Nidan Grading Essay: How I Approach Aikido

We are publishing the reflections and essays written by members who have been promoted to dan ranks at Katoh Dojo, so that other members of the dojo may use them as a reference.

How I Approach Aikido

Akihiro Kubota, Aikido Katoh Dojo

As part of my nidan grading I was asked to submit an essay on aikido, so over several days I spent some time looking back over everything since I first began. Before anything else, I would like to express my renewed gratitude to the head of my dojo, to all the teachers who have taught me, to my fellow dojo members, and to my family for making it possible for me to continue training this far.

Before I began aikido, the sports I had done were swimming and free climbing. Once I entered the working world and my job grew busier, I had drifted away from exercise altogether, but with aikido practice becoming part of my daily routine I feel that something changed in both my mind and my body. At the same time, I started going to the dojo feeling my way into the world of budo, which I had never experienced before, and wondering what aikido, a martial art with no winners or losers, actually was. Every sport I had done and every combat sport I enjoyed watching always had a winner and a loser. When I first started, being a very slow learner, I practiced desperately to memorize the ukemi and the many techniques.

When I went to practice, I made a point of moving more than anyone else, sweating, and taking ukemi. Spurred on by one teacher’s words, “about eighty percent of aikido is ukemi; the techniques follow later,” I kept training, and little by little I became able to do things I had not been able to do before, and I remember going to practice became fun. I think everyone, once they have continued aikido for a while, becomes keen on mastering techniques. In addition to enthusiastic teachers, we can now study techniques on our own through instructional books and YouTube videos, so I think we live in a very fortunate age.

It is said that “aikido is not about competing with an opponent for superiority; its purpose is to train mind and body through repeated practice.” Yet from the moment we are born we live in a society where, in every aspect of life, we are still judged against one another through exams and competitions. When people who started at the same time as us, or people with greater physical ability, advance in grade, it is a stimulus for us, but at the same time I think we cannot help comparing ourselves with others. I wonder how it is for everyone else. Sometimes I think that doing so amounts to denying oneself. Everyone has a different home environment, different physical attributes, age, and stamina, not to mention different demands at work; how to overcome all of that and face aikido is one of the important challenges for me.

During practice, my seniors often say things to me as I try to apply a technique: “You’re trying to throw,” “You’re not one with your partner,” “You’re pulling,” “You’re clashing,” and so on. I am truly grateful that training partners tell me such things so frankly. In other words, my aikido at present must have a strong tendency to be forceful, muscular, and self-centered. On the other hand, when I watch high-ranking practitioners training together or giving demonstrations, I am captivated by the elegance of the exchange, with techniques delivered and received without ever breaking the connection, as if in a mutual movement that never resists for eternity. Even without victory or defeat, a unique space is created there that only those who have trained hard together can understand.

In aikido it is said to be important to forget one’s own ego and become one with one’s partner, and that harmony and cooperation with one’s partner are essential. If this way of thinking is applied to daily life, I believe the teachings of aikido can give us the means to deal with difficult situations and adversity through our own strength. For example, during the period of self-restraint under the recent COVID pandemic, when we had no choice but to suspend aikido practice, each person thought for themselves and worked at training on their own, and some people posted their training methods in videos or shared information, actions that refused to let the connection be severed and that surely continue to this day. And I think that building stamina and flexibility not only generates vitality for daily life and work, but also cultivates mental qualities such as concentration and perseverance, helping to maintain strength of mind. Aikido is of great help in deciding what one will do and what one wants to do, taking responsibility oneself rather than blaming society or those around us, and in the choices we face in every situation of daily life. I think it is wonderful to have, within everyday life, a place where one can cultivate one’s overall strength as a human being.

When someone unfamiliar with aikido asks me “What is aikido?”, I honestly have never been able to give a precise answer that convinced them. Beyond the variety of its techniques, it is a world of great depth, with its classical knowledge and spirituality. Naturally, I am not of a rank to teach techniques to others, so I have refrained from commenting on technique. I hope to keep training at my own pace so that my mind, technique, and body become a little more fulfilled than they are now and I can grow a little as a person, and to do my part in spreading aikido.