An Outsider's History of Kenji Tomiki, the Founder of Shodokan Aikido

Most Aikido people know about Judo, and have some sense of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.  Most Aikido students know that we do not compete, and that is seen as the primary difference between Judo and Aikido.

There is also a difference of a generation.  Morihei Ueshiba Sensei was born in 1883, Kano Jigoro was born in 1860.  Kenji Tomiki, a student of both of these men, was born in 1900.  Kodokan Judo was invented one year before Ueshiba Sensei was born.  There is evidence that Morihei Ueshiba trained in Judo as well as other jujutsu styles as a teenager.  He moved to Hokkaido where he met Sokaku Takeda and became a student of Daito Ryu in 1912.

The founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano Sensei was rigorously methodical and logical in his approach.  He made extensive use of anatomy, physics, and psychology in his system.  He had studied with many teachers, but rather than regurgitate a laundry list of techniques he wanted something better:  the underlying principle:  “the most efficient use of mental and physical energy.”  He subjected each technique to scientific study.  Then, in codifying the techniques, he developed a system whereby he believed his knowledge could be clearly transmitted to future generations.  Kano Sensei openly admitted he had changed and discarded much of what he had learned if it was not in accordance with the principle he decided was going to guide his own martial art.  The clarification, codification and organization of Judo was part of Kano Sensei’s plan to ensure the survival of Japanese Budo. 

During this time, Kano Sensei was also an educator:  The director of Primary Education for the Ministry of Education for Japan, as well as the president of the Tokyo Higher Normal School.  This stands in sharp contrast to the tales of O Sensei as a teacher:  described as a saint and a genius, most of his students openly admit they did not follow much of what he said.  Kano Sensei was someone who took pride in being able to teach well, and he subjected Judo instruction to the standards of conveying information that we expect and demand of our formal education system.

There is one famous incident where Kano Sensei saw O Sensei, the eventual founder of Aikido give a demo.  Apparently, after the demo, Kano Sensei said, “this is the ideal Budo, true Judo.”  Jigoro Kano had been working for years on collecting the history and techniques of Japanese Jiujitsu, refining and codifying them and leaving them intact as a legacy to future generations.  He had studied several arts previously.  He was now getting older and more famous as a teacher and not in a position to be a student of a new teacher himself.  Ueshiba Sensei was also around 23 years his junior.

Knowing his legacy was already secured and that he wanted to add Ueshiba's art to this legacy, Kano Sensei did the next best thing.  He asked/deployed some top students to study with and learn from Morihei Ueshiba.  It is not surprising that the Judo masters that were sent to learn from Morihei Ueshiba continued to have some Judo influence on their techniques and their mindset.  

I have had to update this section - while I first read the story as a ringing endorsement of Aikido by Kano Sensei, this actually isn't true by the timeline.  Kano Sensei would have never seen a demonstration of an art called Aikido, as he died four years before the name Aikido was coined.  It is not clear to me when the demo took place, but Tomiki Sensei arrived to study with Ueshiba Sensei after the demo happened presumably.  (Addendum:  Per a comment below, the demo did happen in 1930, which still means Kano Sensei was watching a demo by a top Daito Ryu student, but then means Tomiki was already studying with Ueshiba before Kano deployed students?). Tomiki Sensei started his studies with Ueshiba Sensei in 1925.  Morihei Ueshiba remained a student of Daito Ryu until 1937.  The actual name Aikido did not come into use until 1942 - the year Ueshiba Sensei left his position as a military trainer.  Was the mythic compliment and Tomiki Sensei's mission to acquire this "ideal Budo" really aimed at Daito Ryu and Takeda Sensei's top student as opposed to Ueshiba as a master in his own right?

For Kano Sensei, competitive wrestling was a way to bring people together in a fun endeavour, a way to attract students and probably also no small part of the scientific process of seeing what would genuinely work.  This lead to Judo competitions.  Competitive Judo was also part of a larger dream to span cultures for Kano Sensei – he was actually travelling from an IOC meeting in Cairo when he died in 1938 at 77 years old.  The Olympics in Berlin were 2 years prior.  Despite Kano Sensei’s efforts, Judo did not enter the Olympic Games until 1964.  Judo became the first Japanese sport to gain widespread international recognition.

