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Women and Everybody Else in Aikido

Martial arts have traditionally been the domain of the strong male. Despite the stories of mythic woman warriors who rode with the boys and fought alongside them as equals and even superiors, this was always the exception rather than the rule. Samurai women were taught to protect themselves and their families yet how many of us can name any of these fighting women? No, it’s pretty much a boys club and the few females who get let in are the ones able to play as the boys do.

There are probably more women doing Aikido on a percentage basis than any other martial art, although that would be just a guess, I have never seen figures on this. Despite their wide participation, which goes back to the early days in the 1930’s in Aikido’s development, women are notoriously absent from positions of prominence in Aikido. I know of no female instructors who have regularly taught at the Aikikai Honbu Dojo. In it’s hard to find any woman acting in the capacity of dojo cho in Japan, regardless of what organization one is referring to.

The contribution of the wives of the prominent instructors are sometimes alluded to when the Shihan recount their young days as uchideshi but then only in reference to their caretaking roles even though many of these wives trained as well. One almost never hears reference to women in terms of their skill on the mat.

Not until one leaves Japan does one encounter significant female presence in the ranks of those teaching the art. But even overseas, the leadership of virtually all Aikido organizations is almost entirely male. Woman may have significant responsibility, and in fact be indispensable to the various organizations, but their efforts are largely in support of the male leadership of these organizations.

I believe that Aikido should be different. I think that few would maintain that its raison d’etre is imparting fighting skills to the public yet we continuously use a performance standard which places, not just women, but the less athletic, and the elderly of both sexes at a disadvantage when compared with the young male practitioners of the art.

Recently a book on Aikido appeared in which the author, a senior Aikido practitioner, stated that any fourth kyu male in his dojo could take any woman in Aikido in a fight. The sheer lack of sensitivity it took to make such a statement tends to hide the fact that it also shows a complete misunderstanding of what Aikido is all about.

First of all, Aikido is not a combat art as normally taught. The techniques of our art are derived from a system which was taught to members of the samurai class and only make real sense when considered, not as a comprehensive empty-hand fighting system, but as part of a wider system which assumed that both the practitioner and his enemy were armed. When the equalizing effects of weaponry is removed as a factor, a distinct advantage is had by the student who is more physically powerful and can over power his adversary. This advantage exists until the opponent reaches a very high level of technical skill at which time attempts to use that type of physical power would no longer have any advantage but would rather be a detriment to the strong but not as skilled practitioner. If one were to look at Aikido from a true combat standpoint in which the practitioners were armed there would be a great equalizing factor between men and women and pure physical power would be secondary to smooth and quick movement and an understanding of openings.

Since normal practice of Aikido is done empty handed (unless one is doing actual weapons training), a distinct advantage is had by those of larger stature and more aggressive disposition in terms of overcoming their partners. The problem here is, of course, that Aikido isn’t primarily about overcoming one’s partner. Masakatsu Agatsu is the term the Founder used to describe the point of Aikido training. “True Victory is Self Victory” is clearly not about how to defeat some outside enemy but rather it’s about dealing with our own internal demons. When O-Sensei said Aikido is the True Budo, he didn’t mean that Aikido was the most bad-assed fighting system. He meant that Aikido was, in his mind, the fullest expression of the aspect of Budo which teaches us how to live fully, to see ourselves as caretakers rather than destroyers.

The Dan system was originally set up in an attempt to assure that a certain quality level was maintained in the art. The real problem with this was that the system tended to focus on only one set of criteria, the technical, martial side of the art has been greatly favored over other factors and not to the overall benefit of the art. We are all familiar, I am sure with various high-level teachers who, while having a certain relatively high level of technical expertise and martial ferocity in no way embody the basic values which we would like to incorporate into our lives. Just as in the case of measuring intelligence in which the focus on the IQ has given way to a recognition that there are actually multiple types of intelligence and that a given individual could excel in one and be quite ordinary in another, our Aikido hierarchy needs to better reflect the different contributions one can make in an art which has so many facets.

