[i]Want to try his Okinawan style?
By Dan Atkinson/ Staff Writer
Friday, September 23, 2005
Someone once asked Anthony Mirakian, a ninth-degree black belt, a question: What would he do if he got into a fight at a bar, and someone smashed a beer bottle on a table and charged him with the jagged shards?
Mirakian's response?
"It's no problem for me, because I don't go to bars," he said with a laugh. "I live a very peaceful life."
That philosophy has guided Mirakian and his karate students for the past 45 years. His karate studio, Okinawan Karate Academy on Mt. Auburn Street, does not focus on competition or even combat between students. If Mirakian thinks a potential student is studying just to learn how to fight, he won't be allowed into class.
"I'm very selective," Mirakian said. "If someone has ulterior motivations, I won't accept them."
Mirakian teaches the Meibukan Goju-ryu style of karate the way he learned it in Okinawa in the 1950s. After emigrating to the United States from Cuba, he joined the Air Force and was stationed at Kadena Air Base in Japan. Although some schools were open to Westerners, teachers were very discriminating, expelling students who tried to use their new knowledge in bar fights, Mirakian said.
However, Mirakian was attracted to the strict discipline, practicing six days a week for five hours a day, and extending his tour of duty several times to remain on Okinawa. The long hours of practice are necessary to reach the proper mental and physical states the art requires, he said.
"It takes practically a lifetime to practice the art," he said. "The more you practice, the more you find out you have to learn."
In 1960, Mirakian came to Watertown and started his academy in the basement at the Armenian Cultural Center on Bigelow Avenue, moving to his current location in 1972. His students have stayed with him - Carmine Strociso joined Mirakian's academy in 1962, when he was 21, and still comes to classes.
"[Classes] keep your character good over time, and they're a good stress reliever," Strociso said.
Mirakian leads class three nights a week for two-and-a-half hours. The six attendees this past Tuesday night spent several minutes stretching, loosening up their muscles for the intense kata, or exercises. Then Mirakian stepped onto the floor.
A genial but deferential speaker a few minutes before, Mirakian became stern and exacting. He barked “Hai!” to put his students through their drills of precise steps and hand movements, occasionally softening his tone but never his intensity.
The students matched Mirakian's concentration, advancing on him and turning away, attacking in different directions with different motions. The students would sometimes break to meditate for a few moments, and Mirakian said karate itself was active meditation.
“It is very complex, it requires tremendous physical and mental concentration,” he said. “You can’t think about what happened a while ago or what might happen in the future. You have to be right here in the moment.”
Gojo-ryu means "hard, then soft," and the exercises vary from short, vicious bursts to fluid, graceful movements. However violent the kata were, though, Mirakian emphasized karate's use only in self-defense, something his students agreed with. Joe Flynn, a Waltham resident who started coming to Mirakian's classes in 1979, said he had been attending another dojo in Cambridge before a friend told him to switch.
"He said, 'Don't waste your time there,' so I came here, and I've stayed here," Flynn said.
Mirakian's students said they have remained with the school for so long because of its sensei. Hyde Park resident Richard Scott said Mirakian "reflects" his values onto his students.
"It's been a lesson in humility," said Scott, who joined in 1978.
Mirakian should know about modesty. At the first Kempo Karate Tournament in 1964, he demonstrated several Goju-ryu formations before a large audience, including the renowned martial artist Bruce Lee. The next day, Mirakian said, Lee called to him from across the lobby of the hotel at which they were staying.
“He said what I did was very nice,” Mirakian recalled. “I took that as a very good compliment.” [/i]
Amusing picture and original article here:
http://www.townonline.com/watertown/artsLifestyle/view.bg?articleid=331043&format=&page=3
Bruce Lee was laughing at your stiff karate ass.