Iwama Monogatari

(Tales From Iwama)

David Alexander Sensei had the rare, invaluable experience of training in Iwama in the 1970s. Not only did he get to spend 10 years training under Saito Sensei, but he got to spend those particular 10 years training with Saito Sensei while Saito Sensei was in his prime. No other foreign student had the advantage of staying in Iwama that long at that particular period of time.
Luckily, Alexander Sensei has agreed to share some of his experiences with the rest of us. This section of the website will be a forum for him to share some of the wisdom and anecdotes he took from his training in Iwama.

Introduction To Iwama
I first went to Iwama and met Saito-sensei in the spring of 1972. I was training at the Aikikai Hombu Dojo in Tokyo at the time, and heard stories about this "outdoor dojo" in Iwama and a legendary sensei named Saito who was teaching the classes there.
Saito-sensei was scheduled to teach Sunday morning classes at Hombu, and I went every Sunday in hopes of meeting him. But he never came.
So, it seemed that I had to go to him. My wife and I went to Iwama and ended up in the six mat room at the entrance to the dojo. Saito-sensei and a few other people were training.
After a while Saito-sensei came over to us and asked if I wanted to train. I said yes. He asked if I had a uniform. I said no. He said "Wait a minute".
He went to his house and brought back an old uniform. I put it on and bowed into the class.
My first training partner turned out to be the resident monster whose name was Shigemi Inagaki. The first technique was shiho-nage. The first time he threw me, he did it so hard that I hit my head on the mat and was knocked out for several seconds.
When I woke up, I thought to myself, "This is what I've been looking for".
We stayed for several days in Iwama, and slept in O-Sensei's old storeroom next to the dojo (which was subsequently demolished to build the current "red room"). It was a very interesting place, filled with books and old charts of Kotodama symbols that O-Sensei used in his lectures.
We wanted to move to Iwama as soon as possible, but there was no housing for us. I commuted to Iwama from Tokyo a number of times over the summer and participated in numerous gasshiku (seminars) with university students and other groups. Particularly challenging was one with Isoyama-sensei and his students from the Air Self-Defense Force base at Iruma.
Saito-sensei finally arranged to have a house built for us, and we moved to Iwama in the Fall. We ended staying for about 10 years.

Words Of Wisdom
Saito-sensei was a perfect gentleman at all times, and set a sterling example for us. He was especially proper with his female students.
One day he took several of us aside and gave us two pieces of advice for conduct as Aikido instructors.
1. Don't try to make a living teaching Aikido.
2. Don't fool around with your female students.
History has shown the wisdom of this advice.

Aikido And Farming
Saito-sensei once told me about part of his experience with O-Sensei. After the war O-Sensei synthesized the present form of Aikido from older Daito-ryu jujitsu and other martial techniques and his religious principles. He constantly experimented and transformed techniques until he felt that they properly embodied the spirit of Aiki.
This process took many years. Sometimes O-Sensei would focus on a single technique, for example ikkyo, for a prolonged period of time before moving on to another.
O-Sensei loved farming, and he and Saito-sensei spent countless hours working in the fields together. Sometimes O-Sensei would get an idea for a technique while they were farming. He would say "Saito, come here", and try out the idea on him.
This happened on numerous occasions during the 23 years that Saito-sensei spent with O-Sensei. How many other people had the great fortune to experience O-Sensei's spontaneous flash of brilliance even once, much less so many times?

Dodge City, Japan
Of course there is no formal or sanctioned competition in Aikido, but Iwama in the early 70's was like a free fire zone for those advanced students who had a competitive disposition.
We had a kind of pseudo "competition" which consisted of PROPERLY resisting our training partner's technique to prevent him from making it work. If you could succeed at this, and then overcome his resistance, you "won", and vice-versa. This established a kind of pecking order which generally corresponded to the official ranks.
Of course, it was a disgrace to be "beaten" by someone of equal or lower rank, especially from another dojo, and we all tried to get promoted as slowly as possible.
Saito-sensei never condoned this activity, but on the other hand never issued anyone a "dame" for doing it.
There were never any hard feelings among the trainees, and everyone seemed to be getting strong fast. We would generally knock the %$#@ out of each other by day, and party as best buds by night.
Many of the university students who came for the gasshiku (seminars) were especially competitive, and wanted to go home as "heroes". I actually don't remember any who succeeded, but there might have been a few.
There was one group (don't remember which university they were from) that was really desperate to succeed. Bruce Klickstein was there for that one. These guys double-teamed us, with two of them training with each of us. Their plan was apparently to wear us out and then go in for the "kill". It didn't work. We just ground them all into the mat.
The Iwama locals were the biggest targets in Japan for this kind of activity, and as the only long-term resident foreigner among the Iwama locals, I was the prime target.
Those days are long gone, but they were sure fun while they lasted.