I met a woman just recently who had started Aikido well after her fiftieth birthday. She has now been training for well over ten years and feels that Aikido has changed her life. In an Aikido world which only values strength of technique and difficult ukemi this person has no real status. Yet her age, while making it difficult to train as physically as the young folks do, gives such a depth to her practice that she is in a position to address in a meaningful way all sort of folks for whom instruction from someone like myself would have less relevance.

There are all sorts of Aikido teachers out there who are quite capable of going toe to toe with some hypothetical aggressor but who lack the ability to speak in any meaningful way to the hearts of a group of students whose needs don’t really encompass daily requirements for self defense techniques. There are a quite large and growing number of teachers who, while not being terribly interested in the martial application side of the art, are taking technique into whole new realms of exploration and can provide great insight into the connection between physical technique and the spiritual side of the practice. Many of these teachers are female instructors who have run dojos for years and have a tremendous depth of teaching experience, often bringing students into the art who would never have been interested in training in the more macho world of traditional martial arts including much Aikido.

This is not to say that there aren’t women who have successfully gone toe to toe with the men in their training and succeeded. Virginia Mahew, Pat Hendricks, Mary Heiny, Lorraine Dianne, Patty Saotome, etc. all managed to get ahead in the male dominated hierarchy of Aikido. But this shouldn’t be how we measure success. Women should not have to measure their worth according to their ability to be “like the guys.” To insist on this is to place only secondary emphasis on the contributions which they make well in excess of what their male counter parts often make.

It has been my experience that women are generally more interested in the social/relational aspects of the art than in the martial. The community bond between dojo members is often created more through the efforts of a group of female students within a dojo than by those of the men. It has been my experience that the women within a dojo are far better at nurturing students who are emotionally damaged or are physically less confident.

In the absence of a different way of recognizing the wide-ranging nature of accomplishments and contributions, the Dan system should be administered in such a way that equal recognition is given to those that are contributing to the growth of the art in any such substantial way. The female instructors who have well over thirty years of experience in both training and teaching but who still find themselves down a rank or two below their equally experienced male counter parts should be brought up to parity. There should be more female instructors on the seminar circuit. The high-level teachers should go out of their way to include senior females as well as males as ukes. It makes a strong and very public statement about the support they can expect from their organizations.

No more should we encounter the dojo which places the male students at the top of the technical and hierarchical heap while the women, all ranked in the second tier, do all of the organizational and administrative work thereby actually keeping the school going for the men. No more should we recognize the accomplishments of women only to the extent that they resemble those of the men but also for the unique contributions they can make which perhaps most of the men can’t or won’t.

Aikido must be inclusive to accomplish what the Founder saw as its essential mission of bringing people together. People may have exceptional talents teaching children, they may be exceptionally nurturing to those of us who have been damaged in various ways. We will find those individuals who have great insight into the spiritual side of the art and they may not be the ones who are best able to show how to handle a roundhouse kick to the head. Instructors should make it a priority to create a new generation of instructors both male and female, young and old, who are empowered to make their own explorations of what Aikido can become and our organizations should support these teachers in following their visions. It is only by doing this that Aikido can grow in such a way that it is both inclusive and has the elements which a widely divergent group of practitioners requires.

George Ledyard — January 28th, 2005 (add comment)

Reader Comments

Myriam Cedres writes:

Bravo!

Its all so true. Thanks for expressing these words. You have just described what is my experience here in Puerto Rico. But it is already changing.

Sensei Myriam Cedres

Jeanne Shepard writes:

I’m speechless ( a rare occasion) with admiration.

I’m forwarding this onto all my Aikido friends.

Jeanne Shepard

Stanley Pranin writes:

I thank George for his excellent blog message. For me what George is addressing is less concerned with the treatment of women in aikido than it is with injustice in the administration of dan rankings.

