Outside of Japan, the highest-ranking member of the karate style, known as Okinawan Shorin Ryu Mukenkai, is passing his knowledge to a new generation, right in the small town of Lonsdale.
During his 18 years of study in Japan, Tim Jerges trained under the head member of the karate style, which he said is one of karate’s original forms. He offers two weekly classes for a small monthly fee in the American Legion Post 586.
He picked the Legion in Lonsdale for simple logistical reasons. Working in St. Paul and Mankato, he said Lonsdale just happened to fall along his commute and that the Legion gave him a good deal to rent the space.
Sometime in his years of training, he learned the origins of Taekwondo, Shotokan and the traditional Mukenkai.
He explained that it began with Mukenkai in the 1500s on the Okinawan island. Mukenkai became more organized in the 1700s.
Then, an Okinawan schoolteacher named Gichin Funakoshi went to Tokyo and began teaching the ancient form in the early 1900s. His style became Shotokan, named after the teacher’s pen name.
At that time, the Japanese Empire was expansive in the region. It included modern Taiwan, Korea and many other islands in the region. That is, until the Treaty of San Francisco gave the land back from the Japanese.
“So these Koreans that were training in Tokyo, the Shotokan, went back to Korea and started to teach karate from Japan, which wasn’t popular, because there was animosity between the Koreans and Japanese,” he said. “So they decided to change the name and change the techniques a little bit. And then that became Taekwondo.”
He said history was distorted by the South Korean government in the late 1900s. In fact, the government even associated its flag with the form, including making students bow to said flag.
“That was something that was specifically done by the South Korean government to develop goodwill toward South Korea,” he said. “It’s very effective. It had catastrophic success. And so you had maybe millions of taekwondo dojang (Korean dojo) that sprung up all over the world. And it got really, really, really watered down, because people were pushed into teaching at a very young age to fuel the expansion, right? And so a lot of what people see around here is Taekwondo, but they don’t have the history.”
Jerges is currently an eighth-degree black belt in the traditional Okinawan system of karate and holds titles of Kyoshi and Shihan, which are various levels of being a teacher. He also is a seventh-degree black belt in Rykyu Kobudo Shimbukan, as well as other belts in other systems.
But he wasn’t always so versed in the karate styles.
“I was your typical 90-pound weakling,” he said. “Literally had to get a waiver, just to get in the Marine Corps, because I was underweight. So I wanted to do something to make myself stronger. So (I started because of) perceived weakness and then trying to compensate for that. And it’s something that I ended up falling in love with.”
While in the Marines, he was stationed in South Korea during the 1988 Olympic Games with the 12th Marine Regiment. At that time, he learned Taekwondo. Also during his time in the service, he trained directly under the chief instructor of the traditional Mukenkai form on the Japanese island known as Okinawa.
He said his classes focus on Mukenkai, which he has more than 40 years of experience teaching. Student teacher Anchi Lo said the form is focused on redirecting power, speed, strength and tuning one’s motor skills.
Brooks Arvig, 7, of Lonsdale, was training in the first class Wednesday. Brooks said the blocks were the hardest part for him, because he had trouble keeping his thumb on the outside of his fist when blocking. But he said he enjoys the classes, and thinks it looks cool.
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