Japan is one of the most interesting, beautiful and inspirational places that I have had the pleasure of visiting. I don’t like judging one place over another, but Japan is special and it has a special place in my heart. It has been my dream to go there since I was a child.

Sakura

By luck I had chosen a good time to come to Japan- springtime! Not to cold, not to hot, and just right to see Japan’s spectacular sakura (cherry blossom) explosion, which moves like a pink wave over the land, from south to north. The bare black branches of the cherry trees are completely covered with dense pink flowers and people come out to admire them in the parks and on the river sides. The flowers bud, blossom for about 2 weeks, and then fall like pink snow.

The sakura time is very special, not just because of the awesome beauty of the cherry blossoms, but also because of their special significance in Japanese warrior philosophy and culture. The sakura are a symbol of the beauty and transience of life. The fearless flowering and inevitable death of these flowers inspired the Samurai warriors of old to “flower” in fearless battle and service to their masters, and to accept death as inevitable and part of the cycle of life.

For me the sakura marked and unfolding and understanding of the meaning of heart and its place in my life’s path. This process really started earlier in China, where training of the heart was the main focus of the Wugulun School of Shaolin Gongfu. I guess the months of slow, meditative practise and vegetarian diet had an effect on me after all! Before the shaolin training I had only concentrated on the training of mind and body, and the training of the heart had never really occurred to me. I will devote some articles to the meaning of heart on this site. But for now I would like to explain very briefly that the heart is the link between mind and body, the seat of emotion, connection with the world, connection with other beings and the divine (if you believe in such a concept), the seat of wisdom intention, and the seat of love. In short, the heart is a very powerful and significant component of human nature. The realisation that I can train my heart and that I can understand and follow it has become central to what I do.

Aikido

I decided to focus my training in Japan on aikido and on arrival I headed straight to the Aikikai Honbu Dojo (world aikido headquarters in Shinjuku, Tokyo). I had no idea where the school was, so when I got off the train in Shinjuku I just started walking down a random street with my backpack, gaping at this technological wonderland with its strange and colourful inhabitants. Ten minutes out of the station someone greeted me from across a street: “Hans!” It was Bodo Roedel, a fellow student of Christian Tissier and teacher of aikido in Cologne, Germany, who had spotted me. Small world… I booked into the same hotel where he stayed together with Wilko Vriesman from the Amsterdam aikikai and another one of his students. The next morning they showed me the dojo location and we had our first training under the head of the aikikai, Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba, grandson of aikido founder, Morihei Ueshiba. So my landing in Japan had been very soft and a true pleasure. Many other visitors had not been so lucky. It’s a confusing place and very few people speak English and even fewer people would know where the aikido headquarters are located.

Hans Menck training with Sensei Kawaiji (7th dan) in Tokyo:

I moved into a small 5-tatami room about five minute’s walk from the dojo. During my first two weeks I did every single senior class at the aikikai (about 5 hours per day). After that I started taking it a bit easier to avoid burnout and injuries. I also started alternating aikido practise with solo gongfu training in the local park. I also taught taiji (tai chi) to one senior aikidoka that I met at the aikikai. The taiji classes helped him with his health and understanding of martial arts, and it helped me to structure the varying styles and exercises of taiji that I had learned before.

The training at the aikikai was great. I really enjoyed training under all the teachers there and it was interesting to experience each teacher’s unique style. My favourite teacher was Osawa Sensei and I made a point of going to every one of his classes, even his beginner’s classes. Osawa sensei looks like a traditional zen monk with his shaven head and upright bearing. His footwork is very deft and agile and is very similar to the footwork style of my French aikido teacher, Christian Tissier. When Osawa sensei moves he keeps his chin tucked, straightening his spine all the way to the crown of his head. His legs are bent and his body slightly crouched so his whole body seems compressed like a spring, and he moves about with the agility of some small darting animal. Another stand-out feature of Osawa sensei is his big smile. His classes were basic and he preferred simple and pure technique over fancy, complicated moves.

In the aikikai the teachers only take selected students into the middle for ukemi (demonstration of techniques to the class). The selected students are usually their closer students or senior students, or students with very good falling skill. In the 3 months that I spent in the aikikai I was not called to the middle once, which was a disappointment for me, because this is the only way to “feel the technique” of the teacher, to experience the things that eyes cannot see. On my very last day at the aikikai, Osawa Sensei called me up for my one and only ukemi! This is a great honor and extra special because he did not know I was leaving that day! I appreciate the experience even though I cannot remember it. I just remember doing what was necessary and it was over in a flash. Great!

I am very grateful to the Doshu and all the teaching staff at the aikikai for upholding such a great level of training and spirit. They were all very generous people.

One other highlights at the Aikikai was a movie evening where students were invited to watch old movies of O-Sensei (the founder) and have a drink of sake. I like sake, especially when it’s hot. Another time there was a special shinto ceremony and aikido demonstration at the aiki shrine in Iwama, the rural town where O-Sensei built his own dojo. There were many people and the day ended as a big picnic with Japanese lunch packs provided by the Aikikai. Goodl memories.

I also met a friend at the aikikai with whom I went on some awesome adventures. We backpacked together through Kyoto and spent about a week in the surrounding mountains. We swam in icy rivers, camped in a makeshift tent or under temple bells and had an adventure which is too difficult and long to write about. Awesome. Japan’s nature is stunning.

We also took a week to train at the Iwama dojo under leadership of Isoyama Shihan and to backpack in the mountains around Iwama. We looked for tengu (mountain goblins) but didn’t find any. Another special experience was doing cold water purification training under a waterfall that O-Sensei built and where he used to train regularly. It was very intense training.  

When we arrived at the Iwama dojo with heavy backpacks and walking sticks, there was a film team busy making a TV program about the aikido. They were interested in what we were doing and we were included in the program as two aikido travellers!

On my first night at the dojo I was given a sleeping area on the tatami of the dojo. I was alone in the dojo, which was very special, because it is like sleeping in a museum of aikido! There was a weapons rack on one wall with a strange looking boken (wooden sword)  right at the top. Curious, I took it and trained with it. It made a very nice sound as it cut the air. The next morning I asked an uchi-deshi what that boken was. He said: “That is O-Sensei’s boken, don’t touch it!”

Master Su Dong Chen

In Japan I was very honoured to meet a legend in internal martial arts, master Su Dong Chen. Master Su is from Taiwan, but very at home in Japan, where he has built up an international reputation as a fighter who has taken more than a hundred challenges successfully. In Japan challenge fights are very serious and usually happen behind closed doors. Master Su bears the scars of his encounters on his body. His arms look like he had put them in a meat shredder at some point in the past.

My lasting impression of master Su, after feeling some of his technique, is that his punches feel like rocks hitting you and his fingers feel like needles piercing into pressure points.

Master Su is an example of a life dedicated to martial arts. In the conversations we had his absolute passion for his subject was clear. Master Su was trained in the arts of Taiji, Xing Yi and Bagua Zhang, but in his personal training he has dissected his learning and stripped it down to the essentials. Master Su’s teaching is high level, the lessons come thick and fast. He motivates his senior students to think for themselves and to create their own theories and understanding. His personal dissection of internal martial arts is called Essence of Evolution. It is high level stuff, I would say like a doctorate level course in martial arts. I wish I had more time to train with master Su Dong Chen and perhaps to comprehend his thought processes a bit better. His words have challenged me and I will not forget him. I am very grateful.