For example, foreign yudansha have been ranked far behind their Japanese counterparts for years even when they teach and train on practically a daily basis and display excellent skills. Only very recently has there been a trend to give foreigners recognition as shihan whereas Japanese have used this title for years. This change only came about because the Japanese were embarrassed by the obvious unfairness and ambiguities of their dan system and finally acted under the pressure applied.

For me, relevant questions are: Is the dan system absolutely necessary? How can the Russian Systema art be expanding so quickly without a ranking system? Why is it that so many people crave the recognition of some organizational body to validate their hard work and abilities?

Ranking is a political and control mechanism and revenue collection scheme in my view. High ranks mean simply that you have remained in the favor of the powers-that-be and have little or nothing to do with one’s ability and progress.

Stanley Pranin

Myriam Cedres writes:

Although I agree with Mr Stanley Pranin on what he expresses about the ranking system,

I believe the blog author also expresses a reality that we can’t deny. Aikido is a

wonderful martial art…but, we aikidoka are still humans influenced by social and

cultural trends.

Sensei Myriam

George S. Ledyard writes:

While the Dan system is a problem, in this case I am addressing a problem that goes much farther than that. Women get incredibly frustrated by training that either casts them as second class citizens in need of patronizing and paternalistic assistance from their male counterparts or as students who aren’t “serious” in the way that the men are serious.

At the beginning and intermediate stages of our training it is very difficult for students of smaller stature, male or female to hold their own with the stronger, larger students who are often junior in status but who are still at the stage where they only respect those that can pound them when they misbehave. Guys tend to get pissed off when they are treated disrespectfully. They may quit or they may rise to the occasion and fight it out on the mat for respect. But the women are often found in the dressing room crying with frustration. They get angry but that seldom translates into aggression. Rather it gets taken to heart and saps their confidence which creates a vicious cycle.

My partner, Genie Rivers, won the national veteran’s championship in fencing and narrowly missed making the Olympic team. She has coached fencers of both sexes for many years and has shared a number of her insights with me. Because of the larger societal issues about how we socialize men and women you find different requirements for how to develop confident and strong practitioners. Genie told me that what women need more than anything is to be told that someone believes in them. They need to feel as if there is someone behind them and they will go off and do battle with all the confidence and spirit of any male.

I came up in the Japanese system in which you don’t hear from the teacher unless something is wrong. I still remember the first time Saotome Sensei looked at something I was doing and offered up a grunt of approval. I had somehow managed to exceed his expectations and so I got the barest of positive feedback. I learned to hold my own with other would be alpha males on the mat and when it was necessary to nuke my partner in order to hold my own. I learned to control my temper when I was pushed around. Much of what went on on the mat was competitive in some way although I was told there was no competition in what we were doing.

Genie’s take on this is interesting. She points out that in many ways this is just like the varying attitudes men and women have about sex. In general, men make love to feel connected. Women want to be connected before they feel like making love. One of the great cosmic jokes as one friend called it. Well, on the mat it is much the same thing. The guys respect you if you can nuke them. And the women don’t seem to be able to tap into that energy until they feel respected. Otherwise they tend to take lack of respect to heart and it saps their confidence. It’s a cycle that over time tends to let the men who can fight their way through the system rise to the top and leaves women behind who might be perfectly capable of developing into warriors every bit as strong in technique and spirit as the men.

As I said before, there are women who managed to get ahead despite the lack of support offered them in their training. I remember Ikeda Sensei saying that Mary Heiny was one of the toughest people he had ever met. But these same women were never happy having to claw their way up going toe to toe with the men and if you look at how they run their own schools today you can see that they fairly uniformly choose a different model when training their own people.

