Steve Arneil (29 August 1934 – 2 July 2021) was a South African-British master of Kyokushin karate.

[6] When he was 10 years old, his family moved to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), and he began training in kung fu, judo and boxing there.

[8] By the age of 17, Arneil had earned black belt status in judo, and he had also practised kenpo and karate.

[7] He made a practice of going down to the harbour and asking arriving Japanese people if they practised karate; if they did, he would invite them to training at the dojo.

[9] Arneil travelled to China, South Korea, and Hong Kong before arriving in Japan.

[9] In January 1961, through Donn Draeger, Arneil began to study Kyokushin karate under Masutatsu Oyama.

[7][9][10] He recalled that, unlike the other karate schools he had visited in Japan (who had welcomed him with minimal reservation), Oyama's Kyokushin school was selective; on their first meeting, Oyama told Arneil, "Remember, you asked me to train, I didn't ask you.

[10] Originally, Arneil had planned to return to South Africa, but Oyama asked him to go to the United Kingdom to help establish Kyokushin karate there; accordingly, he and his wife travelled to London in 1965.

"[9] The couple tried to move to Australia, but this failed; Arneil said that "it is purely by chance that we ended up staying in England.

"[9] In late 1965, Arneil and Bob Boulton founded the British Karate Kyokushinkai (BKK) organisation.

"[9] He claimed that political and financial pressures contributed to the situation, but that "the decider was when Sosai [Oyama] was supposed to meet me in Switzerland, and he didn't come.