In 1930, at the age of 15, he began his lifelong study of Gōjū-ryū karate at the dojo of Sekō Higa and later under Chojun Miyagi as one of his principal students.
Toguchi continued his full-time study of karate until the beginning of World War II, when he was drafted into the army as an electrical engineer and stationed in Sumatra, Indonesia.
At this time Higa also played matchmaker and introduced Toguchi to a young girl named Haruko, soon to be his wife.
In 1954 Toguchi opened up the first Shorei-kan dojo (House of politeness and respect) in Koza City, Okinawa.
With an increasing western population in his dojo, Toguchi found it necessary to devise a progressive teaching method to overcome the language barrier.
In 1969 Akira Kawakami travelled to New York City and joined Thomas Bodie at his uptown dojo and later moved to Oklahoma.
Later on Tamano moved to Milan, Italy to spread Shorei-kan throughout Europe and Scott Lenzi is now the representative of the U.S. and South America.