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Old 11-21-2010, 04:02 PM   #24
graham christian
Dojo: golden center aikido-highgate
Location: london
Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 2,697
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Thumbs up Re: Golden Center Aikido for your pleasure

Quote:
Mark Freeman wrote: View Post
As far as I know Tohei Sensei did not ever teach at the Hut (although I stand to be corrected). My teacher Sensei Ken Williams was the first to receive Aikido training there from Kenshiro Abbe Sensei who introduced Aikido to the UK.

Sensei Henry Ellis' website http://www.british-aikido.com/BritishAikidoTree.htm has extensive material documenting the history of British Aikido and has dealt with many claims of people saying they were there in the beginning and simply weren't. Mr Muspratt may well have trained at the Hut (many people did) but only those recorded on Sensei Ellis' website were actually there in the early days.

Noro Sensei was invited came to teach as did Senseis Nakazono, Tamera and Tada.

Tohei Sensei was not (again as far as I know) part of the British Aikido scene until after Abbe Sensei returned to Japan in the mid 1960's. I will talk to Sensei Williams to clarify, if/when Tohei came to the UK before he went to study under him in Japan, some fair few years after Abbe Sensei left.

I just found the pic referred to in Graham's post above. http://marbella.to/aikido/sensei.htm Mike Muspratt did indeed receive instruction from Tohei in 1978 but it wasn't at the infamous Hut.

regards,

Mark
Hi Marc, nice explanation, good to see someone who can research before concluding.

As I said before I wasn't personally there and only had stories relatrd to me by Mike Sensei and an old japanese friend of his named Yoshi.

However, I am also quite sure he mentioned both Henry Ellis and Ken Williams and in fact I have sent a private message to Sensei Henry Ellis only yesterday to enquire as to his memmories of that time and Mike as I'm sure they all knew each other. I will be very interested to hear what your Sensei has to say too.

Regards. G.
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