Joe Condello began training judo in Philadelphia with Takahiko Ishikawa. During his summer break from college, he and his then-girlfriend Becky visited Ishikawa and Helen Foos in Virginia Beach. The latter asked the couple to relocate to the southern state to assist Ishikawa and Foos. The couple accepted and spent the 1970s in Virginia Beach around judo. Later, Joe would relocate to Pennsylvania and founded the Liberty Bell Judo classic with Lou Moyerman. This interview was used in the writing of the book Takahiko Ishikawa: Judo’s Quiet Master, available now!
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Welcome! Thank you for joining us today.
Joe Condello: Thank you.
Becky Condello: We look forward to your questions.
MAYTT: How and when did you start training under Takahiko Ishikawa?
JC: An interesting thing is as a young teenager, I used to lift weights at a local YMCA. I was there on a Saturday for some reason, and I wandered upstairs on the way out and in there was a meeting room. Howard Wray had his judo classes there. He had a visitor then, this guy Greg Morgan, who was a good friend of Tommy Blair. Tommy Blair was there also. Tommy used to assist Howard. Greg Morgan was a lightweight and just was so lightning fast. I was watching and he just tossed these guys around like crazy. It was amazing.
Anyway, I joined Howard’s classes. I started taking judo there on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Howard, every once in a while, would bring his youth class down to Philadelphia, to Ishikawa’s Club on a Saturday just to get them to meet Mr. Ishikawa. He did that one Saturday I went with him, and it was just fascinating. Mr. Ishikawa was such a nice guy, and he was pretty interesting.
You could just see the power in the guy. He was just so friendly, and he was so humble and all. It was interesting there and after seeing the class, I felt I should go there too. So, what I started doing was going down to Ishikawa’s on Mondays and Fridays and train with Howard on Wednesdays and Saturdays. So that’s how I initially got my start down there. I lived in the suburbs, so I’d make that trek down to Center City and walk to Dojo, via public transit. There were just a lot of adults; we had a fairly big adult class. I mean, Howard had an adult class I was in, but it wasn’t nearly as big or as strong as Ishikawa’s. Howard wasn’t even a black belt yet, but there were multiple black belts at Ishikawa’s and those guys would just all beat the crap out of you. I don’t know why there’s enjoyment in that, but just the whole class was enjoyable. That’s how I got started just through Howard, who himself was actually quite good.
MAYTT: When you got training under Ishikawa, what was he like as an instructor? Was he strict or was he flexible in his approach and methodology?
JC: I am going to say that his approach was very Japanese. I don’t know if I’m wanting to say that he was strict, but he didn’t need to be. There was just a tremendous level of respect. When he was running class and doing things, people would stop what they’re doing and pay attention. Basically, his class was pretty much, especially in Philadelphia, was the same for most of the time that I knew him. We’d have a relatively quick warmup, moving around, doing some break falls and things like that, and back crawling. But it wasn’t really that long. Then he would generally teach a technique. He might show it once and then go around and watch everybody working on it, trying to help you a little bit here and there. Then you go back again if you saw something and maybe modify things a little bit. Generally, that was the class. It used to be an hour and a half, so after probably half hour or forty minutes, he’d just say, “Okay, randori.” We would have randori from forty-five minutes to an hour, and it would just open randori. There was no time schedule for rounds and things like that. That’s pretty much the way it worked. He would just teach class, and he would sit and watch and walk around, or he might just go back to his desk.
That’s pretty much the way it was. He would end class. He really enjoyed teaching. A lot of times on Friday nights, Bob Crowl used to come down from Newark, New Jersey or New York. He was really good. He was like a sandan, I believe, then. He came on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, and his technique all around was really good, but he was really good on the mat too. But Ishikawa, on Friday nights, he would teach groundwork to whoever wanted to stay afterwards. He’d have someone take a hold on someone – you get in and take your best hold – and the guy in the bottom had a certain amount of time to get out. If they got out, they stayed in and then the next person tried to hold them down. But if you held them for the allotted time, then you got held down. That was a fun thing. Ishikawa would be so intent watching us – his face would almost be on you. He just loved to watch ne waza. Also on Friday nights, a lot of times he would teach, instead of competitive judo, he would teach some kata technique. He did not do so much of Nage-no-Kata, but usually some pieces of Kime-no-Kata or Goshin-jutsu. That was kind of interesting because I found out later that didn’t happen in most other clubs.
