Dojo-cho’s Column 1 — The Blank Pages of a Dan Holder’s Book

As a child, my dream was to run a small dojo. Like the martial artists in the movies, I wanted to be strong toward the strong and endlessly generous toward the weak. So I learned many martial arts, from taekwondo and Korean hapkido to kung fu and combat sports, and for nearly fifteen years I practically lived in a uniform at the gym.

Then, past thirty, I met aikido. For someone who had poured all his strength into beating opponents, aikido was the martial way that made me ask again what real strength is.

On the day I was awarded first dan in 2005, I received the dan holder’s book issued by the Aikikai. At the back were pages for recording the seminars you attend, and there were so many blank spaces that I remember feeling a thrill and wondering, “When will I ever fill all these?” From then on I went to international seminars at least three and as many as eight times a year. I studied under many teachers, in Jeju and Seoul and even in Japan. The pages have long since run out; I received extra pages from the World Headquarters and pasted them in, and now those too are about to turn over. When I counted, the total had passed seventy.

Each time I go to a seminar, I think about two things.

The first is learning. These are not techniques that stick after being taught once or twice, so each time I take the teacher’s hand, fall and fall again, and try to grasp that elusive feeling.

The second is checking. I bring what I learned at a seminar back to the dojo and practice it until the next seminar. Then, joining hands with people I have never met, I check where I stand now. Each time I see where I still fall short, and learn again not to become complacent.

At a 2019 seminar with Takeshi Yamashima, 7th dan of the Aikikai, Yoon Dae-hyun Sensei asked him, “What is aikido?” Yamashima Sensei answered in a single sentence.

“Aikido is love.”

The essence of a martial art is winning. And yet, love? At first I tilted my head, but the more I train, the more I understand those words. If the essence of martial arts is victory, the essence of aikido is living together—sangsaeng (相生), mutual flourishing. By joining hands with partners again and again, we learn to govern ourselves, and we learn not the fight to win but the care and cooperation to move forward together.

Aikido is a martial way in which the more you learn, the more you see your own shortcomings. So today, too, I set off to fill the next blank in my book. I hope that the blanks in the books of you who have opened this one will, one by one, be filled someday as well.