MARTIAL ARTS: Once were ... original karate kids

What unfolds during the interview is enough to leave martial arts filmmakers frothing at the mouth.
It's almost in the mould of the fantasy stuff out of kung fu movie scripts, except Marshall McDonagh will hasten to add his experiences fall in the category of seeing is believing.
When the 66-year-old Kyoshi 7th dan black belt trains in his adopted country of Sweden, he is completely in harmony with nature in a preamble that requires exponents to stand still outdoors in temperature extremes of -25C to 30C for up to two hours in Stockholm and Gothenburg.
``Squirrels sit on my feet and play with my shoe laces. Deer stop to look and even geese don't feel threatened,'' McDonagh, formerly of Napier, tells SportToday during his visit to Napier this month.
For McDonagh and his peers and disciples, the notion of colour-graded belts and tournaments is too simplistic a notion of a timeless Oriental discipline.
``When you are accepted by nature it's a very special feeling,'' says McDonagh, who believes the art of 8-year-old Yoshinken, an offshoot of Taikiken (Chinese), takes followers into a realm of a spiritual existence that transcends any physical or material sense of fulfilment.
``You start asking,'How fast is fast?','How strong is strong?','Where is my golden life after this?','' he explains, before breaking down Taikiken to Tai (meaning big or great), ki (energy) and ken (as the way of the fist or sword).
To understand ``soft'' is not ``weak'' is fundamental to becoming more conscious of one's mind and anticipating fight moves before an opponent executes them.
McDonagh's back in Napier to reminisce with several founder members of the what he claims to be the first karate dojo not only in the Hawke's Bay but also in the country.
The original Napier Karate Club, he says, had its roots in a garage at the front of Ken McLennan's former house in Taradale in 1957.
The original members were Napier Intermediate schoolteacher Ray Fredriksen, now in his 80s and living in Australia; Paul Harris, 70, who lives in Hamburg, Germany, and goes by the surname of von Stroheim; former traffic officer Ken McLennan, 78, now settled in Rotorua; retired Greenmeadows postmaster Fred Coulter, 80, who lives in Waihi Beach; retired TV repairman Gordon Larking, who turns 98 on March 4, of Napier; and McDonagh.
The Napier club still exists but it has a new location and offers Goju Ryu karate, affiliated to Sensei Morio Higoanna, according to McDonagh.
McLennan, who had a black belt in judo, helped guide the karate enthusiasts in setting up a dojo.
Last week he had lunch at a Napier Thai restaurant with Coulter, Larking and McLennan.
``We have 322 years among the four of us,'' says Lower Hutt-born McDonagh, who settled in Onekawa with his parents, the late Elizabeth and Desmond McDonagh, when he was 4 years old.
His father was a master furrier and the only one in the Bay at the time. He was also a motor racing driver, going on to compete in the New Zealand Grand Prix in 1955-56.
``He was the also the first discover the use of quality possum fur and later exported it to Japan where they used it for making toys, hats, rugs and furs. No one had thought of possum fur then so it took off very slowly in New Zealand,'' says McDonagh, who has been staying with his sister, Sally Rudzevecuis, and her husband, Algy, who run a bed-and-breakfast in Taradale.
A former Nelson Park, Napier Intermediate and Napier Boys' High School pupil, McDonagh left school to become an offset printer.
A soccer player, he is a former New Zealand junior champion weightlifter in the Olympic weight-age category, having trained under the late Rex White.
Von Stroheim was also into weightlifting.
During a visit to Sydney, he photographed Japanese navy men demonstrating karate. On his return, the original members started looking for material to hone their martial arts skills.
``We learned the terminology and visited every Japanese in at the Napier Port, inviting anyone who knew karate so we could learn their skills,'' says McDonagh, who became New Zealand's youngest karate black belt holder at the age of 19 in Wellington under Englishman Bob Johnson, who graded him.
It didn't help the originals that sponging skills off Japanese led to confusion because of a myriad of styles in karate.
Larking, who had lost a leg in a bike crash before he took up karate, kept them in check.
``If you hit his wooden leg you came off worst. If he stood on your leg with his wooden leg then you learned very quickly.''
In 1965, McDonagh left for Tokyo where, as the only gaijin (foreigner), he trained six days a week, three times a day for six months. He learned from a Korean teacher, the late Sosai Masutatsu Oyama, who was a Kyokushinkai Karatedo black belt.
``He fought 40 to 50 bulls to demonstrate his power and killed three of them. He challenged anyone in the United States for a fight and remained undefeated.''
Fried black crickets and small birds, complete with beak and legs, for breakfast were part of his daily challenges.
After two years of working in Germany, McDonagh moved to Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1968 where he runs three branches of his Yoshinken discipline with 55 years of martial arts experience.
While in New Zealand until mid-next month, he is offering seminars in karate.
``I'm happy to help people think in a different way. I'm never satisfied spiritually as the more you look, the more you find,'' he says, adding you can never become a master. Those who do simply stop learning and hit a dead end.
Becoming professionals was a slippery path because that tended to remind students deep down that they needed money to pay bills, rendering their dedication to the discipline as merely a job.
``I don't feel like a master. You keep it as an interest but don't make yourself dependent on it as a livelihood.
``It shouldn't stop you from saying no to taking students,'' says McDonagh, who worked as a printer before becoming a technician and consultant for a machine manufacturer.