After moving back to the Boston Area in 1977, Bob Whelan began training under Mitsunari Kanai in his New England Aikikai. There, he started to learn to steal the technique from Kanai. Later, Whelan trained under Bernie Mulligan at what is now Shodokan School of Martial Arts. As of now, Whelan continues the legacies of Kanai and Mulligan at Shodokan. This interview was conducted following a Friday night training session in October 2023 where Whelan took some time to discuss his time in aikido, his relationships with Kanai and Mulligan, and the ultimate future of aikido.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Hello Whelan Sensei and welcome! We look forward to speaking with you about Kanai!
Bob Whelan: I am happy to be a part of this!
MAYTT: How did you come to train under Mitsunari Kanai in 1977?
BW: I was in graduate school in upstate New York. There was a book that came out called The Whole Earth Catalog. There was an aikido section in it, and I read about it. Now, I had been doing Zen in Rochester, New York, and I had been taking some yoga, but in those days, they were ashrams and they kind of weirded me out a little bit. But at any rate, I read about aikido, and I said, “This looks really great.” I had taken some full-contact karate, but like I said, it was in graduate school and that can be rough. I was thinking to myself, “How can this be good for your health?” I found a dojo in upstate New York, and I think it was Syracuse, and I went and watched, and I signed up to take lessons, but this was like 1975 or 1976, but the graduate school was about forty-five minutes away from the dojo and winter starts in October and ends in May, and it is terrible. Despite my good intentions, I never went. I moved back to the Boston area, and I thought, “Oh, this is great. There’s an uchi deshi here, Kanai Sensei.” I just showed up and asked if I could take lessons and the rest, as they say, is history.
MAYTT: What was the training that you experienced when you first began under Kanai?
BW: Kanai Sensei was definitely more or less what I would understand to be old style traditional. You didn’t come into a beginner’s class; you weren’t even taught how to fall. You signed up and you got on the mat and then techniques were then just taught. Initially I’m thinking, “Wow, this is supposed to be so beautiful, but it was way more rigorous than I ever expected.” Not that I shirked at that because I was a marathoner in those days, but still. You would train really hard, and the mat was canvas covered tatami and it wasn’t exactly soft. I drove a motorcycle into class in those days and when I left, I actually joined a health club that was on the way home because I couldn’t make it all the way home unless I stopped and got a whirlpool. I actually don’t think that people would stand for that kind of training anymore. I know there are guys that are truly committed to hard training, but in a general way, the dojo was packed. But I don’t think it would work anymore. That’s how I started. That was the training.
MAYTT: I do remember people saying those early years of aikido were hard training. How did Kanai approach teaching?
BW: Pretty much Kanai Sensei demonstrated the technique three times. He would demonstrate the technique; one at least was more or less full speed, maybe one was slower, and he happened to have long hair and after the third technique he would take his hair back and then go like that [arms outstretched to the class] and you were supposed to do what you saw. I later learned from senior students that you have three chances. The first chance, watch the hips; the second chance, watch the feet; and the third chance, watch the arms. Then even later than that, I learned that in that style of teaching, you were supposed to steal the technique. Now I asked Kanai Sensei later on, I had actually interviewed him, and I asked him, “What makes a good teacher?” He said, “A good teacher makes a student work for the technique. It’s not explained. They have to find it themself. And by doing the technique that way they’ll really actually have it because their body has to find their way through it.”
I actually helped bring them over to Ireland at one point in time and I was shocked when we were over in Ireland that he was explaining everything. I had never heard him utter more than five words until we went over there, and he explained in detail. Essentially, he was saying that each of your joints is like a spring and the number of joints you can involve increases the energy and it’s like links in a chain. When you turn one link, the next link has to turn a little, then when you turn it again, the third link, and so on. From the wrist you would get to the elbow, you would get to the shoulder, you would get to the back, and then you control the center.
I had a quite clear memory of that. The other thing he said was that there were three kinds of power. There’s the kind of power where you lift a dumbbell, it’s a pulling kind of power. Then there’s a kind of power where you push like a pushup, but he said there’s a third kind of power and the third kind of power is throwing. When you throw a baseball, you’re putting the energy into the ball. This is the hardest one to see and understand. That’s what a throw is supposed to be; the spring in your joints that’s transmitting the energy that goes into the okay, and that causes the throw. It felt soft, but the falls were hard, not unbearable, but you knew there was something there.
MAYTT: You mentioned that in the beginning he only showed you the techniques, he didn’t explain anything, but then when both of you went to Ireland, he was explaining things. There was obviously a change in how we approached teaching.
