User:Hiroshi Hamai/Noriyasu Hamai

Noriyasu Hamai is a male Karate practitioner (9th dan) and management consultant, born in Nanao, Ishikawa, Japan, who serves as the chairman of Kyokushin Hamai Group of International Karate Organization and the representative of Kyokushin Kaikan Rikisha-kai.

His younger brother, Yoshiaki Hamai, is the Chubu area manager of the Kyokushin Kaikan Matsui School, and his daughter, Mika Hamai, is the representative of the Kyokushin Hamai Group.

Personal History
Noriyasu earned a brown belt in Judo when he was in elementary school. After attending Nanao High School, during which he started to practice karate, he entered the Faculty of Law at Hitotsubashi University in 1972 and joined the Karate Club there. In July of the same year, he also entered the Kyokushin Kaikan Headquarters Dojo in Ikebukuro. A week later, he sparred with the All Japan Champion of the previous year, Katsuaki Sato, where he accidentally succeeded in round kicking the champion’s jaw, knocking the former champion out. In addition to the fact that he was learning at a different karate school, this event moved senior Kyokushin Karate practitioners to put Noriyasu through hard training for a while. Hisao Maki, who had not witnessed this event, heard it secondhand and embellished upon the whole story to make it known publicly. According to Hisao, when Noriyasu sparred with Katsuaki, Noriyasu round kicked upper-left high in Katsuaki’s jaw, which made him sink to one knee. Usually, back in those days, when a lower belt holder did such a thing to an upper belt holder, the upper belt holder pursued the lower belt holder in the following sparring round until he thoroughly crushed the opponent with a lower belt. But Katsuaki raised himself up and took a fighting pose, saying: “Hey Noriyasu, what a great kick you got. Come on again.” Then Katsuaki parried Noriyasu’s attacks quite easily while staying calm without getting emotional and finally finished the sparring round, maintaining a consistent attitude. Regarding Katsuaki’s philosophy, in later years, Noriyasu looked back and said: “Katsuaki is tolerant having a big heart. I have nothing on him, being nothing in comparison with him.” In the following year, Noriyasu earned a brown belt.

Noriyasu’s signature karate techniques are front kicks and back kicks. He skillfully uses two different kicks, a defensive front kick that stops the opponent’s rush and an offensive front kick to kick through the opponent’s belly. With these techniques, he won the sixth prize in the 5th All Japan Open Karate Championship and the fourth in the 9th All Japan Karate Championship.

Noriyasu enrolled in the Faculty of Law without any intention of being a lawyer, but rather, wanting to run his own business. Therefore, he transferred to Hitotsubashi University, the Faculty of Commerce and Management, after taking a year off. While there, he belonged to the seminar of Tetsuya Morita to study accounting. However, his parents divorced during his junior year, so he returned to Nanao to take over the family business, tailoring. He attended the university in Kunitachi, Tokyo, from Nanao, and finally graduated in 1980, eight years after his admission.

Earning a black belt in 1977, Noriyasu assumed the position of Ishikawa Area Manager. While he received many karate disciples amid a Kyokushin Karate boom, his family business as a tailor declined in earnings. He then sold the family business and built a karate dojo in Kanazawa. The Ishikawa Branch, where he served as the manager, produced noble karate practitioners, Toshio Mizuguchi and Akira Masuda, which made Noriyasu known as an excellent Kyokushin Karate instructor. He also started a video rental business founding Video City (which later became Geo City), conquering the video rental market in the Hokuriku area. As for Kaga City, Keiji Kameyama, who later founded DMM.com proposed a franchise agreement with Video City to prevent Video City from developing the business within the city. Noriyasu accepted this proposal and affiliated Kameyama’s shops as franchises. Noriyasu got headhunted by Espo Communications at one billion yen, and assumed the position of sales manager of GEO. He also held positions of sales manager at another video rental company and a director of the Compact Disc & Video Rental Commerce Trade Association of Japan. In 2004, he sold off Video City to GEO where his former coworkers participated through share exchange at the price of about 800 million yen. By doing so, he retired from the business world.

In May 2006, Noriyasu left the Kyokushin Kaikan Matsui School due to differences in the operational policy, parting company with Shokei Matsui. Instead, he established the Kyokushin Kaikan Hamai School and became its representative. In April 2007, he was appointed as a director of the Kyokushin Shogakukai Foundation, opening a dojo in Dairen, China, in October of the same year.

He opened five permanent dojos across China, including Dairen in October 2014, establishing a separate branch in Beijing.

Having nurtured 13 karate practitioners who earned black belts since the opening of the China branch, he established a firm foundation by appointing a Chinese disciple as the branch manager. According to his blog, he was going to hold the All China Karate Championship in the future.

In August 2016, Noriyasu held the 1st All China Full Contact Kyokusin Karate Championship – Mas Oyama Cup in Dairen, China, where many karate practitioners participated, not only from China but worldwide. What Noriyasu did in China was an outstanding achievement, opening many dojos based on the firm foundation he had established.

In recent years, Noriyasu has developed a unique face attacking glove in the pursuit of safety, trying to reproduce a sparring style that was practiced at the beginning of the Oyama dojo.

Innovative Spirit
With an innovative spirit, Noriyasu used video recording, which was relatively new at that time, to study sparring, trying to absorb good points from other martial arts, and he studied effective punching techniques for attacking the face and defense movements within the branch. He learned such techniques from a kickboxer, Toshio Fujiwara, and Takeo Nakayama, who finished second place in the 9th All Japan Open Karate Championship, and was a master of diagonal attacks and vertical and horizontal attacking combinations. Noriyasu instructed Toshio Mizuguchi and Akira Masuda with what he had studied until they mastered such techniques.