Early Life
Abe was born on October 28, 1938, in the town of Iyoshi, Ehime Prefecture (on the island of Shikoku), Japan. Abe's ancestors included samurai; he has told of an incident from the past where two thieves had entered his family home, saying, "My family killed them; the two graves are still standing near my house." In 1953, aged 15 years, he began training in the martial arts of karate and judo. He initially began studying the Shito-ryu style of karate.
In 1956, Abe entered the Nihon University in Tokyo, studying engineering, and graduated four years later. He began training at the honbu dojo (headquarters training hall) of the Japan Karate Association (JKA) in 1958 under Masatoshi Nakayama. In an interview in 2000, he said, "Nakayama Sensei was very serious. He trained us very hard and always encouraged us to not only train hard, but to intellectually study what we were training. He stressed understanding ourselves and being good human beings."
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