One of the last samurais in the world lives in Hungary

The “samurai of Pécs”, Suzuki Kimiyoshi lives in the Mecsek with his wife. The 82-year-old martial artist was born in Tokyo and moved to Hungary 24 years ago. He no longer misses Japan, and when he does go back, it is to learn new martial art techniques, which he then imparts to his students in schools and in the training hall of his house, hirado.hu writes.

After their rebellion was defeated, the age of samurais in Japan officially ended in 1877. However, their traditions lived on and continued to define the image of the country. Today there are only a few samurais left who were trained in the traditional ways. The grandfather of Suzuki Kimiyoshi was one of the samurais of the old days; to commemorate him, an obelisk was built in Japan, on the island of Hokkaido.

Starting in ‘80s, Suzuki Kimiyoshi visited Hungary many times, and, after making some friends and meeting his current wife, he settled down in Pécs, in the south of the country, in 1992. His wife is Hungarian, and he speaks the language, as well.

In the beginning, the Hungarian mentality felt strange to him. He said in the Kossuth Radio programme Közelről: “Hungarians seemed rough and violent at first, but I’ve got used to it over time, and now, whenever I visit Japan, I feel like everyone is overly nice,” he said.

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According to hirado.hu, the 6-dan master, who was initially trained by one of his grandfather’s students, now teaches karate and kenjutsu, that is, Japanese swordsmanship. He has more than a dozen students in Pécs, and over a hundred in Budapest, but he is frequently visited from abroad, as well.

Out of his three katana, one is a 300-year-old original Japanese sword. The sharp katana is not used for practice; instead he uses a blunt sword, forged by a Hungarian blacksmith. “If anything happens to this, it can be fixed, which would be very difficult in the case of an original katana,” he said.

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Swordsmanship used to be a deadly technique, but now it is practised with a different purpose, the building of the body and the spirit, he said.

Suzuki Kimiyoshi began training in kenjutsu when he was 6, and he is still learning. He travels to Japan once a year for this purpose. “I know almost everything, but it’s not over. It is over only when I stop,” he said.

Photo: MTI

Copy editor: bm

Source: hirado.hu