MAYTT: It seemed like the dojo atmosphere or the dojo culture under Ishikawa was very welcoming.
JC: There wasn’t a lot of ego there. There were some guys that were rougher than others, but I guess they just knew that they didn’t compare. It’s hard to have a big head. You are pretty much nothing compared to Mr. Ishikawa. I think that it was pretty much the way judo should be. It was welcoming in the sense that the higher rank guys generally took care not to hurt or injure people who were lower ranks. They played to the ability of the people that were there. So, that was a nice thing.
MAYTT: It seems like Ishikawa was the center of the judo community in Philadelphia. What was that judo community like in Philadelphia? Did it revolve solely around Ishikawa, or was it Ishikawa with a handful of other schools within the city?
JC: Yeah, there weren’t that many. Actually, I don’t know of any individual judo schools. Most other judo in the area you would find maybe at a YMCA. I know that Down Center City, I think Philadelphia Judo was there. I’m not positive. I know that in retrospect afterwards. I know that there was judo at Temple, at the college. There may have been a couple other colleges that had some judo programs, but most of it was spread out. I mean, I remember going to a local school, but it was actually an American Karate school. They had judo on their side, but they didn’t teach any judo it. And there was judo at actually a YMCA in the area near me. I believe Lou Moyerman’s dad was teaching there. But that’s pretty much where judo was.
BC: But they were all connected to Ishikawa Sensei.
JC: A lot of them were connected to Mr. Ishikawa: the guys that ran those schools, like Howard and Lou’s dad, and a variety of other people. They came from different parts of the city or different areas. Some people from New Jersey, if they might’ve had their own little judo programs.
MAYTT: It really does seem like Philadelphia Judo was Ishikawa and everyone else who was kind of in the area all were connected back to Ishikawa in some way because he was Philadelphia Judo.
JC: I was there from 1972 until I went off to school in 1974. But during the summers, I was still there and breaks until we moved in…
BC: 1977.
JC: We moved down to Virginia Beach in 1977, but he was there in 1976.
BC: Late 1976/early 1977 is when he moved to Virginia Beach.
JC: Through the early seventies there was judo in the area, but most of them I know. Even in Pottstown, that guy there, Mike Hifer, I believe he was an Ishikawa student, and a lot of the people weren’t even actually training anymore down there in the programs around the city. There was a Korean by the name of Master Chang. He had martial arts school in Bridgeport/King of Prussia area, and he was a judo guy. He graduated from Korean Judo College, but there wasn’t much money in Judo. He taught a lot of Taekwondo. Now, he might’ve come a little bit later. I know that there was a person that trained with him who used to come to Ishikawa’s too. But, pretty much, things at that point revolved around Ishikawa. Even now, you don’t find too many independent judo schools other than my son-in-law.
MAYTT: One of the big things about Ishikawa is his relationship with Mrs. Helen Foos, who wound up being his benefactor, at least from what people in sources have said. I guess at that point, during your training, how often did you get to see or interact with Mrs. Foos at that point?
JC: Well, when Ishikawa was in Philadelphia, I didn’t even know who Mrs. Foos was. We never really saw her down in the Philadelphia Club. Actually, she may have already moved. I’m not sure what year she moved down to Virginia Beach, but I know that later in my time there, I know that Ishikawa would go visit down there, and they eventually convinced him to come and move there. She was already in Virginia Beach for a few years with his daughters, and actually his younger daughter had a daughter, so he had a grandchild now. I think that helped convince him to come down. We didn’t have much interaction with her prior to Virginia Beach. When he had moved to Virginia Beach, I had gone to visit him the first summer. I was on break from school and when I went down there, the dojo was up and running, but it just had started at that point. There weren’t a lot of people there.
