Hanshi Charlie

Martials Arts and Way of Life

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Charlie Lenz lives in Mastrils, a small village in the Swiss Alps, and on the Mediterranean island of Formentera. By accompanying Lenz for three years, culture journalist Mathias Balzer has come to know this man well: someone who unites humour with humility and discipline with iron perseverance. As a master both in the fighting arena and in how to live life, for many people in our world of excess who are longing for a simple life, Charlie Lenz is a shining example proving that this is still possible. It’s just that simplicity doesn’t come for free. It requires training. “Simplicity is the goal of every form of art”, Charlie Lenz declares. Now, after decades of pursuing this path, he is allowed to bear the title of “Hanshi”, the Japanese word for demigod – a great honour for any martial artist and a distinction that is only bestowed on someone who has dedicated his entire life to this art.
The many conversations and travels with Hanshi Charlie are now culminating in a book and a film. The book about Charlie Lenz relates his life in 25 short chapters. Starting from his childhood in a family of poor miners, it follows his time as a teenage street fighter and how he ended up travelling to Japan. This is where he attended the hardest karate training in the world for more than a year – at Masutatsu Oyama in Tokyo. Years later, after founding his own school in Switzerland, he went back for training in Kobudo and zen meditation on the island of Okinawa.
It is not only practitioners of jiu-jitsu, judo and karate who will find the book and film about Charlie Lenz interesting and enriching. The shaping of his life journey has also come about through his knowledge of Japanese culture and his connection with architecture, art and nature. Moreover, the story about him is not merely the biography of a “master” – it also speaks of great love: Without his late wife Anna, Charlie Lenz would not be the man he is today. A practitioner of judo as well, she earned an outstanding reputation for herself as an architectural photographer and was likewise instrumental in moulding the “holistic artwork” of who Charlie is today – artwork that interweaves his way of life, architecture and a close connection with nature into a fascinating whole.