BW: I’m good friends with the head of the Irish Aikido Federation. We shared a teacher, Sensei Masatake Sekiya, who was Kazuo Chiba‘s father-in-law. I was trying to build a connection and it turned out to just be a one-off. I think what the difference was, he felt, “I don’t have these people here. I’m going to tell them because that’s the most I can do under this period of time.” I don’t remember him doing the same kind of instruction that way. Even at that time at New England Aikikai, like I said, I was shocked. I didn’t realize, but he was an eloquent guy and he’s written some very great articles. He’s worth checking out as far as that goes.
MAYTT: Other than the trip to Ireland, he was basically consistent in the way that he taught?
BW: Yes. He told me it was your responsibility to find it because that was the only way you’re going to learn it. Westerners are used to a Socratic Method where you have something explained. Old Shinto style, there is no scripture. It’s not talked about. It is transmitted through action, one generation to the next. My understanding would be, he would be quite used to that.
MAYTT: But if you had a question for him, would he give a little bit of an explanation?
BW: If you had a question for him? All I can tell you is at least for a couple of years, that was kind of dodgy because you are a new person and so if you had a question, you had to make sure that you looked, waited until you were acknowledged, and then bowed and then you could ask a question. Typically, it would be answered like this: he would show the technique again and then he would have you do it and then he might make some corrections as you were doing it. Now, I was a student at New England Aikikai, but there are people who would be kind of considered deshi if they were with him all the time. I don’t know what he did with them. All I can say is that’s how he explained it to me as a student.
MAYTT: What were some of the stories that he talked about those early days of aikido and the dojo?
BW: The basic one is that he was a young man, he might’ve only been twenty-five. The Doshu [Kisshomaru Ueshiba] came over. They had a bunch of judo guys from all around here and put together a big crowd. At the end of the demonstration and the lesson, they went out to the Doshu and said, “Look at all these people here that want to learn aikido, send us a shihan.” I think what got communicated to Kanai Sensei is that there was a strong aikido dojo and that he’d be over as a teacher, and he could support himself. Now, there was an aikido dojo, and that dojo was in the Combat Zone in Boston, and Terry Dobson was one of the people at that dojo. When Kanai Sensei came over, that was only a small hardcore group.
Here’s the point of the story. He was starving and the stories I’ve heard is for a year, maybe more, he ate nothing but potatoes. He was struggling to get by. Being a young guy and some of these guys that were judo guys weren’t necessarily enamored by the fact that he was a student of O-Sensei. They respected him, but they weren’t timid. My understanding is they sometimes would teach him wrong words in English as a joke, and he was embarrassed by that on occasion. Now that’s hearsay for me, but the source I feel is very legitimate. It took a while for him to get on his feet, but when it got rolling, that’s when the USAF was building. At least on the East Coast at that time, it was Yamada and Kanai, and Chiba would come from the West Coast, and that was my memory of what the USAF was at that particular time. But he was clearly the one who had New England and ultimately, he got a really big dojo.
MAYTT: In a way, Kanai and Yamada were closely connected, not only in geographic location, but also by the fact that they were both high-ranking instructors in the USAF. How would you describe the relationship between Kanai and Yamada?
BW: It seemed to me to be cordial, and they were mutually respectful and appeared to be on good terms and enjoying each other’s company. I don’t think that changed over time, but over time people grow into themselves. It wasn’t like there was a hierarchy – you teach this – it was like a union. But Kanai Sensei clearly had his ways of doing things and it seemed to me to be somewhat different. When you looked at New York Aikikai and you looked at New England Aikikai, there were differences between the two.
My logic at the time was I had totally missed O-Sensei, so there wasn’t anything that I could do about that. But I thought if I could study with as many uchi deshi as I could find, then I would have insight into what they share in common and then what’s different. What they shared in common, I felt that was the basics that was directly transmitted by O-Sensei. But what they had different was how they fitted into their body and personality. When I first was going to do that, Saotome Sensei was coming to do a seminar at a neighboring dojo and I came to Kanai Sensei and I said, “Sensei, Saotome Sensei is doing a seminar. Is it okay with you if I go and study and go and take the seminar?” And he said, “Yeah, no problem. Just don’t come back here.” I didn’t take that he was dissing. I took that attitude to be: if you are my student, you are my student. You stay with me. And so, I did. I didn’t go to that seminar, and I stayed with him for three years at New England Aikikai and then this dojo at that time was called the Salem Branch of the New England Aikikai.