Whenever guests came down, Mrs. Foos would take care of the guests. She’d take us out to dinner and such. When I had gone down to visit, Mr. Ishikawa had asked me if I would move down there and train. This was kind of weird. We had gone out to dinner, and he just asked me that day. I was still in college, had things to figure out. Before he asked me, Ishikawa turned to Mrs. Foos and said to her, “I’d asked Joe to come down, I think he can help me.”
I was being the indecisive person I generally am. She almost was yelling at me saying, “Son, you don’t understand. He’s asking you to come down here. You need to come down here.” She didn’t take a whole lot of nonsense; there was no messing around with Mrs. Foos. She was very decisive. When she wanted something done, she was going to get it done. So that’s the kind of relationship we had, and we became good friends. I mean, she helped me and my wife a lot when we had moved down there. We were both around her quite a bit down there. I think she was totally enamored by Mr. Ishikawa. She would pretty much do anything for him to help him out any way she could. But of course, he was not a greedy kind of guy. He was pretty much very humble, and as long as he could just live a simple life, he was fine. As long as he had some food and could play go, he was happy.
BC: I don’t think he ever unpacked; he didn’t unpack most of his boxes from his move from Philadelphia. If he would go over and have curry with him at his house, it’d just be filled with boxes filled that he never unpacked. There was a big parking lot. His house was right next to the Dojo on one side of the lot and Mrs. Foos’ house and office on the other side. I worked for her for several years, and I think he just moved in, just played go, and went to the dojo. That’s all he did.
JC: He liked to cook.
MAYTT: That does sound like it is a simple life for somebody.
JC: Oh, yeah. He was such a nice guy. And a lot of times when we were in Virginia Beach, we would finish practice and we’d go to change, and he’d be in his office playing go. Then we’d come in and then he would just tell us some stories of things that happened in his life. Oh, it was very interesting.
MAYTT: Since we are on the topic of Virginia Beach, prompted Ishikawa’s move from Philadelphia to there?
JC: Well, he was getting older and running a dojo, just making ends meet, and just living there. He really didn’t have anyone else there in Philly. I think, family wise, his daughters were down there. And again, he had a grandchild – he eventually had two grandchildren – but I think that just the ability to have a place to live worry free and be taken care of. She told him that she’ll build him this big dojo and so he could teach judo. That was pretty much it. He wasn’t a businessman by any sense of the imagination. He pretty much just wanted to teach judo and just do his thing. I think mostly he really wanted to be back in Japan, but I think just because his daughters were there and stuff. I’m not even sure if Fumiko was down there.
BC: His oldest daughter, I believe, just visited a lot. Mrs. Foos adopted his two daughters and son early on. It was his family, so I’m sure why he moved.
MAYTT: From what you remember down at Virginia Beach, what was the judo community there? Was it similar to what was up in Philly, or was it a completely different geo community down in Virginia Beach?
BC: I would say completely different.
JC: People had been established there and there were no judo schools, per se. It’s not that different today, frankly. Judo was kind of taught at rec centers here and there, and there were people that had been there for a long time, and unfortunately, I don’t think they appreciated what they had. I think there were a couple of people that came from the established clubs and trained at both places, but it was different because Ishikawa was kind of semi-building from scratch. There were a couple people that in the area that were involved in judo before and did come and train there. It was very small there. It was a hard sell as judo generally is in the United States.
BC: I’d say a good number of his students came from the Armed Forces because Virginia Beach was such a big military area.
JC: A lot of Navy folks.
BC: They’d stop in and then get hooked.
JC: Or they did judo somewhere else, and they came in while they were staying in Virginia Beach.
BC: Very transient.
JC: But it was a very small group of regulars there. There were times when it might be Becky and me in class [Laughs] Those were the worst times! [Laughs]
BC: Yep.
JC: Nothing worse than that.