Japan had invaded China in 1931, about 7 years prior to Kano's death in 1938.  Germany invaded Poland in 1939.  O Sensei’s first enlightenment (“Budo is Love”) was in 1925, his second (“Aikido is a spiritual practice”) was in 1940, his third (“Competition is a terrible mistake”) was in 1942 during the worst fighting in World War Two.  I do not know what O Sensei’s views on competition were before this time. 

In the 1920s and 30s, Ueshiba O Sensei was still teaching Aikijujutsu under Sokaku Takeda.  The Daito Ryu ledgers show him to be a very active student of Takeda’s until 1937.  He had ties to Omoto Kyo, (Morihei Ueshiba had met Deguchi in 1919, and had travelled to Mongolia in 1924) but the influence on his system was still not quite as evident as it would become.  In 1925, the year of O Sensei’s first enlightenment and two years before O Sensei moved to Tokyo to build his first dojo, Kenji Tomiki Sensei joined Morihei Ueshiba Sensei as a student.  Tomiki Sensei received his Godan (5^th degree black belt) in Judo the same year.  Judo was an openly competitive art, and I do not know what O Sensei’s views on this were at the time.

Given the dates, Tomiki Sensei was a Daito Ryu student, in contact with O Sensei’s Daito-Ryu teacher, Takeda Sensei, before O Sensei broke ties with Takeda Sensei.  I have nothing on how this breakup would have been viewed by Tomiki Sensei or Kano Sensei.  O Sensei’s breaking ties presumably had much to do with his religious beliefs, of which there is little evidence that Tomiki Sensei or Kano Sensei shared. 

While still studying with O Sensei, Tomiki represented the Miyagi Prefecture in the first Judo competition held in front of the Emperor in 1929.  This competition came to be the All Japan Judo Tournament.  Stanley Pranin writes that Kenji Tomiki was one of several men considered by the Founder to marry his daughter and become a possible successor to Aiki Budo, an honour that was eventually (briefly) given to a Kendo master named Nakakura in 1932.  

In 1936, two years before Kano Sensei’s death and six years before O Sensei’s anticompetition enlightenment, Tomiki Sensei moved to Manchuria and began teaching Aikibudo (the name Aikido was still not in use yet) to the Kanton Army and the Imperial Household Agency.  Tomiki Sensei is credited with being awarded the first 8^th Dan in Aikido in 1940 (though, again the name Aikido was not in use yet at the time the rank was awarded).  Kisshomaru Ueshiba (the second Doshu) did not start training with his father until 1937.  Gozo Shioda Sensei (Founder of Yoshinkan) started to train in 1932.  So, Shioda Sensei would have studied alongside Tomiki Sensei.  Kisshomaru Doshu did not start training until after Tomiki Sensei had left Japan, around the time O Sensei broke ties with Daito Ryu.

As I am a big fan of Jet Li’s Fearless, the Founder of Jing Wu died in 1910 and Jet Li’s (and Bruce Lee’s) other movie about the aftermath of those events, Fist of Legend (Fists of Fury), presumably is still set before Tomiki’s arrival in Manchuria. 

The Manchurian Incident (the Japanese Invasion and Occupation of a portion of mainland China) happened in 1931, five years before Tomiki Sensei’s arrival.  It is interesting for me that the start of World War 2 officially was 9 years later. I wonder what would have happened if the attack on Pearl Harbour had not gone ahead.  The actual US response to Japanese incursions was tepid at best until that point, with Americans still shipping oil to Japan while offering war loan supplies to the Republic of China in 1940.  Shipments of airplanes, machine parts, and airplane fuel from the US to Japan continued until 1940 with the Japanese incursions into French Indochina.

I digress.  I believe Tomiki Sensei was not the inspiration for the villainous Japanese generals and Japanese martial artists in those movies mentioned above.  Still, opening a Japanese martial arts school in occupied China sounds BALLSY.  Both the Chinese civilians and the Japanese soldiers he was training likely tested him harshly.  Most Aikido schools today would not even consider training for military applications (nor would the military consider us for their uses).

Tomiki Sensei remained at his post until the end of WWII, at which point the Russians captured him.  He was incarcerated for three years before returning to Japan in 1948.  There are anecdotes saying that his ongoing development of his Budo continued while incarcerated in Siberia and the movements of Shodokan Aikido were influenced by the confines of his cell.

