On Sunday, October 12th, the Karate Club and five members of the Japanese Karate Team for the Tokyo 2025 Deaflympics held a joint practice session at the Karate Dojo in Okusu Arena 2020 at our university.
The Deaflympics is an international sports event for the hearing impaired held every four years, and this year's event will be held in Japan for the first time in November, marking the 100th anniversary of the event.
This time, ahead of the Tokyo 2025 Deaflympics, the team's coach, Tomoatsu Sugino, offered to cooperate with the team, and on Monday, October 13th, the team offered the karate dojo as a training venue in conjunction with joint training.
On the day of the joint practice, the team gave an explanation about hearing impairments and the characteristics of deaf karate, and the team members learned simple sign language. The explanation was given using videos and slides, and the members had an opportunity to think about what deaf people need to be careful of in their daily lives.
Afterwards, the participants split into "kumite" and "kata" and practiced together with the athletes. As they demonstrated real-life kumite and a series of kata, it was a valuable opportunity to practice communication using sign language and get a firsthand feel for the level of the Japanese karate team.
Let's all support the Japanese Deaflympics Karate Team!
[Student Department]
