Grandmaster Henry Seishiro Okazaki

     Grandmaster Henry Seishiro Okazaki was born in Kakeda, Fukushima Prefecture, and Japan. At the age of 16, he migrated to Hawaii on the island of Oahu in Ewa. He later settled on the big island of Hilo, Hawaii.
     While living in Hilo, he went to Master Yoshimatsu Tanaka. At that time he was teaching Jujitsu at his Shinyukai dojo in Hilo and in Okazaki's words, "started to practice jujitsu in earnest and in defiance of death." Whether or not it was due to his frantic devotion to jujitsu, Okazaki's tuberculosis healed and developed a strong, iron-like body. He believed that he owed his life to jujitsu and devoted the rest of it to the teaching and promotion of the art.
     While in Hilo, Okazaki mastered various jujitsu techniques being taught at the Yoshin-Ryu, Iwaga-Ryu and Kosogabe-Ryu schools. He then combined these systems with Karate techniques from the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa) and the knife techniques of the Philippines to form Danzan-Ryu school of Jujitsu. Danzan are the Kanji (Chinese Characters) that denote the Hawaiian Islands, thus Danzan Ryu is the Hawaiian school of Jujitsu. He also studied the Hawaiian secret killing art of Lau under the tutelage of David Kainhee, a native Hawaiian. He also studied western boxing and wrestling. Okazaki incorporated all of these arts into his system. In addition to the martial arts system, Okazaki studied all the resuscitation arts of Kappo and Seifukujutsu, the Japanese art of physical adjustment and restoration.
     In 1922, a heavyweight American boxer champion named K.O. Morris visited the islands and began to challenge Judo and other martial arts. Several Japanese martial artists answered his call in Hilo; Morris defeated them all. Okazaki then challenged Morris to a match. Okazaki suffered from a broken nose in the first round, he then retaliated with a reverse arm lock, which broke Morris' arm and caused him to faint from the pain.
     In 1924, he returned to Japan and has mastered over 675 techniques. In 1929, he moved to Hawaii. He opened his first school in the 1930's and took on the name American Jujitsu Guild, which was later, changed to the American Jujitsu Institute. Many great teachers came from Okazaki, including Sig Kufferath, Bing Fai Lau, Bill Costa, Antone Gonzales, Jack Wheat, Wally Jay and many others. Danzan Ryu still lives on to this very day. Grandmaster Okazaki passed away in 1951.

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