Lament has been expressed that Yamaguchi Sensei (1924 – 1996) did not leave behind instructional material such as a video or book. I certainly agree with that. William Gleason and Stan Pranin have discussed the remarkable technique of Yamaguchi Sensei. It occurred to me that I had some material to offer about Yamaguchi Sensei from notes I kept while practicing at Hombu Dojo from 1973 to 1980. Yamaguchi Sensei taught a yudansha (black belt) course annually. The figure and text given below were taken from material distributed at one of these courses in 1973. The first attempt at translating the figure was done by my wife, Kinuyo Kraus, a native Japanese language speaker. Then, I prevailed on colleagues originally from China to review and interpret the figure, because some of the Kanji are quite old. I would like to thank Professor Sam Wang and Dr. Yan Ding (who lived in Japan for three years), both of the University of Mississippi, for their kindness in offering interpretations of some facets of the figure.
