Nippon Budō Seishin-Kan

When it first began meeting in a small room in the College Church building called "The Green Room," Pellman Shihan could never have imaged the impact the IWU Budōkai would have on campus life at IWU, nor how its influence would extend to other communities in the state of Indiana.

One of the assertions Pellman Shihan made in his proposals was that the IWU Budōkai would produce student leaders on campus, and it did so almost immediately.  Soon, its members were providing self-defence seminars in the women's dormitories, performing demonstrations at the annual campus cultural fair, where the Budōkai's booth was always the most popular attraction, and hosting its own annual Taikai—a combination of a tournament and public demonstation.

Word of the club's activities spread quickly, and soon it was invited to perform demonstrations at other colleges in Indiana, as well as events like the annual Popcorn Festival in  Van Buren, and even the Indiana State Fair.  The club's notoreity also caught the attention of other dojo, and attracted several new kenkyūkai (study groups) into the KNBK.

Meanwhile, Shimabukuro Hanshi and Pellman Shihan were continuing to update Flashing Steel in response to criticism that it contained too few photographs for readers to fully understand the techniques being portrayed, a handful of errors discovered in the first edition, and some of the alterations in technique that Shimabukuro Hanshi had instituted as his research and understanding of iaijutsu had deepened over the intervening years.  Flashing Steel, Second Edition was published in 2008.

By the time Flashing Steel 2e came off the presses, it was already apparent that  Katsujinken was not reaching the broader audience to which it had been targeted outside the Shitō-Ryū community.   In addition, nine years of  training under Mabuni Kenzō had significantly altered many of Shimabukuro Hanshi's views on the philosophy and purpose of karate-dō in general, and on the style of Shitō-Ryū in particular.  While Pellman Shihan was visiting San Diego at Christmastime in 2008, the two met at the Jack-In-The-Box where they had hatched so many plans together and Hanshi presented his ideas for a third book.  The book he now had in mind would be his master work on karate-dō—a synthesis of his lifetime of study and training in the art.  Specifically, it would be a presentation of karate-dō as a samurai art.

"So many people think karate is self-defence for farmers and fishermen," Hanshi explained, "But that's not true, Len-san.  The karate that Mabuni Kenwa passed down to Mabuni Kenzō was not created by peasants.  It was created by Okinawan shizoku, who were descendants of samurai, and it was created for the purpose of defending against the samurai of Satsuma Han.  This is the truth about karate-dō that almost nobody tells, so now that Mabuni Kenzō is gone, it's up to us to explain it."

Thus began the ordeal to produce The Art of Killing.

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Drafts of the first chapters were sent back and forth in early 2009.  Pellman Shihan passed his comprehensive exam in March 2009 and began work on his dissertation while also working on The Art of Killing.  But, Pellman's dissertation committee chairman refused to approve his topic, forcing him to change chairmen twice.  At the same time, Pellman was taking on added teaching assignments in order to afford the increasing costs of child support for his children and the tuition for his doctoral programme.  The pressure caused him to cease work on The Art of Killing for several months.   In early 2010, Pellman Shihan made three more attempts to obtain approval for his dissertation topic without success, before finally abandoning his efforts.

Without the pressure and time commitment of his doctoral studies, Pellman Shihan was able to resume work on The Art of Killing, but progress was slow, as Shimabukuro Hanshi was also traveling extensively at the time, expanding his role in the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai and the operations of the JKI.  Miura Sōshihan of the Nippon Kobudo Jikishin-Kai was in the late stages of Parkinson's disease and had gone into seclusion in his hometown of Tsuwano, Japan.  He and Shimabukuro Hanshi were consulting frequently on the orderly transition of leadership of Muso Jikiden Eishin-Ryu iaijutsu to Shimabukuro.

In November 2011, Pellman Shihan visited hombu dōjō in San Diego and tested for godan (5th dan) in both karate-dō and iaijutsu.  Days later, Shimabukuro Hanshi was diagnosed with cancer of the gall bladder and began undergoing treatments.   In December, Pellman Shihan was informed that he was being laid off by IWU effective 30 June 2012.  With no other employment opportunties within a thirty minute commute of Marion, Indiana, Pellman Shihan realised that he would soon be forced to leave the community he had come to love and begin life again elsewhere.

Shimabukuro Hanshi and Pellman Shihan held their last telephone discussion of The Art of Killing in March, 2012.  A few days later, Pellman Shihan sent an updated draft of the book to Hanshi for review.  He never received a reply.  It was discovered that the cancer had spread to Hanshi's liver and he began an aggressive regime of radiation and chemotherapy.  Miura Sōshihan died on  19 June 2012 and Shimabukuro Hanshi immediately succeeded him as sōshihan of Musō Jikiden Eishin-Ryū iaijutsu.  Tragically, Shimabukuro Sōshihan passed away on 07 September 2012.

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Two weeks after Shimabukuro Hanshi's death, Pellman Shihan taught his last class at the IWU Budokai and bade his students a tearful farewell.  In early October he put his house up for sale.

Having focused on his efforts to find employment for the past ten months, and thinking it unseemly to bother Hanshi about a menjō in the midst of Hanshi's struggle against cancer, the matter of Shihan's promotion was all but forgotten.  And with the IWU Budokai dissolved and no idea if or where he would teach budō again, it seemed a moot point.

During the next six months he continued submitting job applications to employers all over the country, but the answers—when they even bothered to respond—were always the same:  "you're too old" or "you're the wrong skin colour."  Of course, it was never stated that bluntly.  It was worded in code as "Your qualifications and work experience are exceptional, but you do not meet the criteria for ..." followed by either "... our long-term employee development strategy" or "... our diversity initiatives."  Gentler ways of saying the same thing.

In early April, Pellman Shihan negotiated for his mortgage lender to assume ownership of his house.  With no job prospects, but merely confidence that he would find work of some kind, Shihan moved to San Antonio, Texas in May 2013.  In October, he purchased a "fixer-upper" home and began his search for work and a new dōjō.    The two years that followed was filled with frustration and disappointment.

Shihan viewed more than a dozen vacant buildings, most of them in desperate need of repair and some of them structurally unsound, yet none of the landlords were willing to negotiate a workable lease for the properties.  He also visited a score of community centres and YMCAs, pitching a comprehensive budō training programme, but none expressed interest in having Shihan teach.  It wasn't until December 2015 that he finally negotiated an agreement to teach karate only at the city's least-used community centre.  The programme began 04 April 2016.

Unfortunately, the city gave the programme no support.  Despite numerous requests, it wasn't even listed on the city's Recreation Department website until after the decision had already been made to cancel it in 2018.  But within weeks a new opportunity presented itself.  Victory Assembly of God church offered use of its facilities three times a week in which to teach not only karate, but also iaijutsu, jōjutsu, Okinawa kobujutsu, kenjutsu, and aiki-jūjutsu, starting in September 2018.

And Victory Dōjō was born!

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