Kenkichi Sakakibara, 14th successor of the Jikishinkage-ryu tradition, was born in November 1830 in Otsuka village, Shitaya Kanasugi, in present-day Tokyo. The district of Hiroo in Azabu also claims to be his birthplace...
Archive - September 2011
Josh Gold“Interview with Bruce Bookman,” by Meik Skoss
This interview was conducted in 1995 by Meik Skoss Bruce Bookman, 5th dan, is Chief Instructor of the Seattle Aikikai. He began studying aikido at age 12, under the direction of Yoshimitsu Yamada of the New York Aikikai...
Flood damage in Kumano, Japan
Dear Aikido friends, Thank you for your concern about the current disaster in Japan, and your inquiries about Anno Sensei’s safety. Typhoon Talas hit the Kumano area of Japan extremely hard and caused widespread...
“Interview with Kenji Shimizu,” by Stanley Pranin
The following is an interview conducted in 1988 by Stanley Pranin with one of the last uchideshi of Morihei Ueshiba at the Aikikai Hombu Dojo. Kenji Shimizu established his own independent dojo in the mid-1970s in...
Aiuchi 合打
Mutual strike or cut. Sword term used to describe the circumstance where two swordsmen strike each other simultaneously. In AIKI KEN terminology, often used in contradistinction to AINUKE where neither swordsman can...
“Aikido and Independence: On Not Finding One’s True Master,” by Peter Goldsbury
Aikido is a martial art full of paradoxes and some of these are due to the way in which instructors introduce and teach that art, especially to non-Japanese. I myself started practicing aikido because it was not a...
One-upmanship – Learning from Beginners
Everyone will agree, unsolicited lectures are nauseating, monologues put you to sleep and soliloquies don’t need more people than the speaker. And yet everywhere you go there are contests of intellect that...
Interview with Kenji Tomiki, Part 1
This interview is the first part of a conversation with Professor Kenji Tomiki was conducted on January 4, 1974 at Waseda University in Tokyo. Read the second part of the interview here. Editor: Sensei, would you be...