was going to be.
I opened up in 2002. I had to study up because I had no idea what karate had to do with children. I didn’t want to teach children; I was busy trying to take the head off of that guy over there. Having not started until I was nineteen years old, the whole concept of a child doing it didn’t make sense to me. Then I got to do a deep dive into child psychology and how schools, mostly nontraditional schools, treated and thought about children doing martial arts and seeing what from that I could take and apply our own traditional sensibility to the extent that children could even receive it. My own son, I started him at age four and put him directly into Shotokan training with adults at age four. I will never do that to a human being again as long as I live; I just treated him like a short adult. He’s got an extraordinary attention span, so that worked for him, but that would’ve never worked for other four-year-olds. It’s not the way humans operate. If you if you look at it as a curriculum, karate is so deep and so broad, and there’s so much material there. You can take it as a light beam,put it through a prism, and look at how it spreads out, and take the things that are relevant and you can apply them to three-year olds.
We do it here all the time and if you don’t, all you’re doing is closing your mind. You’re not acknowledging the fact that you don’t get to pick who calls your phone number or sends you an email asking about your services. I literally have people say to me, “Hi. My daughter is six. She’s never tried karate before. Is that OK? Will you take her?” In her long life and all of that experience? Really? You lackadaisical mother? [Laughs] People think, for whatever reason, having no martial arts experience themselves, people think that this is something to do with a child. It turns out they’re right. I can do more with children.
From a child-development perspective, baseball can’t hold a candle to karate. I’m going to take a small hard missile, and I’m going to throw it within two feet of your seven-year-old and you’re going to tell me that him swinging a stick at it is going to result in anything but a devastating emotional event where he’s embarrassed in front of everybody on the team who can hit the damn thing. But that’s baseball; everybody’s gotta play baseball. My kids never played baseball. They’re brilliant adults. It is not a religious requirement to be in America. However, what a dojo can do is it can take your child regardless of their physical ability and make them soar beyond what they perceive as their limits. I trained a child without a leg. I trained a blind person. I’ve trained people at every point of emotional instability that children can be afflicted by. Thousands of people and twenty-two years later, I can tell you that anybody can teach the easy ones. But if you can’t reach children who have a variety of conceptions of themselves and how they need to interact with a weird environment, like a tatami, then you have a measure to go as a teacher, don’t you – as a communicator, and as a human.
In the early days, I would have told you that my karate was never as good as it was then, when I became a teacher — I’m standing up in front of the room and I don’t get to have a tired day or a lazy day or a day when I don’t feel up to it. Somehow, with all those eyes on me, regardless of their rank, I’m just at my best. I can’t explain it. It’s a really wonderful thing to be put in that position where you must be on your game. Lo and behold, you’re on your game way more than you would be left to your own devices. I would have told you that within the first couple of years of operating the karate school, what I understand now is the definition of what my game even is has expanded to what it means to be on my game when someone comes in and they’re falling apart. You see in my office how I have blinds everywhere? The number of times people come into this office; I have no idea what we’re about to talk about and they fall apart, that something in their life has just gone, and I’m trying to gracefully lower the shades. I need to be the way you’re here for me right now, Antonio, that’s the way I need to be for them. I need to be a person worthy of that. I need to understand how the human mind works, which is hugely beneficial to teaching it out there. It helps in every walk of every facet of my life and being on my game is what this place has done and really provided an education for me.
This used to be a machine shop. We are all volunteers, including my adult students, parents of my young students, and friends. One of my students happens to be an architect, and he took on the task of designing the entire space. He skillfully transformed it from its original state – raw cinder block, with low-hanging, rusty fluorescent lighting, and filled with millions of dollars’ worth of computer-guided machining equipment, open oil pans, and oil. Initially, I thought the space would forever smell like a machine shop. However, its location across from a beautiful park added a unique aspect to it.
We embarked on a journey to revitalize this space, tearing it down, and converting it into a racquetball court. We sealed everything, laid out the drive, and learned various skills along the way. From electric work to plumbing, we managed to handle almost everything ourselves, ensuring that it would pass inspection. The entire process took a significant amount of time – a whole year of me paying rent and managing the mortgage until we could finally move our classes into the transformed space.
It would be challenging to undertake such a project if I were exclusively focused on training kids. It’s not just about the training; there are other aspects to consider. For instance, the issue of parking becomes significant. It’s not just about whether people care about the training, but also about the convenience of parking for those who want to attend.
