President - Sakagami Kuniaki (7th Dan) Honbucho
Sakagami-Kuniaki Sensei started training in Wado-ryu in 1959 when he was a teenager. He originally wanted to train in boxing but found that the nearest boxing gym was thirty miles away; in those days this was a great distance to travel. A friend then told Mr Sakagami he could easily find a karate dojo, so Mr Sakagami decided to do that instead.
The dojo happened to be one of Mr Tatsuo Suzuki's, a very famous instructor with a good reputation.
At this time Mr Sakagami did not know anything about Karate ‘styles’, it was only by chance that it happened to be a Wado-ryu dojo. The training was a little different then in those days you would do jogging in bare feet and the discipline was military style, you never said "no" in the dojo, only "yes", "hai", you were allowed to question if you were not sure of something but you could not question the teachings.
Mr Sakagami won the Middle Japan Kumite two years running and then went on to take a British Wado team to Japan to participate in the World Wado Karate Cup. This was a proud moment for Mr Sakagami, as he had always wanted to take an English team to Japan.