Kyusho came back into focus again during the 1983 BBC TV documentary programme ‘The Way of the Warrior’, narrated by Dennis Waterman, in which Master Bando, a Shorinji Kempo Master, demonstrates knockouts of several students for the programme.

However, it was U.S. Karate Instructor, George Dillman, who was really responsible for the revival of Kyusho Jitsu and its widespread re-introduction into Karate. Dillman claims to have learned these techniques from a number of Okinawan Karate masters but the two most responsible for imparting knows he of Kyusho to Dillman were Hohan Sokon & Taika Seiyu Oyata.

Almost every practitioner of kyusho today, certainly as far as Karate is concerned, trace their lineage directly back to Dillman in one way or another.

No Touch Knockouts

In September 2005, National Geographic Channel’s ‘Is It Real?’ program asked for a demonstration of George Dillman’s ‘Chi Knockout’, during which Kyusho Jitsu and Small Circle JuJitsu instructor Leon Jay was unable to knock out Luigi Garlaschelli, an Italian skeptical investigator from the ‘Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims on Pseudosciences’ (CICAP).

This subjected the art of Kyusho Jitsu to severe scepticism by the wider martial arts community.

It should be noted, that neither Hohan Soken nor Taikyu Oyata taught, both Dillman’s Kyusho Jitsu teachers, practiced or promoted ‘no touch knockouts’, and were equally sceptical of anyone claiming their effectiveness. It’s therefore highly questionable that this practice this was passed onto Dillman by either Solomon or Oyata.

The Kyusho Jitsu Kenkyukai do not teach, practice, study or endorses ‘no touch knockout’ techniques and consider it a pseudoscience at best. We research, study and practice only physical contact techniques illustrated on anatomical charts in old karate, Ju Jitsu books and densho scrolls.