Aikido Journal

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 6:28 am

Tristão!
Welcome. I am more than honoured that you chose "my" thread for you first posting. Embarassed

Please keep contributing.
Kind regards - hope to see you in Sappada,
Roland.

Joined: 07 Jun 2004 Posts: 37

Tristan wrote:

Aikido is a Budo. Today I have some time off the farm work, so I find it funny to be writing on forums. My first time.

Budo is always alive. The moment we stagnate.....Budo dies. People fail to look upon Iwama ryu as a true Budo.
Fortunantely Hitohiro Saito Shihan lives Iwama Ryu as a true Budo, just like his father and just like the founder. O'Sensei never wrote a book on Aikido. Budo Renshu...Budo....those are the books he wrote. In Iwama Morihbiro O'Sensei not only preserved the forms, just like his successor is doing, but he also preserved the true spirit of this Budo.

True Budo presuposes a change in yourself and therefore your art. This does not mean to abandon what you learned but instead to improve on what you learned. Morihiro O'Sensei himself created the suburi (ken and jo) the kata etc. 31 no kata was codified by him. Everybody knows that O'Sensei did not count as he was practicing the kata.

It was deep winter in Iwama and snowing outside. The uchideshi were in the shokudoo watching a Zatoichi movie. Morihbiro O'Sensei knocked on the door (I still found it really strange seeing the old Morihiro Sensei knocking and asking permission to come in) and asked what we were doing. We had turned off the Tv immediately out of respect but as soon as he found out that we were watching Zatoichi he told us to wait and went back to his house ( I suppose to let Okusama know he would come here). He came back and sat the the intire movie near the wooden stove. We prepared a drink for him but his concentration on the movie was such that he did not touch the drink at all. The result of this is the training next day. We trained the first and the second kumitachi and Morihbiro O'Sensei taught us the most amazing variations of the kumitachi. In this training we had to cut the uchitachi just before he would make the next movement: "Don't make awase, cut him!!" He shouted. OF course the uchideshi then got the Myamoto Musashi movies hoping that next day Morihbiro O'Sensei would come to the shokudoo , but unfortunantely he did not.

Well, was this a change on O'Sensei's Aikido? Who of us really do know of O'Sensei's Aikido? Maybe this was O'Sensei's teachings too, being shown to us for the first time. Or, and I prefer to see it this way, it was Morihbiro O'Sensei studies of O'Sensei's Budo. This class immediately opened a whole new prespective on Budo for me.

The sucessor of Morihbiro O'Sensei is equally devoted to a profound study of Budo and we can see this in every single class. I am also glad that Sensei is also teaching those techniques that Morihbiro O'Sensei stopped teaching for his body could no longer cope with. He urges us to move and to think about what we are doing. All his teachings are extremely logical and ken jo taijutsu riai really becomes clarified in every single class. I am proundly grateful to Morihiro O'Sensei for leaving us his most wonderful teaching: his son Hitohiro Saito Shihan. He was prepared from birth for the role he now assumes not only as a guardian of O'Sensei waza but also a guardian of the Way of Budo taught in Iwama by the Founder and by Morihbiro O'Sensei.

I am not worried at all if the older students see this or not. I am worried that I might not be albe to cope with the excelence of training under Hitohiro Shihan. Last year I was practicing and he told me .."what are you doing?!!" I repeated the technique once again and he shouted again. I thought I was, by then, truly concentrated not only on the exercise itself but also on what Sensei was teaching. But no. I had an opening. My right toe was moving just before I started my attack. This was not real Budo. A good adversary would take immediate advantage of this. Those who also studied under his father, know that this was also his way of teaching. I am really glad that Sensei keeps on teaching with the utmost rigour. How else could I improve?

Takahiro Tristan

Thank you very much for this important historical testimony!

Sung Gyun Cho

Joined: 11 Jun 2004 Posts: 15

Hi All,

When I visited Iwama last year I had to learn a new (to me) ending for the receiving role in the 31 awase. I assumed it was a "new" innovation by Hitohiro Sensei.
I just watched a video of Saito Sensei from 1981. Imagine my surprise when his partner performed the very same set block and tsuki at the end of the kata awase! This demonstrates that Hitohiro Sensei is revisiting many elements of his fathers aikido. It also showed me the value of revisiting old video of Saito Sensei!!

Cheers

Joined: 09 Aug 2002 Posts: 30 Location: Germany

BTW: it is Bernice Tom together with Saito Sensei doing the 31 Jo awaze.
I was also surprised.

regards

foruka