Dear Branch Chiefs and Contacts,

First of all, I would like to thank you for all the hard work that you are carrying out for our organization. Here in Japan, the warm, pleasant weather has introduced us to spring. It is nice to see the trees start to bloom, and I hope you all are doing fine.

April 26th is a day that all Kyokushin Karate-ka should remember and keep within their hearts, for it is the anniversary of Sosai Masutatsu Oyama’s death. On this day, I visited Sosai’s grave, cleaned up the grave stone in Gokokuji, offered flowers, burned a stick of incense and prayed. Under the clear blue sky, a warm, gentle breeze was shaking the fresh green leaves. I then spent a quiet moment thinking about Sosai and about what a great treasure he has given to us: Kyokushin Karate. We, who are studying Kyokushin Karate are fortunate to be given a rich life, with friends all over the world. We must always remember to pass on this treasure to the future generations, to let our children, and their children to live a life as rich as ours. Not one person’s organization, but everyone’s organization. This is our WKO. While feeling the presence of Sosai Oyama, I closed my eyes and made my vow, “I will join hands with everyone, and make WKO the strongest and largest organization in the world”.

What does it actually mean to become the “largest” organization in the world? I know that the ideals and philosophy of the WKO are supported by many people, and I believe that to pass this on to as many countries as possible is our mission. I believe that we need to have at least 100 affiliated countries in order to achieve our goal of becoming the “largest” organization. The further spread of our branches, which acts as this foundation, is also vital for this goal. Our Branches throughout the world are constantly working on developing our organization, and lately, many people from other organizations are finding the WKO attractive, because of the democratic way it is managed, and because of the strong family like connection that has been built up between our members. I am very happy about this recent trend and we will of course make an effort to welcome new members to our organization. It is important that we always continue to work forward, we must not stop our work and be satisfied, there are always work to do and improvements to be done. We should always create new movements, as well as let ourselves be in touch with new movements, and keep developing. I ask you to open the door to people who have a strong will to join our organization. I also ask you to create a strong organization based on democracy, at the regional level and at the domestic level, to be able to welcome these members.

In order to become the strongest organization, it is necessary to bring up strong and good competitors, as next year we are facing the 10th World Championship, and after that the next World Cup will be held in Lithuania. I know that competitors all over the world are focusing on these two tournaments, and daily challenging themselves to hard training. If you would picture the idea of “Strongest” as a mountain, these efforts are the factors that raise the height of the mountain peak. At the same time, efforts need to be made to widen the foot of the mountain. I believe the Karate Dream Cup will be the ideal event to do this. In the Dream Cup, all generations from juniors to seniors will compete in this tournament to fulfill their dreams. I ask for the participation of members from all over the world. If we cannot widen the foot of our mountain, the mountain peak will never become higher. Even if it would become higher, if the foot is weak, the mountain will become instable. By joining hands, I would like to keep moving forward in our creation of our “Strongest” mountain.

OSU
Kenji Midori
President
WKO