Aikido, My Way.

Part 5 Unforgettable Folks Section 1 The uchideshi of Hombu

The uchideshi who were my contemporaries were all unique individuals. The now deceased Genta Okumura worked for the Self-Defense Forces. Once in a while, when he had time off, he would bring good things to eat in his own taxi.

Yoshinobu Tamura Sensei who is active in teaching Aikido in France, was Okumura Sensei’s special deshi but was only a white belt in those days. Okumura’s uncle, Masamichi Noro, was supposedly a good friend of Kisshomaru Sensei’s, who came from Aomori prefecture to attend university. I never saw him go to school, but as I heard it, Noro entered a medical course, and, one day while he was dissecting an animal, it glared at him and he quit school. How much truth there is in that story I can’t say. I know he didn’t care for practice much but that was just too unbelievable. When he ran out of money, he’d go off to a Mahjong parlour in Shinjuku and earn some. Seiichi Sugano came to Hombu Dojo after work from a Chinese restaurant in Kagurazaka where he worked and was serious about practice. Yoshimitsu Yamada was a university student whose father was a university professor so he always had plenty of money. He lived in the dojo and when the envelope with his allowance arrived, all of us uchideshi went out for a good time.

Kazuo Chiba suddenly showed up at Hombu Dojo asking to be an uchideshi. At first he was refused so he staged a sit-in in the entrance hall of Hombu. Kisshomaru Sensei was astonished and finally granted him permission after a week.

About a year later, Mitsunari Kanai came to the dojo and for one month, day and night, begged to become an uchideshi. One month passed and Kissaburo Osawa Shihan said “It’s pitiful, so…” and allowed him uchideshi status. The next day, Kanai stopped coming. “What happened?” we wondered. Many weeks later, I ran into him by accident and heard that after he got permission to become an uchideshi, he was so relieved, he let himself go and got sick and was laid up.

After a little while I understood that Chiba and Kanai had been good friends in junior high school, but during the sit-in, they never let on and no one had an idea that that was the case.

Mitsugi Saotome was the deshi of Yamaguchi Sensei and practiced in a Kuwamori dojo in Toshima-ku. Soon, he became an uchideshi. He was an artistic type, emotional, and as such, was set apart from the rest of the uchideshi.

Andre Noquet of France lived in the dojo for nearly four years. He was Abe Shihan’s deshi. He previously had practiced Judo, but came to Aikido the day after he saw a demonstration. He was the first deshi from another country. I thought Kisshomaru Sensei was being kind. We became good friends. He was picked up by lots of newspapers and magazines. Foreigners were rare in those days. Moreover, he was an uchideshi from France doing strict training in a martial art, so right away the press showed up. Through TV the NHK programs like “My Secret” and “I also take ukemi,” Hombu Dojo reaped a lot of good publicity. A famous cartoonist who began practice about that time even did a caricature of him.

In Sankei Gakuen school an Aikido course was offered. Through the dojo, many many people began practice and places of practice rapidly expanded. In the neighbouring dojo, body building was also offered and the famous author Yukio Mishima came to study. He was always surrounded by so many people.

In 1964, the year the Shinkansen began running, that dojo finally closed, but the present-day Hombu Dojo Seijyuro Masuda Shihan, Koichi Toriumi Shihan and the deceased Kenzo Miyazawa Shihan of Argentina, as well as many others, advanced in that dojo.

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