BC: Even you’d count to 10 and it’d be 150 by the end of it. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4. [Laughs]
JC: It wasn’t regular, but it was a very small group of us. Over time, there might have only just been a half dozen of core folks there. It’s interesting. I didn’t realize how strong and good these guys were over time until I left, because we used to bang heads pretty hard. It was a lot different that way. And even instruction wise, I’m going to say he did a similar thing to what he did in Philadelphia. But again, because there was a core group of us, we would bow in, have a little warmup, and then he would say, “Okay, uchi komi.” We would just uchi komi for, I don’t know, forty minutes or so. He’d just come around and then, whatever you’re working on, he’d spend time correcting you. It wasn’t like he was given a formal class that way.
BC: Or even ne waza. Sometimes they’d just be ne waza for an hour, and then randori. And then even after class, he’d do kata or make you do extra drills.
JC: It was a bit different there, depending on the class. If it was a bigger class where we had more visitors, he was more likely to teach something that night.
BC: It’s such a shame. It was a beautiful dojo.
JC: Really nice dojo.
BC: Actually, it had a women’s locker room, with showers too. And I was like the only woman, but it was perfect.
MAYTT: With that change in instructional approach with Ishikawa, do you think that was because he was getting older and he wanted to relax more, or was it something else that prompted his change in the teaching approach?
JC: I don’t know. I mean, part of it probably with getting older, but I know from my own experience, once you have students for a certain amount of time, you kind of know what they know. Why are you going to teach that same thing tonight to the whole group when they’ve already seen it fifty other times? I think that the people that did show up regularly, for the most part, were pretty serious about working out. I think that he had a good understanding of his students. I think he had a good understanding of what it took to develop your technique as opposed to, “I’m going to show you this tonight. Now you’re going to work on it for ten minutes.” He would tell you sometimes what to do, “You work on this tonight,” and you just did it. When I say you do uchi komi, it’s not like you do ten, but you’d get hundreds. He instilled that idea that you needed to do it a lot.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of how he trained, but he was kind of a madman. He would put a lot into his training. He would train for two hours every morning by himself just to develop his skill. It’s tough to do that, and then train, and then do randori after that. When you get to a certain level, it’s not a matter of going to a class and someone teaching a technique. It’s a matter of continuing to drill what, and then go and do a lot of randori. That’s what he did. At night, he would just go and go to wherever, whether it’s the Police Dojo or Kodokan – wherever they were doing his late nightly training – they would just do mass randori. It wasn’t a class. I think that was his style or his idea of what training should be.
BC: I think another difference between Philly and Virginia Beach was in Philadelphia, he had a lot of older judoka that were past their competition time, and they would come just for the love of judo. A lot of them would help Sensei; they’d walk around and help people. But in Virginia Beach, everybody that came was younger. We were, and most of us, competitive players. That’s what I’m saying. I think that’s why in Virginia, he may have trained us more as competitors as opposed to in the city.
JC: To be successful, you want students to keep showing up. You can’t beat them up unless they want that. When I say beat, I mean just make them work that hard. I don’t want to say it was more of a recreational group there, but it was more of a general group or a heterogeneous group of people. So, I think he had to tailor the lessons that way.
BC: A lot of the women were kata students. This is in Philly.
JC: In Philly, when I started, none of the women did randori. They would participate in the class – the techniques that were taught that night – but during randori time, they were in one section of the mat doing kata: Nage-no-Kata or Ju-no-Kata. It was totally different that way. It was a much more heterogeneous type grouping there. I think that’s the way he would teach those kinds of classes, where in Virginia Beach, Ishikawa knew who we were and what we did. Again, there were times where he said, “Let’s just do uchi komi,” and it you would just work.
BC: Mrs. Foos was the instructor, really, of the kids, in Virginia Beach.
JC: There was a kids’ class, and I would go there pretty regularly and help her out. But she would pretty much have Mr. Ishikawa come in and he would just teach a lesson and then leave. She would pretty much run the kids’ class.
BC: But her kids competed.
JC: She made them compete. We drove them to a lot of places.
BC: In the van.
Part two coming soon!
Find out more about the Condellos, Ishikawa, and more in Takahiko Ishikawa: Judo’s Quiet Master!
