The Joy of Writing

Recently, several senior budo-ka, family members and friends have remarked that I seem to write a lot – through my posts, books, reflections and teaching notes. They asked me whether I had always been a writer.

The truth is, no.

For many years, I considered myself an average writer, at best. I had ideas, experiences and reflections, but I often struggled to organise them clearly on the page.

Around 2007, I began writing more regularly after my Thursday evening meditation classes. Each week, after class, I would summarise the meditation lecture and share it with family, friends and students overseas through social media. I also began recording these posts in a document.

Over time, this simple act of recording my thoughts became an important discipline. It was a positive first step.

I later tried several times to turn those lectures into a book, but I was never fully happy with the result.

After leaving corporate life in 2009, I also attempted to write books on various topics, but most of those projects were eventually put aside.

In 2018, I was challenged by several senior students, who encouraged me to document not only my experiences and feelings, but also the knowledge I had been sharing intuitively for many years on the dojo floor.

They reminded me that if something is worth teaching, it is also worth preserving.
Then, during the lockdown, something just clicked.

In isolation, and with more time for reflection, I needed to find ways to teach and inspire students even though we were not physically connected. Posting regularly and writing weekly emails helped me reach as many students and families as possible.

This process forced me to organise and document my thoughts. Ideas that had once felt scattered started to take shape.
I also found that writing projects that had once seemed unattainable slowly became possible.

During this period, I discovered that I genuinely enjoyed writing — mostly about my experiences, thoughts and feelings, but also about the lessons, principles and traditions that have shaped my life in budo.

Since then, I have completed several major writing projects, including the Kyokasho (2024), Meditative Themes (2025), and now The Essence of Jin Sei Ryu Karate-Do (2026).

There are also several projects I had started and put aside in the past that I have now dusted off for completion.

Writing has become another form of training for me. It is a discipline.

Like karate-do, it requires discipline, patience, humility, repetition and reflection.

It is a way of preserving experience, clarifying thought, and hopefully passing something useful to the next generation.

Sometimes we do not discover a part of ourselves until much later in life.

But when we do, we should acknowledge it, cultivate it, and allow it to develop.