When he did this, I experienced a strange and frightening pain that was like a heart tremor.
Still I did not give up. I requested that he pit himself against me in fencing.  We used sticks in place of swords; and, even though the stick he used was short, he successfully parried all my attacks and prevented my making a single point.  At the end of the match he said quietly, 'The sword- or the staff- both are extensions of the hand.'
This experience robbed me of all confidence in my own abilities.
My outlook, I thought, would be very dark indeed, unless I managed to obtain instruction
 from Wang Hsiang-ch'i. I did succeed in studying with him; and, acting on his advice, I instituted a daily course in Zen training.  Gradually I began to feel as if I had gained a little bit of the expansive Chinese martial spirit.
Later, after I had mastered Ta-ch'eng-ch’üan, I founded another branch of combat training, which I call Taiki-ken. (This is the Japanese reading of T'ai-ch’i-chuan.  Since I am Japanese, I shall use the Japanese reading throughout this text.) As a foreigner, I was able to gain the permission of Wang Hsiang-ch'i to substitute characters in the name of his school of kempo to form the name for my own school.  And this is the way the name Taiki-ken came into being.
I am proud to be part of a martial-arts tradition as long as that of Ta-ch'eng-ch’üan.  Whenever I think of the past, I see Wang Hsiang-ch'i and hear him saying, 'No matter if you hear ki explained a thousand time, you will never understand it on the basis of explanations alone.  It is something that you must master on your own strength.'
My course of training in China was arduous and long- eleven years and eight months.  When World War II ended, I returned to Japan.  Once in my training hall in Japan, I was suddenly surprised to feel something that I suspected might be the ki of which Wang Hsiang-ch'i used to speak.  This surprise was the rebeginning of Taiki-ken, to which I intend to devote myself for the rest of my life.