The Founder of Yoshinkan Aikido, Gozo Shioda, only just started teaching in 1950.  O Sensei was in Iwama farming before the the war ended, apparently in retirement.  The Founder of Shin Shin Toitsu Do (Ki Society Aikido), Koichi Tohei, only repatriated to Japan himself in 1946.  Kisshomaru Ueshiba Sensei was running the Tokyo Dojo, but working on the side to pay the bills and sometimes in Iwama himself.  The art was in a shambles with no clear organization when Tomiki returned to Japan.  Aikido itself was still illegal to practice when Tomiki was repatriated, and remained so from 1945 until 1949.

Tomiki took a position as a professor of the physical education department at Waseda University.  He was also trained as a teacher, like his first Sensei Kano Jigoro.  In 1953, the same year that Tohei Sensei started travelling to Hawaii; Tomiki Sensei was part of a delegation teaching Judo to American servicemen in 15 states.  He was a prolific writer, with some of his books on Aikido and Judo being published in English and French.  Tomiki Sensei was credited with having an influence on the Judo Goshin Jutsu Kata which was created in 1956 and presumably disseminated amongst the American troops.  

O Sensei's enlightenment that was the base of his dislike of competition happened in 1942.  O Sensei then left teaching openly altogether and I have little sense of how this would have been viewed by the Japanese forces - either the leadership or the rank and file that had trained under him.  Tomiki Sensei returned home in 1948 following years spent in a Russian concentration camp after a decade of trying to establish an Imperial Army presence in Manchuria with O Sensei's full support - only to be told Ueshiba Sensei had changed his mind about the whole mission and now condemned it.  The religious views that Tomiki Sensei possibly didn't share were now firmly entrenched in O Sensei's Aikido.  

From the Aikido Journal website, in 1958 Tomiki Sensei started to formalize his competition system.  From all appearances, O Sensei had retired from teaching.  Judo was less than a decade away from becoming an Olympic sport, and Judo was the vehicle that Tomiki Sensei was using to meet and train American soldiers.  Kano Sensei's vision of the world coming together in peaceful competition no doubt looked to be bearing fruit.  

Tomiki was ordered to stop using the name Aikido, or stop competition.  O Sensei himself may have weighed in.  By all accounts, O Sensei was not known for being tactful or diplomatic, and had a volatile temper. I imagine the rhetoric quickly degenerated. 

The orders may well have come from his junior, Kisshomaru Ueshiba - who never started training before Tomiki left for Mongolia and was never in military service as he didn't pass the physical exam, had only emptied the dojo of refugees and quit a second job to pay the bills a handful of years before.

Koichi Tohei, the now head instructor who was also greatly Tomiki's junior and had spent far less time studying with O Sensei, would have had some influence. (Tohei's own breakaway Ki Aikido system would develop competition during Tomiki's lifetime.) Regardless of who gave the order, Tomiki refused. 

In 1954, in the lead up to Tomiki being forced to leave over competition in Aikido, Gozo Shioda Won an Award for Most Outstanding Demonstration in the All Japan Kobudo event that launched his career and the Yoshinkan school. Shioda stayed on good terms with the Aikikai despite competing for a demonstration award. Four years after Shioda's award, Tomiki was out. (It is worth noting that the competitions in Ki Aikido and Yoshinkan are more like a pairs figure skating competition - cooperative and not focused on defeating an opponent. The competitions in Tomiki's Shodokan Aikido are more like a Judo competition.)

The implications of demanding he stop teaching his art as Aikido was to demand he make a choice between Ueshiba or Kano.  As Kano had also been the driving force behind Tomiki and others getting credentials in Aikido, to stop using the name Aikido would have meant Tomiki had failed his original teacher's request, and would have to stop teaching what he had been taught.  Tomiki would have been disrespecting Kano Sensei.  

He was also the highest ranked Aiki-Budo student in the world, and the harshest tested at this point, and probably one of the longest serving.  The name change from Aiki-Budo to Aikido may have served to undermine his authority as he would have trained in a "different art."  

