Fundamental to both judo and aikido is the art of the fall. During Kenji Ota’s 52 years as Goleta’s premier sensei in both martial arts, he taught more than 10,000 students how to fall gently, safely, and, above all, confidently. Or, as his wife, Miye Ota, described it, “to land as a cat.” Ken Ota, who died in November at age 92, operated out of a dojo he and his wife built — cinderblock by cinderblock — on Magnolia Avenue in the heart of Old Town Goleta. The structure was joined at the hip to Miye’s thriving beauty salon, where she made matrons of Goleta’s pioneering families look like the movie stars found in her waiting room’s glamor magazines.
When the Otas opened the studio in the early 1960s, large cornfields and tomato patches lay within easy spitting distance. Over time the area morphed from rustic-rural to aggressively unpretentious urban-utilitarian. Across from the dojo stands a self-serve car wash. Down the street, a Mexican evangelical church thumps out God-fearing rock music, a no-frills gym caters to the hard-core muscle crowd, and a hip-n-healthy restaurant seeks a toehold with the young millennial market.
The Otas were not content merely to open a dojo for martial arts; they opened their Cultural School, too, for ballroom dance, cotillion, manners, and etiquette. Drooping from the ceiling directly above the training mats is the dojo’s famously incongruous chandelier. A sign on the wall ticks off five basic rules of conduct. “Respect your parents, instructor and the law,” reads the first. The last commands, “Always be a gentleman.”
