Koshiro Tanaka

Kōshirō Tanaka
Kōshirō Tanaka
田中小四郎
Martial Artist
Personal details
Born	1940 (age 83–84), Empire of Japan; Tagawa (Fukuoka Prefecture)
Spouse	Takiko Tanaka
Military service
Branch/service	Jamiat-e Islami
Battles/wars	Soviet-Afghan War

Koshiro Tanaka (田中小四郎) is a Japanese martial artist and veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war. Tanaka left an office-job to confront his possible fear of death. He travelled to Peshawar then to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and after joining Jamiat-e Islami, took up arms against the Soviet and Afghan government armies.^[1]^[2]

Early life

Koshiro Tanaka was born in 1940 in Tagawa (Fukuoka Prefecture).^[3] He studied karate from childhood, and then judo and kendo. As an adult, Tanaka became a businessman, but gradually came to the idea that the business of his life was martial arts. He graduated from Kanagawa University Faculty of Law and Economics.^[3] He decided the best “test site” for his spirit and body would be civil war-torn Afghanistan.

Afghanistan

In 1985, while sitting in his office at Tokyo's Shinjuku district he talked of preparations to go to Afghanistan. He would finance himself. He traveled to Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province with 10 thousand dollars to distribute to the mujahideen. He raised the money from his company. Peshawar was the seat of the Afghanistan resistance movement and seven Muslim guerrilla parties had their headquarters there. Peshawar was then home to more than 3 million Afghan refugees. Tanaka joined Jamiat-e Islam which was the second largest mujahedeen group, headed by Burhanuddin Rabbani. As he prepared to depart to Afghanistan, his wife Takiko stood beside him and showed support but wanted him to stay. She admitted she didn't understand her husband's attraction to the mujahideen.^[4]

The mujahideen, he said, "need help, any kind of help. They need weapons, bread, food, anything". When Koshiro Tanaka arrived in Afghanistan, he exchanged his black uniform suit for a salwar kameez and proceeded to convert to Islam. He had no battlefield experience but nonetheless, he began to teach the mujahideen hand-to-hand combat. In February 1985, he took part in a battle against the Soviet and Afghan armies. Many journalists around the world reported on the so-called "Afghan samurai".

Reaction from Japan

The Japanese government disapproved of his activities.^[5] The Japanese Embassy in Islamabad officially warned Tanaka about the inappropriateness of involvement in the Afghan conflict. Tanaka ignored this warning and began to train the Dushmans of the second largest group headed by Rabbani. He eventually viewed himself as a martyr for Japan, which had an Island dispute with the Soviet Union.

Tanaka was strongly against the government and Constitution for denying Japanese people the chance to fight the Russians off the Kuril Islands to which Japan had historical ties to. The Islands were lost to the Soviets.^[4]

Post-Afghanistan

He later became the managing director of the Japan Freedom Afghanistan Association, the secretary general of the International Refugee Relief Committee, and succeeded the second Soke of Fuji Fluid Art in 1991, serving until 2007. In 2008, he launched his own school, "Hiko School".^[4]

Tanaka wrote an autobiography based on his experience fighting Soviet and pro-communist Afghan troops in "Soviet Soldiers in a Gun Sight, My Battle in Afghanistan".^[5]^[6]