Richard Amos

Richard Thomas Amos 6th dan, was born in Surrey, England, in 1963 and is well known in the Shotokan Karate world as having completed the three-year Japan Karate Association (JKA) instructors’ program in Tokyo in 1994, becoming only the second Westerner ever to do so in the JKA’s fifty-year history. He is a former KUGB Under-21 National Champion and former British team member. He is currently Chief Instructor of the World Traditional Karate Organization, headquartered in New York.
Amos started karate at the age of ten in Essex under the guidance of Charles Naylor and his wife Dot Naylor. A major influence was Keinosuke Enoeda, whose Crystal Palace training camps in the late 1970s and early 1980s Amos attended habitually. They were renowned for the quality of their instruction from such JKA luminaries as Yoshiharu Osaka, Katsuhiro Tsuyama, Hiroshi Shirai and Yasuharu Kase.
From 1981 to 1985, Amos enjoyed several years on the powerful KUGB national team during the boom years of Shotokan Karate in Europe. In 1984 Amos received his 3rd dan under Keinosuke Enoeda. He left England for the USA in 1986.
In early January 1989 Amos decided to dedicate himself to training at the Headquarters of the Japan Karate Association in Ebisu, Tokyo. There he worked under the daily tutelage of Tesuhiko Asai, Masaaki Ueki, Keigo Abe, Masahiko Tanaka, Mikio Yahara, Yoshiharu Osaka, Minoru Kawawada and Masao Kagawa.
Training throughout the politically volatile era of the JKA he graduated from their prestigious instructors’ class in the spring of 1994 after a three-year apprenticeship.
Following his arrival in Japan Amos competed and made his mark by placing in the top three in virtually every Tokyo and tournament. Highlights were an impressive string of victories in the 1989 Tokyo team event and, the following year, winning the Kanto region individual kumite title.
In 2000, with John Mullin and Fred Serricchio, both senior JKA instructors at the time, Amos formed the World Traditional Karate Organization. The enduring goal of the World Traditional Karate Organization is the propagation of karate ideals through research and constant training.
As the WTKO’s Chief Instructor, Amos teaches daily classes at his Manhattan dojo. Every year he commits to an extensive teaching schedule, giving master classes to all levels, all over the world, notably England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Holland, Portugal, Norway and Iceland.
Eiji Maeda, one of Amos’s fellow graduates at the JKA instructors’ course, is Amos’s assistant in New York.
Richard Amos is married to Yanti Amos, the producer of Shotokan Mastery, his series of instructional DVDs. Together they own and manage Earth Yoganyc, a yoga studio located in Manhattan's Upper East side.
Related work
Richard Amos has conceived and created a series of DVDs entitled Shotokan Mastery

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