I had several sempai. They were in tea, as well as in the various martial arts that I had taken up over the years as a counterpoint to my academic studies at Cornell University and the University of Hawai'i. Sensei and sempai helped me to learn judo, karatedo and aikido, three of the major "modern" martial arts of Japan.

Two weeks before I flew to Japan, I had to go to one of my karatedo sempai's funerals. It looked like rain. Fat gray blobs of gray brewed overhead. They hung low over the sloping roof of the Mililani Mortuary, threatening and foreboding, rumbling their hurt. But no rains came.

The late summer heat steamed the insides of the plaster-walled mortuary. Sweat, mingled with some wayward tears, flowed down faces dragged down by gravity and humidity. The sallow-faced priest halted and and searched for words.

I didn't think much of it, but Mel, another fellow karate student, nudged me. "He can't give final absolution," Mel said. "You know us Catholics; you can't go to heaven if you commit suicide. It's against our religion." "Kind'a harsh, huh?" I whispered.

"'Das da breaks, braddah. Us Catholics, we got our cross to carry, eh? Look like goin' rain, eh?"

After the lengthy Catholic service, we filed past the open casket where Jerry lay in his policeman's dress uniform.

Jerry's narrow face betrayed no trace of emotion, nothing of what he must have felt in his last moments. His shining green eyes were hidden behind gently shuttered eyelids. The locks of his sandy blonde hair were neatly combed and slicked back. His police hat was placed carefully on his chest, which were covered by a row of glittering badges and awards.

No show da pain, Jerry used to say as we trained on the beach, throwing kick after kick at the incoming Pacific waves. . . Our mae-geri front snap kicks flung clods of sand and foam into the air as the two of us teenagers strove to become the fastest karate kickers in Waialua. We were awkward, anxious bozos falling headlong into a new and exciting pastime called budo, the martial ways.

Jerry and I trained in the Shito-ryu style of karate-do, the Way of the Empty Hand. "-Empty, but open, willing to teach you all there is to learn," my first karate sensei used to tell us. "That is the true meaning of the empty hand. The teacher teaches with compassion all that he knows to the student, who becomes a sempai, a senior student, then a teacher. And the cycle continues. . ."

Wow, we thought. Deep. So we adolescents trained together after regular practice hours, in between school and part-time jobs, on the beaches, in open parks, in backyards, trying to ferret out the secrets of budo through sheer dumb repetition and the boundless and idealistic enthusiasm of our teenage years.

Karatedo, the "way" (-do) of karate, was a modern budo, a martial Way. Bu means "martial," but is has more implications than simply being warlike. The Chinese ideograph, so the noted martial arts researcher Donn F. Draeger was wont to say, is composed of several radicals. One is a crossed spear, alluding to the arts of the warrior. But there is another part of the character, which Draeger deduced as having been derived from the radical for "stopping." In other words, budo is a Way (the Japanese character for -do comes from the Chinese character of Tao, or path, which is also the same character for the philosophy and religion of Taoism. This Chinese belief system felt that by undergoing ritual training and/or alchemical practices, one could transmutate one's rough, physical shell into divine and eternal spirit) of the Warrior, and a true warrior was one who sought to quell conflict, not start them. Karate-do, a martial art from the islands of Okinawa, focused on fistic methods, i.e., punching and kicking, or percussive attacks and counters.