The Secret Years: Shigeru Egami at the Army Nakano Intelligence School (1939-1943)
The military intelligence academy, espionage combat research, and the subsequent ethical turn of budo
In Kimikagesō (Chapter 60: "Before He Began Visiting the Branches"), Chiyoko Egami recounts that the matchmaker who arranged their 1941 marriage described Shigeru as an upright Waseda graduate working as a civil servant at the Imperial Army General Staff Headquarters (Sanbō Honbu).
Between 1939 and 1943, according to historical archives and martial chronologies in Japanese sources like Hiden, Egami instructed at the legendary Rikugun Nakano Gakkō (Army Nakano School, 陸軍中野学校). This elite military intelligence academy trained commandos, secret agents, and reconnaissance specialists in covert warfare, demanding lethal, silent unarmed tactics tailored for espionage.
Yoshitaka (Gigō) Funakoshi and Tadao Okuyama also taught in that setting. This was obviously not school gymnastics or university athletics, but lethal combat application. Egami had already been chosen by Gichin Funakoshi for the Shotokan evaluation committee in 1937, at only 24 years of age, reflecting his preeminent technical command.
The Ethical Departure: From Lethality to Heiho
In his mature decades, Egami never boasted of his service at the Nakano School, nor did he leverage military lethality for martial prestige. On the contrary, the horrific devastation of World War II and the destruction of the Mejiro Shotokan dojo caused him profound reflection.
Egami realized that an art restricted to injuring or destroying other human beings is spiritually bankrupt. Throughout the postwar era, he redirected his research away from destructive impact toward the pursuit of peace, mutual harmony, and universal brotherhood (Heiho).
His silence regarding the Nakano School was not an act of forgetfulness, but a conscious moral choice: true Budo does not celebrate lethal combat, but deepens the sanctity of human connection.
