[Aikido Interview] Kimura Jiro - 8th Dan - Osaka Buikukai & its influence outside Japan [1/3]

[@CercelCremene]

A great interview! Congratulations!

[@kingofaikido]

My understanding too is that Buikukai is a wide federation type of organization. Everyone is experimenting with their own ideas and they come together once in a while to exchange the ideas they are working on, and learn from each other. The Aiki-kai is more of a vertical structure, with main instructors that everyone is expected to follow. These are fundamentally different structures. My understanding is that Kobayashi-san was interested in exploring freedom. He took "individual freedom" as the meaning behind O-Sensei's recommendation that aikido was 'a creative art.' By this reckoning, vertical structures are oppressive. This is most likely why Kimura-san also stays true to this what we might call proletarian point of view. This is also the craftsman's approach that does not worry about what others are doing. Ultimately, I think we can only do what we are attracted to anyway and find joy in what emerges from within. Many people are taken in by the security of conformity to a large vertical organization. Others are more independent in their thinking. It is impossible to crush the spirit of freedom, especially in this day and age of modern and postmodern democracies. I look forward to more exciting creations emerging from the Buikukai. The Kobayashi legacy leads me to think that creativity is not strictly reserved for, or the provenance of, those who consider themselves elites.

[@seidobudostudies]

This is a very interesting, and I believe, accurate comment. Thank you very much. This is what I have experienced with all Kobayashi students I've had the opportunity to meet and/or train with. After the rather fuzzy (obscurely religious) discourse of the founder, I find Kobayahi's Aikido ethic very interesting and very refreshing. Although I do not believe that Ueshiba was very into individual freedom, I think Kobayashi sensei was somehow inspired by a part of Ueshiba's discourse and just left the rest (Omoto being, in the end, a monotheistic religion that inevitably favors individuality in some forms). Jordy