· Home
· History
· Competition
· Articles
· Profiles
· Tournaments
· Network
Email |
History of aikido
· Origins (from old style jujitsu to aikido/judo)
· Sokaku Takeda and Morihei Ueshiba
· Morihei Ueshiba and Kenji Tomiki
· Jigoro Kano and Kenji Tomiki
· The development of aikido competition
Manchukuo collapsed after the defeat of the Japanese and Kenji Tomiki was detained in Siberia for three and a half years. He finally returned to Japan in November 1948.
At that time the Japanese were forbidden by GHQ from doing anything related to budo. Tomiki made efforts to revive judo and assisted in creating the All Japan Judo Federation and All Japan Students Judo Federation.
In the autumn of 1949 he became a teacher of physical education in Waseda University and in 1951 he became an instructor in the university judo club. So he made a fresh start in judo but but his enthusiasm for aikido was still there. In the same year he visited Ueshiba in Iwama, Ibaraki prefecture.
In Tokyo he taught aikido to businessmen and other people but the opportunities to teach were limited. For the university students who studied hard he felt that he had reached his limit for teaching aikido techniques that were not used in competition. To preserve aikido techniques for posterity he thought that he had to develop a specialised practice and decided to establish an aikido club.
In his writings he explained the steps taken to get competitive aikido on a par with judo. To form an aikido club he was given certain requirements by the University authorities. The conditions were to show that aikido had:
1. significance within the context of traditional Japanese budo.
2. value as a training system from the point of view of physical education.
3. prospects for development on an international level.
He was requested to provide a detailed explanation of how aikido met these requirements. In particular he had to show that it was possible to have competitive matches. Kendo and judo allow people to have competitive matches safely where they can test each other's ability and thereby improve. This is the way modern budo should be. In old bujitsu, there was no way to judge techniques objectively except in actual combat which is not a way of peace. So after a lot of discussions Waseda Aikido Club was approved on the condition that the competitive aikido system be completed.
|