Nippon Kan Wins Again! Nippon Kan VS Enshin Karate

March 25th, 2007
Written by Jim Lattanzio
Tournament Nippon Kan chief coordinator

Nippon Kan was declared the winner and returned home once again with the winner’s trophy from the 12th annual Enshin Karate-Nippon Kan bowling tournament held March 25th. About 100 people attended this special tournament, founded twelve years ago to honor Enshin Karate’s Founder Joko Ninomiya Kancho’s birthday. Ninomiya Kancho and Homma Kancho both came to Denver about the same time to teach their respective martial arts and have been friends for many years.

Every year a group of senior and junior Hakama members are selected to be on the tournament organization committee. It is also part of uchideshi training at Nippon Kan for uchideshi students to work as part of this team to learn skills in organization and leadership. Uchideshi Jim Wolff participated as part of the team. The team did an outstanding job at organizing the event. Many thanks to everyone for their creativity and hard work!

Annual time for friendship and communication.

As is tradition, uchideshi students on the losing team get doused with coolers of ice water. Luckily it was a nice day this year as Ninomiya Kancho’s sons Jota and Koichi Ninomiya “took the plunge”. Homma Kancho commented that Nippon Kan had won for the last few years because many of our students are from a generation when bowling was quite popular. I think Homma Kancho was trying to tell us that we are getting old!

Two weeks after the bowling tournament, it was time for the real tournament; Ninomiya Kancho’s annual international full contact karate tournament, The Sabaki Challenge. Every year this tournament is held in Denver and many past uchideshi students who lived with and trained with Ninomiya Kancho return for this annual event. Many of these past students now are instructors with their own dojos and return with their students to participate in the tournament. This year Nippon Kan hosted three fighters and five Sensei and staff members for a total of eight guests at our dojo. Homma Kancho said it felt like having sons and grandsons come home for a visit and he was very happy to see them again. Homma Kancho cooked special meals for the group; preparing them for the competition to come. Of the three fighters that stayed at Nippon Kan, one earned the title of Middle Weight Champion, one took second place in the Middle Weight Division, and the last fighter earned the title of Heavy Weight Champion. Homma Kancho commended all of the fighters and joked “I think it was my cooking that did the trick!”