Interview with Bill Witt

When did you first come into contact with Saito Sensei, Bill?

I started training in July of 1967 and after I had been in Japan a couple of months, a friend, Julian Jacobs, asked me if I ever went to Sunday class. I was training six days a week and resting on Sunday, so I told him I hadn’t. “You ought to go to some of Saito Sensei’s classes because he does some very good basic aikido,” he said. That seemed interesting, so I started going and whenever Saito Sensei taught, O-Sensei would seem to come out too. I was really impressed right from the very first because here was a guy who was not too flashy but nice and solid with good basic technique who was willing to help beginners and who seemed very friendly. I attended his class for about six or nine months. One day, I walked out of the dojo and Saito Sensei was standing in front and he said to me: “How long have you been training?” I told him and then he said, “How do you like aikido?” I said, “I like it very much, but I don’t understand it.” Then he said, “Neither do I.” I thought that was a pretty significant statement coming from an 8th dan. Then he told me that if I wanted to systematize my training I should make a chart where on one side I put down all the attacks I could think of an on the other side all of the throws. As you learn them you start checking them off and you begin to see that there are parallels. You start breaking them up into attacks and defenses instead of attack-defense techniques.

A chart like this appears in one of Saito Sensei’s books, doesn’t it?

Yes. it made learning for me a lot easier. You could see that you can do this technique from here, here, and here, but not from here. So I continued going to his classes. This was of course when O-Sensei was still alive. I came back to the States in 1968. Then I returned to Japan again in 1969 five months after O-Sensei had passed away. It was while you were there, and that was when I went out to Iwama for the first time. That was when Saito Sensei was starting to teach jo (the aikido stick) at Hombu Dojo and I thought that was pretty interesting. The time you [Stanley Pranin] and I went out to Iwama, Saito Sensei mentioned that if we wanted to get together a special group to come out and train all we would have to do would be to give him the price of a bottle or something like that. So I got a small group together, Terry Dobson, and a few other people and we went out to Iwama fro a couple of weeks to train. Then I started going out a little more periodically because I had decided at that time that he was the person I wanted to train with.

What is the atmosphere like in the dojo when Saito Sensei teaches?

Very traditional. The first time I saw Iwama, I felt that this must be a significant center. O-Sensei lived here, the aikido shrine is here. There is a top teacher who lives here. The dojo itself has a Shinto shrine rather than a simple Tokonoma like at Hombu Dojo. There are festivals every month on O-Sensei’s birthday anniversary, on the 14th. O-Sensei was born on December 14th. So when the Doshu comes out, there is a little festival where the food is cooked up to offer to the Kamisama (deities) and then you eat it and drink Sake. So there are all these traditional aikido customs that have grown up over the years that O-Sensei started and which are still held.

And the training in the dojo itself?

Saito Sensei has three things that he always does during training. Tai No Henko, the basic blending exercise, then he does Kokyuho from the two-hand grab, and finally Kokyudosa. He considers those to be the three basic exercises that you should always do. He always finishes the practice with Kokyudosa and begins the practice with Tai No Henko and Kokyuho. He believes also in balancing Taijutsu training with training with the stick and sword, because, of course, a lot of aikido techniques were taken from the sword. Understanding how to swing the sword for instance should result in better technique.

Does Saito Sensei talk about aikido movements in terms of mechanics or use more abstract explanations?

He uses a lot of O-Sensei’s words. O-Sensei had a series of teaching patterns. He had a great number of sayings that he would use when he would teach, some were poems, some were just statements. For example, he would talk about doing Hanmi Handachi Iriminage from Shomenuchi. He would say as you step aside and enter in you have to fold your partner up. Always make sure you fold your partner up. Some of them got a little more abstract in terms of being a little more poetic. I think some appear in Saito Sensei’s first book. Talking about Iriminage, there is something like: “My enemy stands before me brandishing his sword ready to attack, but I am behind him already.” Some of them like his Kuden. Kuden is like an oral teaching rather than a written one. For Koshinage (hip throws) he would say “Make your body and your partner’s into the shape of a cross, or the Japanese character for the number ten. Extend your hand and your partner’s hand up to the top of the pillar,” in other words right up to the ceiling. And then as you swing down you let your eyes follow the arm down. That of course makes the whole body rotate. It’s like taking your partner down over a rotating barrel. So he has quite a number of these, and Saito Sensei uses them all the time. He believes in doing what he calls Kihon Waza or basic techniques. And that’s really all he teaches in class. He has a lot of different patterns and different techniques and a lot of pretty far out techniques, but basically working with him is like being in a laboratory. He’s after you to move properly and correctly and be precise. When it comes time for you to develop into the next phase of technique that he calls Ki No Nagare, ki flow techniques, then you’re prepared. He believes he’s teaching you only for the first step. He can get flashy, but normally you only see him do the basic techniques.

I saw Saito Sensei perform at an exhibition in Japan several years ago where he was attacked by a man with a stick, one with a bokken, another with a knife, all at the same time. He handles them just beautifully. It was a work of art.

One day during a foreigner’s class last year, Saito Sensei said, “You know, the basic techniques you learn here comprise only a little of what you’ll ultimately learn. You will build from these techniques. For example…” and he called over two Swedes. He was standing up against the wall. One was holding his left hand with both hands like this, and Saito Sensei had a sword in his right hand. The other guy had a sword in front of him and attacked him with it. He defeated the one with the sword and threw the other. And it was a weird technique, something that you’d never see. He was showing that if you know your basics well, it’s like applying a formula in a clinical or laboratory situation. Saito Sensei went on explaining, “Imagine you’re standing on a bridge one log wide and there’s somebody coming down the other way who wants to throw you off. What are you going to do? You’ve got to be able to do aikido in this situation, too.” In other words, he was demonstrating that you didn’t have to move off the line. And he had Bruce Kickstein come up and attack him, and Bruce was orbiting around him like a planet. He would come in to attack with strikes and thrusts, grabs, everything. And Saito Sensei would stand in that one spot and do things like Shihonage, Iriminage, Kaitennage, Kitegaeshi, Ikkyo, all the basic techniques. He was throwing off this side and off that side, around in back of him. We were all sitting there like this agog. But it’s something you rarely saw him do.

