3.The Birth of Shorinji Kempo
Kaiso used all the money that he had earned by working since returning to Japan to buy land in the town of Tadotsu, build a house, and open a dojo there. The opening was on October 25, 1947. Shorinji Kempo began on this day. Until building a new 60 mat dojo in April 1950, this was the headquarters. Using the hint from Dharuma in a dream, it had shed the skin of "secrets of fighting" and completed the transformation to "Shorinji Kempo." It was a small five and a half mat space, but it was his own dojo space. Despite all of Kaiso's enthusiasm, he did not see much in the way of results. It was not that no youths were coming. Rather, despite coming at first, they didn't stay around long term. For the neighborhood kids, as well, Shorinji Kempo was an unknown martial art, and none of the techniques seemed familiar. Still, the techniques were impressive, and they seemed quite powerful, so more than a few came to visit the dojo. However, the children and youths who visited were there because they were attracted to his strength. Again and again they witnessed him easily handling violent people all by himself.
It was early in April of 1948. Tadotsu's famous flower viewing site, Toryo Park, was filled with flower viewing visitors. Drunken people at flower viewing parties getting into fights over the slightest offense were regular daily events, but this fight was not just a quarrel among townfolk, but was apparently a dispute involving gangsters. It appeared that some unrelated townspeople were about to get sucked into the violence. But, since the opponents were gangsters, there was no one who could stop it. If one carelessly tried to jump in and stop things, he could be wounded.
While the people formed an ring around the disturbance, one man slipped into the ring. Then he slipped out into the disturbance. Then, after a moment, the gangster who had been fighting collapsed. Nearly everyone there couldn't figure out what had happened, and just stared blankly after the man's attacker as he walked away. That man was Kaiso, and it seems that he had, in an instant, "thrown the gangster with some mysterious technique." It was a technique that no one had ever seen before, a strange technique. That was Shorinji Kempo, but although based on Chinese techniques, it was a technique Kaiso had originated himself, and so of course no one had ever seen it before.
This Tale of Martial Valor by Kaiso in the Toryo Park instantly spread all around the town. The youths who had been there and those who heard about it, later on visited Kaiso's place out of a shared desire to get stronger, and in that battered world, it's no surprise that they said that they wanted to learn Shorinji Kempo. In regards to their motivations and goals for wanting to learn Shorinji Kempo, there was still a great distance between their feelings and Kaiso's, but the interests of these youths gradually began to turn towards Shorinji Kempo.
However, Kaiso's goal was to teach Shorinji Kempo as a discipline and a method for building the people who would take responsibility for the next generation, and who would mutually support and recognize each other without getting stuck on problems of winning and losing, but rather support each other. His learners' goal was to get stronger in fights. Between those two views there was a huge gap. For a lone wolf with only a kind of private school and no corporate organization, limits imposed themselves quickly. Despite successfully gathering youths, many of them let his lectures run in one ear and out the other, and once they had grasped the keys to fighting, made their exit immediately.
"At this rate, there's no difference from before. To keep these youths going long term, teachings and techniques alone are not enough. I need to make a well ordered organization."
In this way, from the time that people asking to be taught Shorinji Kempo began to grow, Kaiso began to consider "the organizing of people with confidence, courage and the ability to get things done," and he drew up in his mind an image of making an organization for people to help each other. Later, Kaiso gave that organization the motto, "half for the happiness of oneself, and half for the happiness of others," and the organization took shape so that it made these words real. Kaiso meant to make a single group in Japan through Shorinji Kempo. And as it grew, he began to picture in his head how he wanted to establish a Shorinji Kempo community that would "put a ruined Japan back on its feet, and form the foundation for raising youth who would be proud to be Japanese."
Amidst all this, in October 1948, the Nihon Hoppa Shorinji Kempo Society was founded.