My time as an Uchi-deshi

First let me begin by telling you what an Uchi deshi is;

Uchi-deshi (内弟子 lit. "inside student") is a Japanese term for a live-in student/apprentice who trains under and assists a sensei on a full-time basis. The system exists in many societies, including those of kabuki, rakugo, shogi, igo, aikido, sumo, karate and other modern Japanese martial arts.

Uchi-deshi usually live in the dōjō or the home of the teacher, or in separate accommodations near the dōjō. He serves the teacher all day, every day. Duties may include cleaning and secretarial work. In contrast to uchi-deshi, students who live outside are referred to as soto-deshi (外弟子 lit. "outside students").

This is just a basic description of what an uchi-deshi is, each dojo has its own separate traditions for their respective uchi-deshi programs, and they can vary from dojo to dojo and from style to style.

Now I know someone is going to say “wait a minute one of your teachers was your father, so you can’t count that!”  I have two answers for this;

1.       Why not? I lived with him from the time I was born until I was 9 years old, I then lived with him again from 16 to 18, then he lived with me for a year, when I was in my mid-20s.  So that is basically 8 years of 24 hour interaction, now if anyone knows my father, you will know that all he talks about is karate-do. That coupled with the fact that I started training with him in 1977 and we have continued training together all of these years, should count for something, right? I mean shoot we still spend 5 or 6 days a week training with each other and sometimes twice on Friday.

2.       My second response is, nope that isn’t what I am talking about, I am talking about actual time spend living in the dojo, sleeping in the dojo, being in the dojo 24-7.

My father, Pat Mitchell and I, all worked on a dojo and opened it in January of 1990; of course we named this dojo Komakai, as we had with the other dojos before it. After we got the dojo opened and running, my father decided that for the betterment of my personal training that we should move into the dojo, so with that decision, we moved in and got rid of or house.

Living in the dojo is not near as cool as you might think, first off you have no personal space, you have to sleep on the mat, there was no kitchen, no hot water, no heat for part of it, and there was also a time when there was no running water and we had to go next door to the fire station and fill up buckets of water. So as you can imagine it wasn’t an easy life.

We had classes 6 days a week, day and evening, on Sunday’s we usually went to Karate tournaments. So I spent a great deal of time assisting, teaching and training during class hours.

When we weren’t in class, the two of us spent a great deal of time training with each other on everything, kihon, kata, kumite, kobudo, tuite, and philosophies. One day he might teach me about history, and the next bone and muscle structure.

I remember that when we slept, we would sleep on the mat, we would roll out sleeping bags sometime around midnight or after and call it a night. Several times he would wake me up in the middle of the night and teach me something new, then let me go back to sleep. In the mornings after these lessons, he would wake me up and tell me to demonstrate what he showed me, and I remember that the first few times I would say, well I haven’t learned that yet, and he would get out a Shinai and motivate me to remember. It was an interesting and creative way to teach, by waiting until I was in a deep sleep to wake me up just enough that I could do the technique and then fall back a sleep easily, he said that my sub-conscious mind would better retain it.

During this time period, the only break I got from Karate was when I went to school, but during the summer, it was a 24-7 ordeal.

I learned many great lessons from him during this time and remember it fondly. Eventually he got tired of living in the dojo and we once again got a house, but even then karate was pretty much a constant factor, it didn’t matter whether or not we were in the dojo or not, whenever the mood struck we practiced.