It appears to me that at the moment there are many opinions floating around on how to save Aikido, but I think the question needs to be, is it something that should be saved? In saving what it is now, are we actually saving anything of value?
This is not going to read like your usual solution, it will be blunt and it may be confronting, it’s written this way for reasons that will become apparent in the reading.
I have reasons to say this beyond most, a different perspective on the art I have practiced and taught for decades.
It seems to me that most people train in the art because they are attracted to its philosophy.
Peace, an art of peace, love, an art that promotes love, inclusiveness, an art for everyone……really?
Those that have this as their for sale mantra in my experience are the greatest hypocrites I have ever met in my life.
Love and inclusion?
Only if you fit their leader’s idea of followers, fit the tribe. Sometimes this is based on a misinterpreted philosophy not represented in action outside a limited group, sometimes it is based on social standing – many Aikidoka are from middle to upper class well educated families who’s version of inclusion is talking down to those they see they are above, to try to illuminate the masses from a far superior(yet usually vastly less experiential) knowledge/wisdom base.
These people are the most ableist, arrogant, egotistical, vindictive and self absorbed people I have ever had the pleasure to have spent time around.
Their philosophy won’t and can’t fit their actions.
A bit rough you say? Evidence you say?
Well let’s take a look at me.
I am from a broken family and grew up mostly in public housing , my father was a violent man that could not read or write, my mother was a narcissist. My father has spent time in prison. By the time I was 13 I had physically prevented/restrained both of them in multiple suicide attempts.
My reality started far from the comforts and securities offered by the middle/upper class.
I am and have always been a level 2 functioning Autistic (diagnosed) in have ADHD(severe)(diagnosed), and I have complex PTSD(diagnosed) due to severe childhood trauma.
So that means that I have 2 neurodevelopmental disabilities, along with a trauma related mental health issue.
What it means is that I don’t have any or at least well developed social cues, nor do I study aikido out of a need for social stimulation. I don’t understand social hierarchies at all, and in a dojo setting my assessment of capacity has always been skill based, and as such in my mind my mental dojo hierarchy wasn’t a match for the one presented by Dan grades and its associated handicap system derived from Japanese chess, mentally I have absolutely no capacity to entertain the notion that time equals competence. In true Budo time should never ever be a measure of competence and is a sure way to bring the art to ridicule and regression.
I have hyper focus/hyper fixation, this means that I study every aspect of what I am pursuing, read every opinion, every student of the founder and every masters words and actions to form a cohesive image of what aikido is, not based on personal prejudices, allegiances or agendas’s, but on finding the learning/teaching pattern that they all have in common.
I have hyper vigilance and am able to repeat patterns that I have identified as important ad nauseum. I desire rigidity in structure and routine.
I am a pattern seeker with a hypersystemising brain that can’t help but find out how a system works by focusing on precision and detail and I have a highly developed sense of justice and what is right. Most autistic people lack interception and proprioception skills, and are clumsy. I am the opposite in that I have an extremely heightened sense of both to the point where I can hear/feel the blood moving around inside my body.
I see in vivid pictures/images, both static and moving(like a movie reel inside my head, much like the type of Autism described by Dr Temple Grandin), and can replicate images exactly(hence my artistic skills). These are just some of the attributes that I have inherited from my birth disability.
These attributes don’t allow me to function well in a society not designed for neurodivergence, so I developed “masking” to fit in. Masking is copying the actions and attributes and social cues of others. If you hadn’t worked out I was autistic, it’s because I became very ,very good at copying others. This copying skill is great for learning martial arts the traditional way, because no explanation means just copying, looking and copying. Add this to the aforementioned heightened physical “skills” and you get the picture.
I can, hand on heart say that, although these skills have been useful in my learning of my art, (especially the focus on precision and detail) they have meant that I have been marginalised and ostracised by most of the people that I have met along my journey. Especially those in senior or influential positions.
The same people that would talk of love and inclusiveness were the same people that rejected any notion of what I had or tried to offer. Excluded me entirely from their tribe due to my being strange, or perceived violent/to intense or a bit weird.(not their tribe)
So let me put this another way. I was born disabled, these people identified that I was different to everyone else, and through their personal prejudice, excluded me. (I even have the minutes of the meetings from the incorporated organisation, where the board voted/agreed to exclude me….)
These people are the inclusive love and peace promoters.
These are the “masters” that, when you enter their dojo, talk of creating a better world through Aikido.
Let’s look at my life in Yuishinkai aikido. (I have a previous 7 years in Aikikai, but not enough pages for that story)
I have been my sensei’s main uke since I met him in 2002. I did not ask for this position, I just did what he required. When at seminars I didn’t go out socialising between classes or in the evenings. I came and I went minding my own business. By 2006, sensei was introducing me to Japanese instructors as his number one student in the world, though I was smart enough to downplay this and swore anyone who overheard him say it to secrecy, I knew I was already unpopular, and this secret getting out would have made my life even more awkward.
In 2012 when the previous international chief instructor resigned and retired from Aikido, Sensei wanted to make me his replacement, this person was so incensed at the thought of this belligerent, arrogant nutter (read Autistic) of a man taking over that he fractured the organisation on purpose then came out of retirement to found a new organisation to protect his flock from this disabled, purposely marginalised man – how peaceful loving and inclusive is that!
After the split, many lies about my person were spread, about my Japanese wife(not Japanese), my Yakuza ties from my time in Japan, and my threats to make sensei make me his head instructor through these ties!!. After that came the physical threats, the no holds barred fight that I was asked to participate in to prove myself and my philosophy right to those that had been perceived they had been displaced by me, and were angered at being overlooked for the position by sensei. I was an affront to those that deemed me unworthy(don’t worry, I kept all the correspondence in regards to this), and this was their solution to bring me down a peg or two..
