TERUYUKI OKAZAKI

MASTER TERUYUKI OKAZAKI was born June 22, 1931 to a samurai family, in Fukuoka, Japan. After studying aikido, judo and kendo, he began karate training in 1947, joining the Japan Karate Association (JKA), where he studied under both Grand Master Gichin Funakoshi and Master Masatoshi Nakayama. In 1953, Master Okazaki graduated from Takushoku University in Tokyo with a BA in Political Economics. That same year, he helped form the JKA Instructor Training Program along with Master Hidetaka Nishiyama with Master Nakayama’s oversight. He later taught at Boei University (considered Japan’s West Point), Takushoku University and Tokyo Toritsu University. He also taught the instructor trainees for the JKA Headquarters. Master Okazaki was sent to the United States by JKA Chief Instructor Masatoshi Nakayama in 1961 to help share Shotokan karate with all people throughout the world. This was Grand Master Funakoshi’s goal – to share Shotokan karate throughout the world. He established a dojo in Phila- delphia and founded the East Coast Shotokan Karate Association in 1963. In 1977 he founded the International Shoto-kan Karate Federation (ISKF), which is now one of the largest karate organizations in the world. Master Okazaki received the rank of 10th dan in October of 2007. He has been a member of the faculty at Philadelphia’s Temple University since 1970, and was also an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Drexel, West Chester and Thomas Jefferson Universities.