Quote:
Alex Megann wrote:
Hi Peter,
That is very interesting indeed, and I hadn't heard this story. I was under the impression that Chiba Sensei had encouraged Kanetsuka Sensei to study kesagiri.
Alex
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Hello Alex,
I will attempt to answer Raul's question in response to your post. You might know that the reason M Sekiya spent a year in the UK was to ease the transition in the BAF from K Chiba to M Kanetsuka as Technical Director. K Chiba remained as Technical Adviser and came to England frequently. (For this was when the political problems in Europe were beginning to hot up.) M Sekiya had retired as an engineer for Japan Airlines (JAL) and could travel very cheaply. He had trained with S Yamaguchi and K Chiba wanted him to teach S Yamaguchi's way of doing aikido. However, he did not want the
kashima koryu to be taught at the same time and as part of aikido--but this is what happened. I suppose it was thought that there was little point in teaching
kesa-giri alone, without the basic
kata of which it was a part, so we practised these.
As far as I recall, practice at Ryushinkan on weekdays lasted for three hours, with a short break in the middle. The first part always began with
kokyu ryoku training and
suwari-waza ikkyo. The second part nearly always featured weapons, which invariably began with suburi training at the tyre
makiwara in the dojo. I would sometimes teach the
kokyu ryoku and
suwari-waza classes, but MKS would usually appear and take over--and teach the weapons classes, which were usually
aiki-ken and
aiki-jo. M Sekiya taught the midday classes and sometimes taught weapons.
All in all, it worked very well, even when the weapons training was split into two separate systems and there was a more pronounced separation between Ryushinkan and Tempukan.
Best wishes,
PAG