NYC Aiki-jujutsu History

There were several small NYC area Aiki-jujutsu schools inspired by the teaching of Daito-ryu Kodokai by Yonezawa Katsumi, especially the dojo I trained at from 1989 to 2001, which centered its practice around a mixture of early post-war Aikido and Nippon Shorinji Kempo and included techniques drawn from Daito-ryu.

It was not an official lineage of any of these arts. The core aiki-jujutsu I learned was mostly a preservation of locking and throwing methods drawn from 1950's era Aikido, especially as practiced by Tohei Koichi, combined with striking methods drawn from Shorinji Kempo that were grafted onto a set of self-defense oriented body movements called tai-sabaki developed by Dennis Fink in the 1970's, which influenced many NYC area jujutsu styles.

The dojo also maintained a set of religious practices under the mentorship of members of a Japanese family. This family history, although separate from the martial arts lineage, was borrowed in an attempt to create a greater sense of authenticity to the martial arts practice. For example, the portrait placed in the shomen of our dojo, where typically an Aikido dojo might place a portrait of Ueshiba Morihei, was the grandfather of our sensei's coworker and religious mentor. The portrait of his teacher, was actually that of a famous British kendoka who practiced koryu, but later was discovered did not know our teacher or that his image was being used in NY.

Unlike in the 1990's, for those interested there are many resources on Japanese martial arts and religion available online.

I learned about the provenance of the aiki-jujutsu I had first learned through conversations of senior Aikido teachers who remembered practicing variations of throws I learned in the 1950's in Hawaii, and later through a colleague who had encountered an early student of our teacher's actual instructor and described the formative period of the art taking place at the Hoteikan Dojo in NYC — the Japanese karate instructor of the Hoteikan founder was named Nishiyama, a name our teacher used in his own lineage. However, that Nishiyama was a senior Shotokan black belt, and not an aiki-jujutsu teacher. These are but a few peculiarities I have since discovered, but I remain grateful for learning goshin-jutsu (self-defense) and the friends I developed during those years, even if I now train elsewhere.

In NYC, I recommend those interested in aiki-jujutsu train at the Daito-ryu Takumaki dojo in Brooklyn. I attended Takumakai seminars while in graduate school and was impressed by the subtlety and precision of Daito-ryu compared to what I had first learned in Queens. Several friends I knew from New York changed to training there from our dojo in Queens and were quite happy with their decision. There is also the NY Seibukan for traditional Sosuishi-ryu jujutsu and several koryu that train in Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey.

I had begun learning Bagua Zhang after I moved to Baltimore in 2004 and shifted my practice towards training in internal martial arts after leaving this school. Shortly thereafter I began training in more traditional approaches to Japanese weapons as well.