LIFE
University Daily Kansan/Tuesday, January 28,1992
5
Violent sport is vehicle for peace
Hikaru Murata, graduate teaching assistant in physical education, left, instructs Jose Amarilar, Paraguay, freshman, in Nippon kempo. Murata is the only registered Nippon kempo instructor in the United States.
By Greg Farmer
Kansan staff writer
Many people dream of world peace.
Hikaru Murata, graduate teaching assistant in physical education, has a plan to make that dream come true.
Despite the violence of the sport, Murata says understanding will create peace.
The vehicle for Murata's peace plan is Nippon kempo, a martial art that combines techniques from karate, judo and ki-aikido in one sport. But Murata admits that Nippon kempo, which was begun in 1932 by Masaru Sawayama, is one of the most violent sports in existence.
"I believe we can solve many of the problems in the world if we learn to understand each other," Murata said. "Martial arts and Nippon kempo are part of Japanese custom. I'm teaching KU students a Japanese sport. They're learning to understand."
"I came here because I wanted to learn English," Murata said. "Life in Japan was too stressful. Before I came here, I worked at a trading company. I can't imagine what I was doing there. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and drinking alcohol."
Murata is from Tokyo. He came to the United States and the University of Kansas in 1986.
Murata said KU had changed his life. He earned a master's degree in physical education in October.
"I love the United States and KU," Murata said. "I want to stay here as long as I possibly can. But tradition says that eventually my wife and I will have to go back to Japan."
Murata coaches the KU Nippon kempo club. The club has 35 members and practices three times a week.
Murata said KU was the only recognized headquarters of Nippon kempo in the United States. He said the club usually had to travel outside the United States to compete in Nippon kempo.
"Canada, Mexico, Great Britain and France offer Nippon kempo," Murata said. "All these countries
teach a Japanese sport. All these places share something Japanese in common."
Murata said Nippon kempo was a full-contact sport.
"The difference between karate and Nippon kempo is that karate has little contact," Murata said. "In Nippon kempo, we punch, kick and throw, and we wear football-like armor."
Murata said cooperation and discipline were keys to being successful in Nippon kempo and life.
"I stress to my students that we are individuals, but when we are together, we are a group." Murata said. "I love it." It also "it's a Japanese idea that I believe."
"We are participating in a very individual sport. We compete in one-
on-one matches. But we are all part of the club. We will be successful together, and we will fail to perform our best together. We can share the idea of fun. Sharing is the most important part."
Murata said the difference between Japanese and U.S. students was that
"Japanese students start learning martial arts when they reach the seventh grade," Murata said. "American students have a limited martial arts background."
But Murata said his students could compete against Japanese Nippon kempo students.
"We are training very hard to be able to challenge Japanese competitors," Murata said. "We can do it. We train harder and harder every day."
We may be stronger, smarter or bigger than they are. We may be quicker. "That's looking at things with a lot of sense. But I am confident can do it."
"The thing I like most about (Murata) is that he isn't horribly strict," Parsons said. "He makes us work hard, but he always keeps things at the level of friends."
Breven Parsons, Lawrence senior and captain of the KU Nippon kempo club, said that Murata was a kind teacher.
Parsons said he thought Murata's plan for world peace was a good one.
"We have a lot of international students in the club," Parsons said. The team will work on retreat backgrounds working together it's sure to break down boundaries."
The Associated Press
The Cinedome Theatre, a multiplex in a mostly white, middle-class neighborhood in Sacramento, Calif., usually plays mainstream movies: "Hook," "The Addams Family," "Beauty and the Beast."
Butthissummer, Cinedeadorsan "Boyz"N the Hood,"a drama by a 23-year-old African-American director that is set in a Los Angeles ghetto. In the fall, the multiplex featured another African-American film, "House Party II," a hip-hop flavored campus comedy.
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"They just try to put them in predominantly Black areas. I think films are pretty much looked at the same way as records are. They label it as Black music or pop music, and that's the way they market it. The studios pretty much label and so do the people who distribute the film."
Some blame the studios for insufficient support; others say the films' subject matter gives them limited appeal. But whether it's racism or simply a matter of what the market will bear, the same formula seems to apply: African-American films for African-American people.
"I think it's because of the way distributors and retailers view Black films," said Fred Rashid, the NAACP's national director for economic development.
"There are films that you can't open in the middle of a white, cracker neighborhood," said Mark Gill, Columbia Pictures' senior vice president of publicity. "There is racism in America, and we're fools to ignore it."
"There are films that you can't open in the middle of a white, cracker neighborhood."
Columbia Pictures 'senior vice president of publicity'
Steve Rothenberg, senior vice president of the theatrical distribution for the Samuel Goldwyn Company, said, "When any distributor looks to market a film, they want it to be a synergy between the content of the film and the neighborhood it's in."
And there are image problems. Violence marred the openings of "Boyz 'N the Hood" (a woman was injured in a shooting outside the Cineade) and "New Jack City," and the repercussions may have harmed the distribution of "House Party II" and other Black movies.
"There are, unfortunately, theater owners and, in some cases, mayors and chiefs of police who did not want 'House Party II' playing in their neighborhoods," said Mitch Goldman, sales manager for New Line Cinema, which distributed the film. "They said it was for fear of problems, law enforcement problems."
Rashid and others fear a self-fulfilling prophecy is at work. By assuming non-Black audiences don't want to see Black films, studios and exhibitors make it that much more difficult for those movies to cross over.
"I think it's very debilitating," said Jacquie Jones, editor of Black Film Review magazine, a Washington, D.C.-based publication. "You have Black films getting limited money for promotion and half of the screens of a mediocre Hollywood film.
"A film like 'Bozy' N the I乐od' could have made a lot more. I don't think it's acceptable to say that white people won't go see these films."
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