u/hilukasz

honestly love how he trains him on the front kick. And then pulls out a crescent, kick almost like a question mark kick style.

hatano9ma/IG

Tokyo, 1985. Koshiro Tanaka, 44, sat in a Shinjuku office wearing a suit that didn’t fit his soul. Sixth-degree black belt in Kyokushin karate. Trained in judo, aikido, kendo. And nowhere to put any of it.

Japan had grown soft. The Soviets still held the Kuril Islands. Nobody cared. He did.

So he resigned. Raised $10,000 through his own company. Flew to Peshawar alone.

Traded his suit for a salwar kameez. Joined Jamiat-e Islami. Walked over the Hindu Kush into a war that wasn’t his.

His first firefight was a raid near Jagdalak, east of Kabul. “I didn’t know how to fight, how to move. I felt a bullet go by my ear. I got a shot of adrenaline.”

He was hooked.

Over the next four years and seven trips, he trained mujahideen in hand-to-hand combat, fought alongside the legendary Ahmad Shah Massoud in the Panjshir Valley, and survived malaria, jaundice, kidney stones, and a broken foot.

He carried an extra grenade. Not for the enemy — for himself. Capture would shame Japan. Better to go out like a samurai.

The Afghan government reported his death so many times on state radio that his brothers-in-arms started laughing every time it aired.

The world called him the Afghan Samurai.

Japan called him an embarrassment.