After I took control of a new look organisation, almost half the remaining dojo in the country and the world left within 2 years because I asked them, under guidance from our teacher, to do a few simple things. Make all grading based on competency in the art for quality control, to follow and teach the art as propagated by its founder, if one didn’t feel they had the capacity to do this, I offered at my own expense to travel and help teach them this, and to then commit exclusively to understanding the art they represented. Not hard rules to follow you would imagine, but once again it was rejected, not for the harshness of the rules, but, as one 6th Dan so eloquently put it on departure, “Peter, is great at Aikido, but he just doesn’t make me feel special.” Peter is Autistic, and you are ableist, is the correct way to read this……..
Love, peace, harmony and inclusiveness…….
This is the same as throwing a quadriplegic man down a flight of stairs, no different, disability is disability whether seen or unseen.
So where are the peace loving, love making, all inclusive Aikido masters in all this? Still there pretending to be all that they never were……
I have had a complex life.
In my youth, due to serious abuse I have seen and felt many things that humans should not experience. I have had surgery on two occasions due to physical abuse(read violence), I remember my father taking a knife to stab my mother and the 10 year old boy leaping in front of it. I have a small scar still on my abdomen to prove it. I thought my life was about seeing how many hits I could take before I would inevitably die. I never dreamt of a life past the day I entered breathing, and lucky for me my neurodivergence provided the power to live completely in every moment I was breathing.
But the death I thought I was destined for never came.
Many years later when asked by a psychiatrist. Why didn’t you run? I said I remained to protect my younger siblings, I made a choice to be brave against tyranny.
My oldest sister was institutionalised because of this childhood. She has never worked a day in her life, never functioned in society.
Do you really know what peace and love are?
The same psych asked me why are you not a drug addict? Or a violent offender? Why are you not institutionalised or incarcerated? Why don’t you consider suicide?
These are the usual responses (my sister is the example here) that are the result of such trauma.
My answer. Forgiveness.
I decided a long time ago, I am not vindictive, hateful and angry. I will not pay it forward ever. I am peaceful, because I know true violence, and I can inflict true violence, and I choose not to. I know love, true love is forgiveness. I chose forgiveness rather than vengeance.
You mistook me, all of you.
I have become, through a life of hardship and trials, all the lies you tell yourselves that you are.
I was the disabled boy you rejected, in my mind you are no different to the parents that rejected me.
Psychological violence and passive aggressiveness are no less damaging than physical violence.
You are not a loving, holistic inclusive community.
You are a gathering of self righteous hypocrites hiding behind philosophy you uphold without true virtue, within a vacuum of your own construction.
And aikido fails because this vacuum exists.
Would you allow felons into your dojo? I have
Do you allow the poor to train for free? I do
Do you marginalise those that you deem unfit for your style of training? I don’t
Do you teach a non dogmatised version of aikido researching all its schools and techniques? I do
Have you set up a dojo as a microcosm of the world including all its races, religions and demographics? ……..
The list goes on. How is that love for all beings going now? How is your aikido in daily life fitting into this matrix? When was the last time you sat with a violent offender and broke bread? When was the last time you accepted a person of lower socio-economic background and trained them for free? When was the last time youn tried to reach out to the marginalised children and vagrants that occupy society who’s trauma could benefit greatly from the somatic training that Aikido provides?
Aikido in daily life works well as a measure of trying to protect the self righteousness you promote to maintain your status in the world you occupy, but that’s not where the challenge lies, it’s not meant to be about how you make it work for you in your life, but how you can help those less fortunate in theirs.
That is not ego, that is love, and that goes a long way towards peace.
When the founder said world peace, I think he meant every individual in the world, not those in your carefully constructed world.
When Aikido changes to not marginalise those born different, when it takes down its false gods(false masters). When it accepts that what Aikido is was defined by the founder, not selectively gleaned, but all the founder did and taught after he experienced the devastating effects of war and loss.
When all the posers and all the hard work avoiders stop limiting others through their own mediocrity. When we finally acknowledge that growth can’t happen through a Dan grading system designed to restrict such growth by eliminating the talented and excluding their excellence (yes Dan grades were created from the handicap system in Japanese chess, much like a golf handicap it makes everyone even).
When we can hold up a bloody big mirror and say it’s time to stop bullshitting ourselves, then maybe it will be time for true aikido to grow.
But until then, keep telling yourselves that the little tribe you reside in promotes world peace and inclusiveness. Keep training by not really training. Keep up the charade. Who knows, the cost may only be the life of the art that you pretend to represent.
I am proud that in a world not designed to embrace Autism my sensei has said these words about his international chief instructor.
“Peter is the man I trust most in the world. His aikido techniques are of an equivalent level to mine, and even more than that, you could even say that he is me – Koretoshi Maruyama. It’s very hard to teach real Aikido to people, because they think that Aikido is some kind of combative sports, even Japanese people. I think that true aikido is completely different. True Aikido is to cultivate one’s mind and one’s partner’s mind. I think that you are the pride of Aikido Yuishinkai, because you completely understand what is Aikido. (Ainuke) is the true Aikido spirit.”
I am proud that in my aikido dojo we are truly inclusive of everyone and every style. I am proud that a man born disabled and abused can rise to Aikido’s highest levels. And I love Aikido enough to share my story in hope that it inspires a change in its teachers to understand that through much hard work we can also change, to know true love, true peace and true inclusiveness, to allow ourselves to be challenged and rise to that challenge without excuse, so that our art may truly live.