aikidoc

"I never presumed to call myself Osensei. I was first called Osensei by a wonderful Japanese woman whose son I had been teaching for some time. When I presumed to correct her, she kindly let me know that as there were several teachers of the system which I was teaching, and all of them had been taught by me, I was the teacher of teachers, or the head teacher. She went on to state that as the founder of the system, with no other direct teachers above me, the title of Osensei was indeed correct. She continued to press the point by saying that, over the many years of our relationship, she had found that my teachings transcended the simple concepts of my art and directed students toward a truer understanding of themselves and their place in the community. This, she said, was the main reason that she addressed me as Osensei. I was both humbled and honored to receive her compliment. Other students began to address me in this way, and I would laugh it off with such remarks as "are you saying I am the fattest of teachers?" (O sensei)."

Michael: I don't know the intricacies of assigning names. However, the title O'Sensei is generally for the founder of arts after 40 or 50 years of study. As some of the links above point out when you google your name, your profile shows you studied kung fu, tae kwan do and then 5 years of jujitus and then founded your own style. From your site: "Rosen found that Jujutsu provided an excellent balance to his Kung Fu training, and after five years of study, separated from Professor Jennings' school in order to fully devote his time to the development of Byakko Ryu Jujutsu." Founding your own style of an art you only spent 5 years studying and then ending up with the title of O'Sensei is probably why you got grief on Bushido. However, the aikiweb thread I read was more about how much you charged. Your point though is well taken. I'm not sure why you ended up on an aikido site. If you had called your art Byakko Ryu Aikido, then you would have been fair game. You sound like a concerned person and help out children and I applaud that.

This site has had a lot of discussion on issues of titles and frauds (see my thread on Aikido Frauds-which had over 13,000 viewings). It resulted in somewhat of a guideline for telling when people in aikido were likely frauds. I have it posted on my website if you'd like to read the criteria that evolved out of this discussion: members.cox.net/aikidoc1 (go tothe instructor link and scroll to the bottom and click on the link for choosing instructors and schools). Please don't misinterpret this as me insinuating you are a fraud. I'm not. However, in the Aikido world we are starting to see lots of lofty titles crop up like O'Sensei, Soke, Professor, Doctor, Hanshi, etc. Other than O'Sensei for the founder, these are not titles commonly used in our art and generally are indicative of frauds or someone who bought their title from some Soke organization that sells them. Generally, these are people not qualified by years of experience to be recognized at such lofty titles. Generally, in Aikido you are looking at 1st or 2nd degree black belt in 4-5 years. This would not qualify someone to start their own style of aikido-they'd be laughed out of the art. Many in the art do not want to see this go the way of other arts where the ranking system becomes totally bastardized