How does Saito Sensei approach training with the jo and bokken?

He believes, and O-Sensei said this, that you should not depend on any particular weapon. You should feel comfortable with them all. Saito Sensei feels that movements of the jo and bokken and Taijutsu are identical, and that training with one is as good as training in another. What he is really after is that the weapon become the extension of your hand, which, after all, is what a tool is. If someone hits the sword out of your hands and you say, “Oh! What do I do?” You have to know what to do. It really makes itself plain in some of the movements that the two go side by side. The sword and Taijutsu, even the jo and Taijutsu. The techniques for taking a sword or a stick are the same as Taijutsu. But not many people see that. They see the stick as a new system of moves that they have to learn.

Would you tell us something about Saito Sensei the person?

Saito Sensei himself is 46 years old, that means he was born in 1928. He started training in July 1946. I asked him once how he started aikido training. The story he told me went like this, “After the war ended there wasn’t much for the young people to do. They were frustrated, very frustrated. Those that were too young to go into the army or didn’t get called up yet were old enough to be frustrated over the defeat would take out this frustration by fighting among themselves.” Thus, Saito Sensei got interested in the marital arts. He started taking judo, kendo, and karate. I think he did mainly karate. However, he doesn’t hold a belt in any other art except aikido. At that time he was living in Iwama and going all the way into Meguro to train. One day he heard about O-Sensei and came out to see him. O-Sensei saw his knuckles and said, “Oh, you do karate. Hit me!” He reached out and struck at him and of course he got thrown. Then O-Sensei said, “What else do you do?” Saito replied, “I do some judo.” And O-Sensei said, “Throw me!” And of course he got thrown again. And then Saito Sensei said, “Well, I also do some kendo.” O-Sensei said, “Well, here’s a sword. Hit me!” And of course the sword was taken away from him. By this time he realized that O-Sensei was somebody pretty special. And so he asked to become a student and O-Sensei said, “Well, do you have any money?” He said, “No, I don’t.” O-Sensei sent him away. Then, I think, when I first heard this story it was a long time ago and my Japanese was not that good, but I think that was happened was that he volunteered to come back and be an uke for the students that were training. Then, finally, O-Sensei accepted him as being serious. Also, he was able to pay for his training, too. So then he became a student. For the last 30 years Saito Sensei has been working at the train yard in Tsuchiura in the switch house coordinating traffic through the station. A good job for an aikido man! He worked three 24 hour shifts a week – Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – although the schedule varies sometimes. As a Hombu instructor, he has the whole northern end of Japan, the Tohoku district. He regularly teaches up in Akita, Aomori, and Sendai. Saito Sensei comes across as a pretty humble person. Not much glamour to him at all. Yet he comes out with some pretty strange things. For instance, Dave Alexander, who lives in Iwama about a block and a half away from the dojo, told me the following story. The first time Dave went out there Saito Sensei gave him a little party at the house and he was sitting next to Sensei and I guess Sensei had been drinking quite a bit and it looked like he was weaving around, kind of having a good time. Dave thought to himself, “I bet I could attack Saito Sensei right now and get away with it.” Just after he though that, Saito Sensei turned to him and said, “Practice is practice, but this is a party.”

Does Saito Sensei talk about his early years of training, about what it was like to be with O-Sensei?

No. Very seldom does he talk about the early days although he does talk about the days when Tohei Sensei and Wakasensei (the present Nidai Doshu) were there. One day he was admonishing us to train more. He said, “What you should be doing is working on Nikyo with each other after class to get the wrists good and strong, and besides, that’s a good way to learn.” Then he told us the story of how he would be in the little four-mat room with Tohei on one arm and Wakasensei on the other, both doing Nikyo on him. They would spend an hour after class doing Nikyo on each other and saying, “This one hurts. Now why does it hurt? And this one doesn’t hurt. Now, why doesn’t it hurt? What’s the difference?” That way he perfected his own art. If you think about it, it is a very logical way of training. It’s not just up and down. You’ve got to put a little bit of intelligence to it. Training in aikido at the dojo in Iwama is very strong. Saito Sensei works mainly from a static position because he stressed basic techniques. He’ll do Ki flow techniques some of the time, he’s not locked into any one particular was of teaching. He thinks that Uke, the attacker, should really firmly hang on to the defender. That way when the throw occurs the guy is really thrown. He doesn’t just take a floating forward roll so that it looks pretty. In spite of the heaviness or firmness of the training, people are seldom hurt. He’s mentioned himself that he’s never seen any broken bones there and he was with O-Sensei for 24 years.

How did you approach convincing Saito Sensei to make a visit to the United States?

We had talked about it a long time ago, about three or so years ago. I said, “I’d like to have you come to the United States some time to see what we’re doing.” And he said, “Well, maybe. I work, you know.” Then, this last year when I was over there he told me that this year was going to be his 30th year with the railroad and he was going to hit them up for a long vacation and that this would be a good time for him to come to the U.S. That’s how that came about. I said, “Fine,” of course, and Bruce said, “Fine,” and we said we would make the arrangements. Afterwards, we though of inviting Inagaki Sempai to go along too. He’s a 30 year old 5th dan and very good.