The Visitor
We had someone from Tokyo come one Saturday to train with us over the weekend. This guy was very big, and I think he was a professional wrestler. Saito-sensei was off traveling somewhere and Hirosawa-sensei taught the Saturday night class.
I was in Tokyo on business and missed the class, but I came back later and heard about what happened. It seems that the visitor acted inappropriately toward Hirosawa-sensei during the class, and then went off to go to sleep.
The word about this spread surprisingly fast. Inagaki-sensei came by and was very angry. He showed his disapproval by smashing a steel bucket into a small ball with his fists. He also appointed himself to teach the Sunday morning class.
For the only time during the ten years I was in Iwama, the dojo was packed with spectators for the Sunday morning class. There were mothers with their little children, my wife was there, everyone wanted to see what would happen when Inagaki-sensei got the visitor on the mat.
The visitor woke up, looked at the spectacle in the dojo, apparently got the message, and quietly took off for the train station. We were all disappointed that the show we anticipated did not take place.
That was probably the smartest thing the visitor ever did.

Demo At Tsuchiura
Saito-sensei, Dennis Tatoian, Hans Goto, myself and some Iwama locals participated in a demonstration at the Air Self Defense Force base in Tsuchiura sometime in the early '70s.
The demo was outside, and it was raining. The mats were tatami covered with green plastic, which turned out to be very slippery when wet. Whenever Sensei threw us, we slid across the mat for about 10 feet. They should have called it bowling. It was a lot of fun.
Afterwards they gave us tour of the Kamikaze museum. It was a surprise that they trained many of the Kamikaze pilots at this base. There were a number of photos of the graduating classes. Most of the pilots were just kids, maybe in their mid teens. Our guide explained that they were only taught how to take off and fly. Time was not wasted teaching them to land, because this was not an option.

Sweet Dreams
Saito-sensei made his first teaching trip outside Japan in the fall of 1974. He was accompanied by myself as assistant and interpreter, and also Shigemi Inagaki-sensei.
We initially went to several dojos in California. On the way back, we stopped in Hawaii for several days. We had a big party after class one night at the Honolulu Aikikai, and then went to sleep on futons in a small Japanese style room (originally built for Koichi Tohei-sensei) outside the mat area.
I thought it would be an honor to sleep in the same room with Saito-sensei. But Inagaki-sensei seemed to know something I didn't.
It turned out that Saito-sensei snored, REALLY loud. It started after about half an hour, and increased to the point where it seemed like the whole building was shaking. After a while, it got so bad that Inagaki-sensei and I moved our futons out onto the mat area, WAY on the other side away from the Japanese room.
The snoring was still very loud, even with the door to the Japanese room closed. Mercifully, we had enough to drink at the party that we were eventually able to get to sleep.

Nothing Is Ever Easy

I attended a summer gasshiku (seminar) sometime in the early 70's taught by Shigemi Inagaki-sensei. It was very hot, and we trained hard all day starting at 5 or 6 AM. There was only one scheduled class left, the regular evening training.
Inagaki-sensei produced several cases of beer, and told us to help ourselves. We thought, wow, we're knocking off early today and can skip the evening class and relax for the rest of the day. We were all very tired and thirsty, and drank our fill.
Then, Inagaki-sensei pointed to Atago-san (the mountain behind the Iwama town). Our hearts sank. Shortly afterward, we ran up the mountain (the beer did not help at all!) and had another training session up there. We then ran back down the mountain and attended the evening class.

The Koku-Jieitai

Hiroshi Isoyama-sensei was born in Iwama and trained a number of years with O-Sensei. He became an officer in the Nihon Koku-Jieitai (Japan Air Self-Defense Force), and prior to his retirement became the chief martial arts instructor for the Japanese armed forces.
His primary students were a group from the Iruma Air Self-Defense Force base. A number of them had trained with O-sensei. They came to Iwama for gasshiku at least once a year, and Isoyama-sensei taught the classes.
These guys were absolutely great! We would normally get up at 5 AM and run up Atago-san (the mountain behind the Iwama town), train hard all day and party hard until the wee hours of the morning. I especially remember a colorful character named Sgt. Asai who had huge biceps that he loved to show off.
Isoyama-sensei had a number of unique warm-up exercises that could get excruciating really fast. Those gasshiku were really challenging.
It was the custom in Japan at parties for people to pour drinks for each other, and not let each other's glasses get empty. The Iruma guys elevated this to a whole new level. Even if someone's glass was completely full (and even had a positive meniscus), someone would offer to pour more, and it was impolite to refuse. Of course we had to drink some to make room in the glass for more.
We would often party until about 2 in the morning, and then get up at 5 and do it all over again. In retrospect, I think the hardest part of it all was getting up in the morning.

