Читать книгу Complete Aikido. Aikido Kyohan: The Definitive Guide to the Way of Harmony онлайн

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“There were a lot of times that he commented negatively about aikido. There were many times that he indirectly challenged me, and of course, I took the challenge and said, ‘Let’s do it!’ And he would say, ‘No, we’re friends.’ We never got into a real fight. We got into verbal confrontations many times, but never a physical confrontation. We were really just teasing each other.”

Let it not be said, though, that Fusei Kise wasn’t prepared to fight when pressed—or insulted:

“We were in the squadron day room. There was a pool table there, snack bar, people were playing cards. We were sitting down, watching television. I was in uniform, but of course Kise Sensei was a third country national, so he was in street clothes. This great big guy walked in the room—he recognized that I was a GI, from the uniform, even though I looked Japanese, but he saw Kise, and he said ‘You goddamn gook! What the hell are you doing in here?’ Kise Sensei heard him, but he didn’t understand a lot of English, he just looked up and said, ‘Huh?’ And the guy said ‘You deaf? I said what are you doing in here?’ So I said to the guy, ‘Hey, what’s your problem? He’s the night electrician. He belongs in here, he works here!’ And the guy says, ‘What the hell they got a gook doing that job for?’ By that time Kise Sensei knew something was up, and he asks me, ‘What did he say?’ I said, ‘He called you a gook. I think he wants to kick your butt.’ And Kise said ‘What?!’ Then he got up, his eyes got small and he turned red as a beet, and I thought, ‘Uh-oh.’ So I turned to the guy and I said, ‘You better get out of here, now. He may be small, but he can kill you and me right now, just like that.’ And then the guy’s eyes got real big, and he said ‘No shit?’ And voom!, he was out the door. Later on I saw the guy again, and he asked me, ‘Who was that guy?’ So I told him. I said, ‘If that man had gotten ahold of you, you would have been lying in little pieces. And by the way, I’m Oriental, and I don’t like the word gook either.’ And he said, ‘Oh, man! I’m sorry!’ And he went back and apologized to Kise Sensei, and Kise accepted. He was pretty good about stuff like that. He could be pretty mean when he wanted to, but he knew his limits as to what he could and couldn’t do on the air base. Now, had it happened in town, the outcome would have been very different!”