HISTORY OF KARATE AND MARTIAL ARTS CENTER IN
EUROPE

At the beginning of 1968, at the Faculty of Economics in Subotica, there was founded a karate section of 40 members. With karate development in this Europe region, this organization managed to open many karate schools and sections in Serbia, in the near countries and also in former Yugoslavian countries. This karate and martial arts section managed to enter sport organization "Železničar - Spartak". Members of this organization were very successful on tournaments allover Europe and won big number of trophies.

Couches and competitors who were the most successful in the first stage of development: Race Igor, Žiko G. Bečanović, Rankov Siniša, Mirkić Ivan, Gabor Kirliček, Brborić Vlado, Davor Bukarica, Branko Šaćer, Martinović Predrag, Miodrag Živković, Miloje Stojanović, Dojčilo Grujičić, Mihalj Pasku, Dragan Spiridonović, Branko Jakovetić, Branislav Marković, Jovan Makitan, Šandor Paći, Duško Vojnić, Aleksandar Pervan, Srba Radulović and Ladislav Pervan.

The second stage of development was characterize by presents of couches and competitors from our organization on European tournaments: Budapest, Seged, Brno, Trst, Milan, Hannover, Paris, Arad, Timisoara, London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Rome, Warsaw, Sophia, Moskow, Malta etc. As they won a lot of prices, they have also managed to organize many seminars and lessons. The leader was sensei Žiko G. Bečanović, who became representative of Yugoslavia. He also started to compete in other associations, such as SKI, GKF, HACHI-O-KAI, MARTIAL ARTS.

Žiko G. Bečanović, the "founder" of karate in this region of Europe, managed to
assign big number of instructors in 57 countries all over the world. He also held a lot of
seminars and lessons in 128 countries. The instructors from this association are couching
approximately 80.000 people at the moment. For 40 years of intensive and consecutive
work, they have managed to organize 2780 tournaments, seminars and examines in martial arts association GKF HACHI-O-KAI, guided by Kancho Takemasu Okuyama
9°dan and Žiko G. Bečanović 8°dan.