I was working at a local hospital, it was nearby. I found out that if I joined that dojo, I still could train in New England as much as I wanted. I would go here like three days a week and there like three days a week. But I was given more freedom in terms of whose seminars I wanted to go to. I mentioned no disrespect, but those were the rules, and it was the rules that I was careful of when I went to Japan and studied under Minoru Inaba Sensei that we would visit Hombu Dojo, but we didn’t substitute. We would stay and we practiced his kind of aikido.
MAYTT: Yamada and Kanai uchi deshi’d at the same time?
BW: Yes, I think they were in the same generation. Yamada Sensei would have been sempai to the other deshi I’ve mentioned. That’s my understanding. Somewhere, we have a pedigree chart, and it shows how many people studied and at what time. And my recollection is that they were all at the same time.
MAYTT: From my research, there were not good relations between Yamada and Saotome, for whatever reason. It seemed in some happenstance, Kanai had some of that same feeling towards Saotome.
BW: Okay, anything that I have here is strictly hearsay and there are different stories. I have taken classes with Saotome Sensei. He has been very kind to me. I was allowed to go to instructor seminars there. I respect all of them. That’s always been my attitude. However, there was a particular point in time – this’ll illustrate what I think is the attitude you’re talking about. When Koichi Tohei left Hombu Dojo, his picture was on the wall of New England Aikikai, and the day he left, the picture came down. If someone left and it was with Koichi Tohei, if you weren’t loyal, rigidly loyal, then that was that. Kanai Sensei was absolutely, absolutely that way.
I think Chiba Sensei, Saotome Sensei, and Kanai Sensei are all underestimated in terms of their brilliance as a thinker and as an understanding of life. Again, if you read their writings, they’re pretty intense. They’re pretty deep. I am not familiar with the others in terms of anything that they’ve written. Kanai Sensei was a very thoughtful guy, and he was a hundred percent. If you weren’t a hundred percent, then you weren’t a hundred percent. You weren’t on the same path that he would have you be on, if that makes any sense to you. You have to be there a hundred percent. He told me one time, “Aikido is commitment and you can’t have real love without commitment.” That’s critical. I’m saying that because I think that colors it from his perspective. That’s the kind of commitment. It’s a kind commitment as opposed to a commitment like a warden, if you see what I’m saying. But there was still a boundary. There’s a saying about samurai and their character, “Never bends, never breaks, cuts clean.” And I think that was the thing. You are or you aren’t. Simple.
MAYTT: For the newer and younger aikidoka, what would you tell them about Kanai’s contributions to the aikido community? Why do you feel these contributions are important for future aikidoka to remember?
BW: It has to do with his intensity and not to just repeat myself, his commitment. He was committed to his students when he demonstrated, when he did classes, when he was doing a larger demonstration in front of a big crowd; it was always a hundred percent intense and that’s what you went to him for.
I think his idea of joints probably isn’t something that other folks don’t know. But I remember at one point seeing that when he threw, sometimes his rear foot would go on to his toes and that was something from iaido. He was a very proficient iaido practitioner. When you’re drawing and cutting, there’s a spring in your rear toe. When he said about joint to joint to joint in Ireland, that’s what I think he did. That was a signature of his: that he applied that principle and that gave another joint that added to the power.
Another story I heard was that there was a student of his that was asked to take the family sword somewhere. In the process, he broke it, and he came to Kanai Sensei and said that. Kanai Sensei didn’t get mad or anything. Okay, it happened. And then that was that which in turn, almost, in a way, made the student feel bad because he was so kind. You would think that there would be such a huge reaction to that. He was kind that way and he took care of his students.
MAYTT: You were saying a little bit earlier before this recording about Bernie Mulligan founding this school. Can you tell us a little more about the history of Shodokan School of Martial Arts?
BW: Bernie Mulligan was, so that would be Sensei Mulligan who also was a shihan and at one point was on the Technical Committee of the United States Aikido Federation. When I would see Yamada Sensei, he would always ask, “How’s Bernie doing? And I’d say, “He’s doing fine, Sensei.” And he said, “If it wasn’t for Bernie, aikido wouldn’t be so big in America.” Yamada Sensei would come to Shodokan when it was in Swampscott, once a month on a Greyhound bus. He would show one technique in the class. It was written in a notebook. We still keep notes about what we teach in the classes. Then he would leave. If you were an aikido student, you practiced that technique for one month.
