KANBUN UECHI IN CHINA

In the early summer of 1897, he began to study at the Kugusuku Karate School with Matsuda. However, Kanbun had something of a personality clash with one of the senior students, and soon left the school to study a form of Chinese boxing called Pangainoon, under a master named Shushiwa.
 
This version of Kanbun's acceptrance into Shushiwa's school is a combination of Seiko Toyoma's and Kanei Uechi:
 
One day Shushiwa became ill with a massive headache. He did not look well so his alarmed students sought out Kanbun Uechi and insisted that he use his medicine to cure their teacher. Kanbun successfully healed Shushiwa with herbal mixtures. As a result Kanbun Uechi was finally accepted as an official disciple at the Fu Chuan Shin Temple in a secret ceremony called Pai Soo.
 
Shushiwa proved to be a taskmaster of the highest degree. Like many would-be martial arts students in the last days of the 19th century, Kanbun Uechi's first years of study were as much about patience as about martial arts! He later told his son, Kanei, "All I did for three years was Sanchin. Very few students survived this test of patience. When I first began my training, I cleaned the training floor and the toilet area, and occasionally tried to learn some of the movements by watching the senior students. After a while, they would see me going through the movements by myself, and would give me a little help, but the master would offer no assistance. Finally after being thoroughly discouraged and resigned to the fact that I would never learn karate, the master called me to him.
 
"Stand here and do this motion.", Shushiwa said, indicating the opening movements of Sanchin and the double thrust. I worked on nothing but these thrusting motions for three months, but because I had nothing else to work on, my thrusts became very strong."
 
Kanbun told Kanei that mastery of Sanchin took at least 10 years, but after 3 years, his teacher taught him Seisan kata. During that time Kanbun became very strong and fast, almost all his time was being spent in study. This was due in part to the rigorous old-style Chinese training methods for strengthening and conditioning, which used sand, gravel, buckets of rice, gripping weights and holding/lifting with the fingers, and chores that encourage the development of the body. Kanbun worked at farming on the temple grounds, pulling up daikon radish roots. Another chore he performed was the cleaning and husking of beans. The beans were placed in a large stone bowl and struck repeatedly with the fingertips until the husks could be blown away. With this type of work the fingertips were being trained for martial arts. But throughout all the training, emphasis was placed on total mastery of Sanchin. 
 
 

Excerpts from "The Secrets of Uechi Ryu Karate and The Mysteries of Okinawa" and "The History of Uechi-Ryu Karate"