This is a very deep and persistent issue for most women. I have close female friends who are at the top of their Aikido careers, fifth and sixth Dans who still question themselves in ways that the men I know never do. What our organizations need to do over time is to develop strong female role models for the younger female students. Male attitudes will change over time as the men have experience training with really strong women (something I have had in my own Aikido training from the first day). I think that the female instructors we already have can do this over time. The real issue is that there are far more male instructors than female. All of us have female students who need to be brought along. An understanding of these issues is crucial in developing male instructors who can step up to the task of developing strong female students as well as men. And when they do, they need to have an organization that will accord equal recognition to those women so that they know they have the support they need to keep growing in the art.

Myriam Cedres writes:

Thank you, Mr Ledyard… Myriam

Marcus Ferreira writes:

I certainly can assure how important is this female presence in a dojo.

When I began my training in 1989 the top three yudansha at my dojo were women. My sensei’s wife (who gave me my first class), Mrs. Lurdes and Mrs. Mitiko. They were proof of how Aikido is about training and technique and not about brute force.

And more important, for me and a bunch of friends, who were kids away from home, struggling through college, they were like a beacon of confidence. Always ready to give a word of support.

To be at the dojo was just like to be at your own home.

Marcus

Nev writes:

George,

Another great article providing clear perspective. People with gender issues are unwell. Women tend to be more strategically competent than most men ever will be and usually get immense results without much noise. Men who bully women fear women because they do not understand them. There is nothing to understand but lots to love. And sometimes endure, but that’s part of it. Gender wars are a travesty because they cannot be won. Conversely mutually complementary opposites are an unstoppable force. Sure, men are often physically stronger but women are ahead of the game most of the time even when suppressed. And sure sometimes women quit training when babies become their new career, but so what. Some of the my best students and some of the most powerful warriors are women. It’s just that they are usually quiet about their immense capabilities and are too intelligent to bother starting fights in order to “win” them. Women can also be more ruthless in combat because they have a tigress protective instinct when it comes to their kids. As it should be. That’s why the Russian military deployed them as soldiers before anyone else thought of it. Further, most tough men fall apart without the invisible woman in the background wiping his nose and propping up his big fat ego. As a species it’s time we grew up and got some perspective. As far as Aikido is concerned women tend to grasp its principles more quickly and better precisely because they do not rely on ego and physical force. Also, women are natural hara people for obvious reasons. Women feel and attune more naturally. For millennia our societies have been crippled because the feminine half of creation has been attempted to be disregarded by unwell misogynists and so as a species we limp. Perhaps its not too late, but this is a long story and I don’t intend to go into it here. If Aikido groups fail to be inclusive they cease to be Aikido and lose the plot. Right down to the basic fundamentals, Aikido relies on the universal principle of complimentary opposites through the expression of in and yo in harmony. This should apply at all levels otherwise we not only miss the point, but do ourselves, the art and the world a grave disservice.

Keoni May writes:

Your article was a thoughtful examination of all martial arts with regards to females in general. Although it was never spoken about, I had great respect for the VC women who fought against American soldiers during the Vietnam War. To take on men who were physically 2 to 3 times bigger than them (although with a long needle nosed bayonet on the end of their SKS or AK-47) was indeed a noble feat. Contrary to popular belief, these women had a good share of wins because their combat techniques had to be better than their Vietnamese & American male counter parts.

Christiaan Oyens writes:

The following is Shirata Rinjiro Sensei’s account of how he started training Aikido. When he visited the Kobukan Dojo and met O-Sensei: “There were two girl trainees about my age (19 years old) present and the Founder told me to try to throw one of them. Despite my knowledge of judo and my superior build, I was no match for her — she kept whipping me to the mat with a painful technique I later learned was shiho-nage. After this humbling experience, I petitioned the Founder to become his student.”

It’s too bad that more and more today, we seem to be losing this martial aspect from Aikido. It’s bold enough that we do no promote competitions and that we have the courage to preach the harmonious aspects of budo training. To lose the practical side of the martial art we are practicing is truly costing us. Both boys and girls!