Bernie Sensei studied judo in Japan with a fifth dan who got his five dans from Jigoro Kano. When he came back and left the Marines, he actually worked for the American Red Cross, but he opened up a judo dojo.
He had a Marine friend who was a karateka and he taught Shotokan. So, it was a karate-judo school. We’re coming up on almost sixty years. He opened up the school. He was intensely into judo. He knew the judo community and a lot of people crosstrained. It wasn’t like you only did judo or you only did this. I had told you before he went to watch a demo at Boston Garden. There, he saw Koichi Tohei do an aikido demonstration and he was blown away by it. Somehow or other, don’t ask me how, he actually got Tohei to come back to the dojo and do classes there. He was so enthralled with aikido. He went back to Japan, studied, I think he spent a year there or more, met Kanai Sensei, knew of Kanai Sensei over there, came back, and aikido started to enter into the curriculum at the dojo.
Bernie Sensei was a jovial guy, but he was humble, and he found an aikido teacher from Hombu Dojo that was a surgeon at Mass General, and I can’t remember his name. This was before my time there. Bernie had him coming and teaching aikido classes. They got Kanai Sensei to come over because like I told you before, there was this big demonstration. It looked like there was a need. And so Kanai Sensei came. But from Yamada’s point of view, he was building it in New England, and he knew folks that were training at the old dojo and the Combat Zone in Boston. Right from the very beginning, he was present in the martial arts scene and built up from there. Like I said, as a humble guy, he was sixth dan and he was offered his seventh dan, but he declined it, and he declined it because he thought he was too old.
He was already named shihan. He was at this dojo until his early nineties, and by that time he actually wanted folks to not call him sensei anymore. He was supposed to be called grandfather. He was a jovial guy. He was the presence here. He was the spirit of the dojo. He always watched and sometimes, after people got off the mat, he might call an instructor over and say, don’t do this or do that. He was always involved, but he got Covid right when Covid first hit, and he was in the hospital. Like I said, he was a ninety-two-year-old guy. He fought it. He got over it, but his lungs were so damaged that shortly after, he died of complications, pulmonary complications.
Somebody had contacted him and said, there’s students that want to talk to him and see him and everything. He said, “I can’t do that.” But he okayed us to send videos to him and also do some FaceTimes with him. But other than that, as far as I know, he never married. He didn’t have any kids. He passed away almost the same way that he lived – solitary. He was with people who cared about him, but he was on his own when he came into the world, and he was on his own when he left. He insisted that we have no memorials; that his order to us and his death wish was to do something anonymously kind to someone. That’s how you would show respect and care for him. I keep that in mind, and we have an annual workout on his birthday. That directive is always read at that event. He was a great guy and I’m really glad I know him.
MAYTT: He sounds like he was a very intense person with that as also being jovial.
BW: I describe him as someone between a drill sergeant and Santa Claus.
MAYTT: Those are two extremes!
BW: But somehow, he pulled it off. He used to leave us handwritten signs all over the place. We had some put in frames and they’re hanging up in different places in the dojo, which tells you how to behave and what’s expected. They could be as simple as the last one out, turn out the lights and lock the door. He was a great guy.
MAYTT: With the passing and retirement of the last of O-Sensei’s direct students here in the United States, who should American aikidoka look up to, if anyone at all?
BW: That’s a complicated question; there’s a notion of shuhari. The people to look up to are probably in that third category, and it is a historical trend throughout the martial art that at a particular point people diverge, they separate, and it’s called a ryu, which I do think means like branch or like a branch of a stream. There are really, really intensely good aikidoka. But here, I’ll drop back to what Sekiya Sensei told me: “Every generation has somebody that really knows it, that really understands it. Maybe they were taught by somebody else or maybe they’re discovering it on their own, the same thing, for the first time. Those are the folk you’re supposed to look for.” I think you can only feel that, but there’s an attitude of character built into a do like judo or kendo or aikido; that’s the Japanese pronunciation of the word Dao, like in Daoism, the Dao De Jing.
It’s a way of being. That having been said about trying to find that teacher who knows it, I think you also have to have a consideration and I don’t think they go together. I think a person who knows this would fall into this category. What you are taught by the teacher smuggles in part of their character. Sekiya Sensei said, “If you’re looking for a sensei, look at how the students treat the other students in the dojo because the way they treat each other probably has a lot to do with how the sensei treats the students.” Somehow or other, if there’s a negative aspect to it, they’re letting it slide. Now here, there’s a difference between being tough and being mean. What I’m talking about is mean or egotistical. You look at how the students treat each other. Then the other thing you look at is who’s wearing bandages; where are the bandages? That is going to give you an indication of the school’s approach to the art. Again, this is an issue between being tough and mean.
