Chiaki Ohashi

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Chiaki Ohashi (born June 31, 1948 in Showa, Japan) is a japanese martial artist and Chairman of the Japanese Budo Conference, chairman of a Japanese construction company, responsible for the Shizuoka Conference between Japan and Australia, chairman of the conference between Japan and New Zealand, teacher at the University of Shizuoka and chairman of the International Kenpo Kai Organization (IKKO).

He graduated on the year 1971 at Meijyo University in Showa. He is from Nagoya, in the Aichi province. His first master was Nakano in the Rensei-kaikan school. Later he got introduced in Kenpo with master Ishizaka. He was nicknamed “Ohashi-keri” for his kicking speed and reputation of good fighter. This big budo lover came across Shihan Koji Nagamine in the Meiko institute and took up Kendo. With the influence of Shihan Nagamine he entered the Meijyo University in Showa in 1967, where he learned with Shihan Yoshiro Tanisuki from Aichi police. In 1969, he went through bad times, because his revolutionary ideas in martial arts were “clashing” with the established ideas and he was feeling he was missing something… For him in those time the most important thing was to be a good fighter, so after a long meditation, he decided to start working in a company in the Japanese city of Hamamatsu and began to train as a hobby and not as a way of life like he had done until that moment. But he lost the desire to better himself and got Mushin (not in the mood), but he reacted later and started to train hard Judo with Shihan Kunio Asakura and to train again with his Kenpo master, living the budo again.

It was then he realized his life was the budo and decided to leave his job. According to him, “it was the moment when I started to find my place in this world”. He also said, “As I went through bitter times, I didn’t go mad with budo, and this allowed me to know it better”.

After having trained really hard from 1974 to 1976 with Shihan Seiji Sakakibara (deceased), he was living in Australia, Korea, China and New Zealand and went on with the practice of martial arts, training kenpo kai and studying budo in depth. He introduced the culture of Japan and did a lot of fighting in these countries.

In 1998 Master Kazuo Ishizaka dies, creating a little uncertainty about the future of Kenpo Kai. Master Ohashi takes charge of Kenpo Kai in a worldwide level and he defines a new project in the year 2000. In this year kenpo kai is reorganized and unified in a worldwide level, aiming to give it away and achieving this way a worldwide acknowledgement. Among many other things, the way of writing KENPO KAI was unified, as there was not any rule about the right way to do it a the name of this school could be found in several different ways: KEMPO KAY, KEMPO KAI, KENPO KAY, KENPOU-KAI, etc. Another important change was the Kenpo Kai etiquette based on the KEN NO RI (reason of Ken). This one is based on the technique of the old Japanese BUSHI (warrior).

According to master Ohashi “the current Kenpo-Kai is a Japanese budo which was created recovering Kenpo techniques from the Chinese So period and joining them with the Japanese old budo”.