Quote:
Joe Curran wrote:
Dear Peter,
I can confirm the T.K. Chiba statements about the tree[roots, trunk, branches].I may be wrong here[my memory is going fast ]but I seem to remember a logo with a flourishing tree on it.Was it the Aikikai of G.B logo?
Regarding the system of future /potential teachers as you know Chiba Sensei introduced the shidoin/fukushidoin certification tests in the U.K. in the early 70s.Having moved later to San Diego he then set up Kenshusei /Uchi deshi programmes.There are now from these programmes many U.S.A teachers, and a number of
European/U.K. ex kenshusei now teaching currently.
Hope you are well, Joe
|
Hello Joe,
Many apologies. I missed this mail of yours.
Certainly, Tamura Shihan's European organization had a tree as an emblem. People like Pierre Chassang and Andre Gonze used to wear navy blue blazers with the tree emblem on the breast pocket. I can remember a seminar at the London Boys' Club taught by N Tamura. All the EAF people wore blazers, as did N Tamura himself. I think the AGB/BAF thought this was taking European solidarity a bit too far.
When I was in the UK, K Chiba was trying to get the
shidoin /
fukushidoin system adopted throughout the Aikikai. I saw repeated early drafts of what are now the Aikikai international regulations. (The Hombu were not so enthusiastic.) But I seem to remember a
kenshusei system in place at the Tempukan, which, as you know, was really K Chiba's London outpost in the UK, after he had returned to Japan. I have some grounds for believing that he came to regret his decision to return to Japan.
I have heard many times from some
deshi of K Chiba's generation that there was unhappiness at what was allegedly happening in the Hombu Dojo, but the unhappiness seems to have been based on a vague nostalgia for the old ways, coupled with a certain resignation that ‘things have to change'. I do not think this unhappiness has anything to do with the issues concerning 'internal' training that have been discussed in other threads. In the last few years I have talked a lot with some senior Hombu shihans (both resident in Japan and resident abroad, some still living; many passed away) and I remain unconvinced that Morihei Ueshiba actually taught his
deshi how to practice this type of solo training. He might well have shown it in his own daily training sessions—which those deshi who claim to have been very close to Morihei Ueshiba would presumably have seen, but I doubt whether those
deshi who had not had some related experience (like R Shirata and K Tomiki, prewar, or K Tohei, H Tada, M Sasaki postwar, the latter all at the hands of Tempu Nakamura) would have had a conceptual grasp of what he was showing.
Best wishes,
PAG