The ironically highly competitive acrimony in the far more junior Tokyo Hombu dojo instructors would only become more apparent in time.  Having lived through the events with Ueshiba Sensei's separation from Daito-Ryu and probably having faced criticism from the military due to O Sensei's association with Deguchi during the unpatriotic protests of the Omoto-Kyo sect while Tomiki was serving the military, Tomiki would have seen a very human side to Morihei Ueshiba.  

Morihei Ueshiba died in 1969.  Tohei Sensei was promoted to the rank of 10^th Dan, which he received after O Sensei’s death in 1970.  Tomiki Sensei had been teaching sporadically in the Tokyo Hombu Dojo, but was not a successor to the lineage and the Aikikai Chief Instructor, Tohei Sensei, now outranked him.  The founder of Yoshinkan Aikido, Gozo Shioda Sensei received his 9^th Dan in 1961.  Tomiki Sensei by comparison was not promoted in Aikido from 1940 onward.  O Sensei’s son, Kisshomaru Ueshiba, inherited the title of Doshu. 

In 1971, Koichi Tohei was ordered not to teach his system inside Hombu Dojo, which lead to him creating an organization for outside the Hombu Dojo and the Aikikai Umbrella, Ki No Kenkyukai.  Eventually, Tohei Sensei resigned and cut ties with Aikikai in 1974.  No version of events makes the Hombu Dojo sound like a stable, happy, thriving and harmonious environment immediately after O Sensei’s death.  All students owe a debt of gratitude to his son, Kisshomaru Ueshiba Doshu, that the Art of Aikido under the Aikikai is still around today.

While Tomiki Sensei’s theories and research into competitive Aikido would have been in the works for years prior to O Sensei’s death, the first major open Aikido tournament did not happen until 1970.  This public break from his teacher did not happen until after his Sensei had died.  1970 is also the year that Tomiki Sensei retired from life as a professor at 70 years old.  He received his 8^th Dan in Judo in 1971.  Tomiki Sensei created the Japan Aikido Association to support the growth for his own vision of Aikido in 1974, the same year that Koichi Tohei severed ties.  Tomiki Sensei passed away on December 25th, 1979.

I was born in 1970 in Canada.  I could have never met O Sensei; I was born after his death.  From some people I talked to who were there in Hombu after O Sensei’s death, there was a very real concern that Aikido was collapsing and in danger of vanishing.  Instead, our Art has seen phenomenal growth.  Only the love and respect for O Sensei had been enough to keep these disparate groups together.  That love of the Art we all share was enough to keep Aikido moving forward, in all its different variations and directions.

I am not a Tomiki Aikido student.  Stanley Pranin writes about Tomiki Sensei’s decisions in 1958 making him unwelcome in the Tokyo Hombu Dojo.  When asked once about Tomiki Aikido, my Sensei stopped the conversation immediately and refused to comment or even have us comment.  I have always kept an open mind for my own research, and I think there are technical merits to what Tomiki Sensei has taught.  I am not suggesting competition, though I know many students are, of course, competing on the mat informally and asking for “less compliant uke.”  The flavour of Judo Kata, which is the flavour of Shodokan Aikido Kata, is not the flavour I bring to my own practice.  But, I respect what I see and read about Tomiki Sensei’s creation.  I think many Aikido students would, if we ever reconcile the differences.  Many students will never make the time to learn outside their dojo and lineage out of loyalty.

Our Art has become politically fractured, and the third and fourth generation of Aikido students and instructors has a choice if they want to rise above the politics alone that decide what techniques we are allowed to call “Aikido.”  This essay will hopefully give some basis for future essays I hope to submit here. 

This is my whole thesis in a nutshell - historically, when we in Aikikai decide we do not like a person we throw out all their teachings and pretend they never existed, never had anything of value to offer us.  When we modify and throw information away, we do not do it because of our philosophy or a desire to better express a physical priniciple.  We judge the teacher and the teachings as one and the same.  While this refusal to reconcile our differences does not sound like Aikido, there is also maybe not enough questioning about what we have now lost in technical information out of stubborness and protocol.  This generation has no reason to be as emotionally hurt as our predecessors, and no reason to keep this quiet feud personal.

I do continue to hold my Sensei in the highest regard, and I continue to respect the Doshu and I hope my comments will not be construed otherwise.

My initial personal experiences with Tomiki Aikido are covered in The Ballad of Bob.