Paying for the parking lot became a necessity, and it’s a point that highlights the broader responsibilities that come with managing a space. It’s not just about the training itself; considerations extend to the overall experience, from the moment people park to when they show up for their sessions. And of course, physically confronting them is not a viable solution – it’s about addressing practical concerns like providing parking facilities.
I would just say that to the extent people can turn this upside down and understand their blessings and their obligation to all of these people, that’s the kind of person that these people are going to want to be with. You’ll notice we don’t have shelves of trophies here – there’s no monument to me in here. I need to be able to die and have this place go on; I need to encourage the people who are on that same path as me. I just got on it first. I got to make sure that path is clear and blazed and thought out, then they hopefully will be able to do that too. That’s the best we can do.
MAYTT: In 2021, you published your Welcome to Karate: Unlocking the Wisdom of the Beginner’s Mind. What inspired you to put pen to paper? Are there any plans to write and publish more?
BC: I had been a writer for quite a while at that time, longer than I care to admit, given that I had a reading disability as a kid. The idea of becoming a writer seemed impossible back then. However, by the time I was operating my karate school, I had already published well over 200 articles. Now, it’s over 250 or so, by the time I read the book.
The motivation behind writing the book stemmed from a sense of embarrassment – the book, focusing on the journey from white belt to yellow belt, felt necessary to articulate. I initially intended to write a series of eleven books, covering various belt levels. However, I haven’t continued producing them, primarily because my interest in writing extends beyond karate.
The first book needed to be written because what I wanted to talk about wasn’t just karate. Unlike the many books by serious karate practitioners, each offering their perspective, I wanted to delve into broader aspects. Most people in our lives don’t engage in conversations about karate, and I’m interested in connecting with the rest of humanity.
I aimed to address questions like why we take off our shoes or the significance of bowing. Bowing is not just a formality; there’s depth and beauty to it. It’s not just about the other person; it’s about self-reflection and personal growth. While I didn’t expect many to care about the book, I felt compelled to articulate the value I found in these practices.
I read somewhere that only three percent of Americans will ever try martial arts, encompassing the full definition of martial arts and the notion of trying. I wanted to share what is special and precious within our practice, something that can be communicated even at the white belt level. The effort was to make these teachings accessible to beginners, emphasizing the depth that often gets overlooked in the rush of daily training.
The most challenging and rewarding elements of this practice, to me, lie in those seemingly simple actions, like taking a long bow and being fully present. When someone engages in these practices with sincerity, it’s magical, and I’m eager to hear their perspective.
MAYTT: Thank you. Who would you consider having helped pioneer or disseminate karate here in the Northeast and in the United States as a whole? What actions or methods made these individuals stand out from their contemporaries?
BC: Jhoon Rhee. Easy, right? Now, I have a considerable number of colleagues, especially in the shadows – I would go so far as to say other martial arts practitioners who spend all day criticizing taekwondo. I’ve witnessed brilliant taekwondo practitioners – powerful individuals you wouldn’t want to face in a fight. I’ve seen it; it’s possible. But I agree that the majority of what you find in taekwondo, especially what has descended from Jhoon Rhee’s arrival, may not align with what would make me happy to practice or see my teacher and students practice.
There’s a lot to worry about, and all respectable taekwondo practices should be set aside and respected. Many practitioners are just in it for the training, and it’s essential to represent that voice without sarcasm or unnecessary criticism. While some might dismiss certain practices as not the “real thing,” it’s crucial to recognize that every discipline has its challenges and areas to answer to in a critical analysis.
What Jhoon Rhee achieved was exceptional – he communicated something unique to a Western population. At one point, karate schools in the US numbered 1,400, while taekwondo dojangs numbered 14,000. Jhoon Rhee played a significant role in making people feel like they could be involved in martial arts. Hats off to Jhoon Rhee for his impact on the accessibility and popularity of taekwondo.
Well, so he’s the first thing that comes to mind, but insofar as the integrity of Shotokan is concerned, I know that since Okazaki had another contemporary who came over the year before him.
Junki Yoshida, or Yosh Yoshida, and Teruyuki Okazaki are significant figures in the history of martial arts. Unlike me, I was concerned about getting into trouble with you because I’m not as knowledgeable about martial arts history for self-serving purposes. Here’s an attempt to give credit where credit is due.
