This is Okimitsu Fuji’s hand written history and the photos he gave me at the time, must have been in the 1980’s. I used to have private lessons with him every Tuesday morning for many years, I’d go to his house and wake him up, we’d go to the Irishman’s club in Dartford where he’d give me a private lesson. We became good friends and he was a good Japanese cook so he would cook for me and my family. My daughter Caroline would call him ‘Uncle Oki’ and I also took Toru Takamizawa and his wife to his house to meet him. He was a good man, a great martial artist and a good friend with no arrogance of any kind. I learned a lot about Japanese Budo and Iaido from him that I could not get from anywhere else. I miss him.
steverowecom 
Hi Steve,
I met him in 1982 when I was doing a demonstration with Mick Gooch at the Black Lion sports centre as it was then called. Very interesting man with a good sense of humour…in a Japanese sort of way. He could certainly move his ‘sword’ in a most interesting manner!
It was then when I saw two of his students in full kendo armour battling it out (Kendo is physically tough!) but what was interesting was one of the combatants was fighting in the manner(style) of Musashi. He fought with two swords. A short bamboo sword in his left hand and the long shinai in his right hand. The other guy fought classical Kendo style with his right leg/foot forward (han zenkutsu-dachi) and both hands on a single shinai. Interestingly, the man with two shinai stepped, left then right, then left then right, and so on when he moved forward. The man with the single shinai shuffled/leapt but always kept his right foot forward. (Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. A Japanese classic published before the WWII but still in print. An excellent read.)
Kind regards
Dennis J
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Hi Den – watched Fuji do a similar demo with 2 swords including foot sweeps at Springhead Hall, he was a good Budo man.
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