Hiroaki Toyama was one of the highest-ranking instructors of Yoshukai Karate in the United States. An 8th-degree black belt, he also co-directed the annual Yoshukai Karate Winter Workout on Pensacola Beach, along with the Summer Camp in Lake Eufala, Alabama, and from the early 1990s to 2015 was an instructor at the Langley Avenue YMCA.
Toyama started his martial arts training in the 1960s in Japan where he achieved the shodan, or first degree black belt, in both Kendo and Judo. In 1975, he relocated to Birmingham, Alabama, then to Brewton where he met his future wife, Donna, and trained in Santa Rosa County.
As a Yoshukai brown belt in the late 1970s, he started teaching at Bayview Community Center. In 1980, he helped start the annual winter workouts on the beach. By the early 1980s, he was listed in Black Belt Magazine as one of the top ten martial artists in the southeastern United States. The 1990s saw his classes at the YMCA begin, and in 2000 he helped start the Summer Camp in Lake Eufala.
He has recently again taught Yoshukai Karate in both Santa Rosa County and southern Alabama, and has had more than one-hundred of his students earn their black belt.
Aside from martial arts, a few of his pastimes have been working as a mechanic for Buick and GMC dealerships, applied guitar, drawing, and fishing.
Toyama attributes his success to the philosophy of keeping a positive state of mind, and to keep moving forward - a philosophy also exhibited by hundreds of karatekas who have for thiry-five years followed his training and disciplined themselves to his instruction.