There’s another karate school down the road that attributes its training to Sensei Yosh Yoshida. I’ve been told that he arrived in the US a year or two before Sensei Okazaki. However, Okazaki founded the International Shotokan Karate Federation, which eventually outgrew the Japan Karate Association (JKA). My understanding is based on my experiences, but political divisions in such matters are complex and not fully understood by those enduring their consequences.
Sensei Okazaki, who admired his teacher Nakayama Sensei, felt unable to operate under the JKA any longer. After much pain, he started the ISKF to expand its influence globally. It was a difficult decision for him, and I empathize with him during that time. It wasn’t about him straightening us out; it was a process for him to reconcile his loyalties.
Up until that point, Sensei Okazaki was single-handedly responsible for the greatest expansion of karate in the world. While he might not have popularized it in America the way Jhoon Rhee popularized Taekwondo, his influence on martial arts in America was substantial. In my view, the impact goes to Bruce Lee first and then Jhoon Rhee because Jhoon Rhee brought it to neighborhoods.
Teruyuki Okazaki brought something authentic – the real thing. June Rhee’s concept could be made malleable, and taekwondo itself comes from karate. The historical connections between the two traditions are interesting, and you can see similarities. Our practice has remained relatively unchanged since 1965, which I find cool.
I appreciate the tradition and don’t have the courage to discard it entirely, given what I and my students have gained from it. Standing in front of people, going through the motions, and adding my own touches is significant. Sensei Okazaki must have endured a lot to spread karate farther and faster, and I respect him for that.
The cultural change for Sensei Okazaki, coming from a place like Tokyo, known for its cleanliness, to North Philadelphia must have been immense. I can’t fully comprehend what that change was like for him. All I can do is honor and respect what he did and try my best to represent it to new people. It’s a privilege.
MAYTT: Who do you see as the “rising stars” in American Karate that could help the evolution of the art or help revolutionize it?
BC: You’re prompting me to consider something new, a perspective I haven’t explored before. I’ve invested considerable time worrying about a particular concern. It’s a dual worry – on one hand, about those practicing in church basements, seemingly disconnected and unable to communicate effectively, and on the other, about the commercialized chains in strip malls that may lack the authenticity I value.
The concern extends to both extremes – practitioners in church basements who may not appeal to a broader audience and commercial entities that might prioritize aesthetics over substance. It’s a dilemma I’ve grappled with, as neither extreme seems to serve the overarching question of how to take something authentic into the future and make it a beautiful, relevant practice.
This challenge is especially pertinent in the age of technology, social isolation, and political division. I ponder where to find the rising stars, individuals who embody both authenticity and modern appeal. While I can identify talented individuals, those with impressive bows or powerful side thrust kicks, they may not fully address the core question of bridging the gap between the past and the future.
One of the things I cherish about martial arts is its ability to bring people together, irrespective of skin color, economic class, or religion. The shared experience at events, everyone dressed in plain white Gis, symbolizes unity and the offering of hearts to each other.
However, I’m grappling with the isolation I feel in my effort to strike a balance between authenticity, effective communication, and a genuine love for real people. While there might be many dojos better at finding this balance, it’s challenging to find a community to discuss these concerns. There’s a difficulty in talking to commercial entities about getting more authentic and serious practitioners about being more relevant to real life. The question remains unanswered, and the struggle persists.
MAYTT: This segues into the ultimate future of karate. You make the point where there’s these two dichotomies of what karate training is in the United States. In the next ten to fifteen years in the United States, will the dichotomies of karate training go further away from each other, or will they somehow come back together?
BC: Indeed, the thought of creating a captivating social media series has crossed my mind. I’ve contemplated the energy required to produce a series that communicates the essence of martial arts, akin to what Jesse and Kent do. I’ve even written about it, exploring the idea of capturing the authenticity, sincerity, and realness while making it accessible to a broader audience.
While there might be successful examples in other countries, translating this concept to America presents unique challenges. The US landscape, with its preferences and cultural nuances, might not easily embrace a series that delves into the depth and patience of martial arts, especially when competing against the trend of short-form content on platforms like TikTok and Facebook reels.
The paradox arises in the fact that it seems easier to embrace the traditional side of martial arts than to align with the popular trends. In a world where attention spans are fleeting, attempting to communicate values like patience, broad-mindedness, and real openness becomes a formidable task. The conversation about suffering, as seen in the physical challenges of martial arts training, might be lost on a society that often prioritizes instant gratification.
