senshincenter

I think that the point about competition, etc., has to be equally applied to other martial arts then - as was mentioned above. I mean, would such a dojo keep out a Karateka or a Tae Kwon Do practitioner - what about a Judo practitioner? These traditions all have competitive elements, so why just pick on Tomiki? Perhaps something more sinister is afoot. Like maybe the instructor mistakenly feared someone always countering his/her techniques in front of his/her students, etc.

I'd also like to note that we are not really dealing with "freaks" here, or the occasional oddball - which is not to say that those folks don't exist, they do. But my first experience with this type of behavior came from my first instructor - a well-respected (to this day) Shidoin from the USAF. He decided one day that folks that trained occasionally at the dojo's sister school (which he established as such) in order to train with a higher ranking instructor from the same federation, could not attend a dojo Xmas party or any further classes until they all had written a formal apology to him for training elsewhere.

dmv