What To Do With Your Free Time
I bumped into Isoyama-sensei on a train one day when I was returning to Iwama from Tokyo. We talked about a bunch of things. One that is especially memorable was his advice on how to use free time.
He advised that if you are totally exhausted from training, and have a little free time, don't waste it resting, use it for more training.
And people wonder why he's so formidable?

The Crew From Tenri
Sometime in the 70's we had a gasshiku come through from Tenri University. Tenri-kyo is some kind of new Japanese religion that was founded in the 19th century.
These guys seemed nice enough, but there was a problem. Whenever we grabbed their wrists hard, they started bleeding. It just came squishing out.
It must have been their diet or something, but at any rate, yuk!

Iwama - The Place That Time Forgot
In 1998 we got a letter from Saito-sensei urging us to come back and visit Iwama after an absence of 15 years. My wife and I and one of my students stayed a week and had a great time. Sensei was very cheerful and teaching spirited classes, not to mention partying. We stayed in our old house, and for a while it seemed like we had never left.
The town of Iwama had hardly changed a bit. The main street looked almost the same as when we left it, although the post office and town hall had been relocated. The most visible change in the neighborhood of the dojo was that the Onuma store, with its quaint beer vending machines out front, had been replaced by a Hot Spar store (under the same ownership).
In the dojo complex, Hitohiro's Yamabiko restaurant was replaced by Saito-sensei's new dojo, and there were some new artifacts in front of the shrine. Otherwise, it was like opening a time capsule.
Iwama, like the neighboring town of Tomobe, is on the Joban railroad line. However, express trains stop at Tomobe, but not Iwama. This is the reason why time passed by Iwama, but not Tomobe.
Tomobe's main attractions used to be the driving school, the general hospital and the mental hospital. There is a rumor that one of our more eccentric Aikido trainees spent some time at the latter. We made many trips to Tomobe in the old days, and pretty much knew it inside out.
On our return visit, Saito-sensei loaned us an old truck to knock around in. One day we headed for Tomobe. It was so built up that we hardly recognized anything. All of our old landmarks were gone and replaced by new houses and businesses.
After a while we were completely lost. Fortunately, I had the foresight to bring a GPS receiver along, and we were able to use it to find our way back to Iwama.

Don't Forget To Tap
My family and I visited New Zealand in 1980 at the invitation of a local Aikido instructor. I taught classes at his dojo for about 6 months. New Zealand is a beautiful country with very friendly people.
One day I was teaching a group of constables from the local police station. The detective sergeant in charge asked me to be careful not to injure them. I tried very hard to comply, and lectured them very clearly to tap out as soon as they felt pain, and to release immediately as soon as they heard a tap.
The constables seemed to like sankyo a lot and considered it to be very practical for their work. So, we did a lot of sankyos from a variety of attacks.
I selected the biggest constable in the class to demonstrate the techniques on. They said that he knew some Aikido, so he seemed to be the perfect choice.
I demonstrated a sankyo on him very lightly at first using about 10% power. No tap.
OK, so he has strong wrists. I cranked it on again, this time with about 30% to 40% power. Still no tap.
The third time I really let him have it with about 60% to 70% power. He jumped up into the air screaming. The rest of the class was uneventful.
I didn't think anything more about this except to be surprised that the guy had such strong wrists. Right?
Wrong. A bunch of us went to the pub that night and this guy showed up with his wrist all wrapped up in an ace bandage. I was astonished and asked him what happened.
His explanation was that the FIRST time I did the technique it hurt so much that he went into shock and couldn't remember to tap.
Oops!
An interesting bit of trivia about New Zealand is that the police have pubs inside their stations (at least they did in 1980). The constables seemed to like me and invited me to their pub on a number of occasions. It was actually the best one in town.
After partying with these guys I did, however, wonder how some of them were able to make it home OK. But then, I guess they weren't worried about getting busted for DUI.

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