While there’s potential for a meaningful conversation with dedicated practitioners who appreciate the depth of martial arts, bridging the gap to the broader masses proves challenging. The dichotomy between the hard, intense nature of martial arts and the disinterest of the general population in something perceived as difficult adds another layer of complexity to the equation. It’s a delicate balance between maintaining authenticity and making it appealing to a wider audience that might not be accustomed to the enduring nature of martial arts practice.
The number of parents that I have sitting in those seats that I care so much about making them feel comfortable and looking at some thirty-four-year-old mother who feels so strongly about having her child do this. I ask her, “You’re just sitting here the whole time. How about we put a gi on you and see what you think?” She responds, “I’m not…” It’s crazy. Can I prove to you, please, that you can do it. I promise, if you can breathe, you can do karate. It says that in my book that you can benefit from this.
Can we bring those two together? I think the problem is on the popularity side, because no matter how beautiful of a communication you produce a film, a television show, highly funded, really well thought through brilliant thing, Americans are going to sit on their armchairs and fast forward through the commercials and go on to the next thing. If anyone was going to do anything, it would be someone as gifted as Jesse Enkamp who could do something that would reach more people than most of the karateka.
Take a look at professional sports; you can’t live in the Philadelphia area without either being an Eagles fan or risking your life. I have many friends who like to watch a whole season of millionaires and tights slamming into each other to get a piece of an animal across a line. You lose me when you put the money that would lift entire countries out of poverty into a stadium and we all go there and buy our sixteen-dollar beers and pretend like this is a normal thing to do. The ethics of professional sports stop me every time. Why is the tradition of football as a popular thing among Americans? Evidently, you put more and more and more and more money into it; you start paying participants hundreds of thousands of dollars; you make rock stars out of them; you find ways to film them with camera technologies that have never been seen before. if we had a hundredth of the attention that football gets in our field of interest, but that would be the prescription.With hindsight, I would say pump it; we’re going to lengthen the seasons; we’re gonna really fight for optimal positioning on network television; we’re gonna really that thing is crafted into something. That’s what karate has to do.
How do we fill those stadiums like they do in Europe? What are they doing in Europe? The WKF in Europe has really great camera work and have these little mock battles in the of their katas; it’s so silly and funny, and they climb up on each other and the crowd goes wild, and the people fall on their face and wait there a minute, and then they get back up to fight again. They’re doing something right. And I got all these people in church basements in America, saying, “That’s not really karate. Look at how long they keep eye contact for!” Their stadiums are filled; ours aren’t. We can’t fill the ladder in the tournament. We can’t get the people that the participants drove to the event.
We have an annual kangeiko – it’s our special winter training. I studied how kangeikos are practiced all over the world before I pulled the trigger. We do trail running; we practice suburi with bokken. We were all geared up for that and then we went inside, and we got on our gis and did a lot of training. After that, we go out barefoot in the snow and practice kata in the snow and it’s super awesome! The biggest element of it is my own contribution to it, which is mindfulness and meditation practice. I’ve been a student of Thich Nhat Hanh since 2007, and that’s where I do my most serious meditation work with my students. That’s the best thing I do every year. Kangeiko is at dawn, four days in a row – you’re supposed to do it the first week of the New Year, but we do it right up to daylight savings time, because then on the last day, it’s in darkness. We go out on top of the mountain and meditate until the sun rises.
When I first started the dojo, I didn’t know if I would have multiple locations in strip malls – that was definitely on the table at the time – but I found I wanted one location. I want to go deep, not broad and really love these people, really challenge them, and share what my teachers have done for me.
I do get quite enthusiastic, and people may think I’m pessimistic about karate in America. I wouldn’t quite put it like that, but it is depth rather than breadth. I think that the solution is this invitation to self-awareness that’s just a lovely practice. It’s very challenging. I’m training with someone else – I’m attending a class where there’s someone teaching and I’m vacant inside. I completely forgot how old I am. It’s definitely a flow state, the term we’ve learned to use now. That appeal surely can remain, even if we’re all in church basements and we’re all just doing the smallest of jobs of caring about whether we’re promoting what we’re doing.
MAYTT: Thank you for the great conversation, Costa Sensei!
BC: Thank you for having me!
This is the second part of a two part interview. Read the first part here.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 