Your uke is doing you the favor of loaning you themself for practice. There are going to be different levels of capacity. It should always be at the lowest level. This gets complicated when you’re trying to rebuild the dojo after, for example, Covid. The only way you can rebuild the dojo in my opinion, is to improve the ukemi of people over and over and over because you can’t have a strong dojo if people can’t take strong ukemi at our dojo. Right now, I’m seventy-five. I’ve had major heart surgery. I was out for almost a year and a half but did come back. But I’ve got all sorts of wiring and aftermarket parts and I’m not supposed to take ukemi anymore. This is frustrating because you want to be able to instruct. Some students who weren’t here tonight, they can take wonderful ukemi and I put them in charge of the ukemi and basically tell everybody it has to improve.
You’d look at how the students treat each other, what their bandages are, and the quality of the ukemi, and that is the way you safely find a good dojo to practice in. If that teacher has it and that’s how the dojo runs, that’s where you should go. Instruction, like promotion exams or federations, those are bureaucracies that help with organizing things. The exams, in my opinion, are for the benefit of the teacher, not necessarily the benefit of the student. O-Sensei didn’t give exams. He watched you practice, and I was told that he went on the mat, and he said, “Okay, you are a second dan now. Oh, you are a fourth dan.” That’s basically how it worked.
He himself apparently said, “There are no techniques in aikido.” You meet and do the movement. For Americans and contemporary times, it actually follows the reason why Kano Sensei developed a colored belt system. He was bringing judo into the school systems in Japan, and he thought middle school students wouldn’t continue if they didn’t get intermittent reinforcement. So, he said, “We’ll give them colored belts.” I think at that time it was white, yellow, brown, black, and the white is when you start; yellow is when you perspire in it; brown as it gets dirty and black, it’s really dirty. You’ve been around for a while. When people talk about promotions and colored belts and stuff, it’s like they’re middle school students. You practice the technique. There was never any pressure when I was coming up to get promotions. I started aikido in 1977 and I didn’t take my shodan test until 1989. It just didn’t seem to be the thing to do. As time went by and looking at things, it occurred to me that saying you don’t test is the same kind of ego as you’re saying you do. You strengthen your dojo by having the rank that indicates your level so that there can be some confidence. It’s like quality control, but it kind of sort of isn’t because there are going to be different teachers who give ranks for different reasons. So, at any rate, that’s a complicated question. There are great aikido practitioners out there. All I can give you is the guidelines really.
MAYTT: I think we need something to guide us or at least have a standard to refer back to.
BW: It’s good to have. The other thing is we make a big deal about being a black belt; what a black belt means is you’ve learned the basic curriculum and you’re out of kindergarten. Now you know the curriculum and at a shodan is when you’re supposed to start to really learn. If rank and dans are like the ladder of climbing, shodan means you’re only now at the foot of the ladder and you can start to climb it. This is one of the things in life where age and consistent practice means something, not necessarily just the rank. But age and consistent practice also doesn’t mean that they know anything. That’s why you look at the details and the dojo that I told you. It’s complicated. It really is complicated.
MAYTT: Final question; what do you think aikido will evolve into without a direct connection to the Founder?
BW: I don’t think it is necessarily the senior students that were deshi. I really respect the instructors in the United States Aikido Federation, all of the high-ranking ones. Donovan Waite was absolutely terrific. If he was still with us, I would say go and see him. There’s senior USAF instructors who are all terrific, but in relation to them, the culture has changed. The instructors carry the content, but it has to be the people that come to learn. Students are only going to achieve the level that they’re sincerely willing to challenge themselves to. If you were a professional athlete, you would not expect to go into a major league football game because you’re a pickup football player on weekends and even survive that, let alone score. Aikido is no different than that.
We have to be careful in aikido to realize the limits of what you have. Aikido is teaching you blending and harmonizing; how to center and how to settle, and it’s almost like an Aristotelian concept. An examined life isn’t worth living. Learning how to fight for your life and the character that would be underneath that is what shapes you. But that doesn’t mean you can go into an Octagon and you’re going to dominate. It’s a different kind of thing. I think aikido is a pinnacle of martial arts, but as a younger guy and a younger guy going in, I’d say learn ground techniques, play some judo, learn correct punching, because even Sekiya Sensei – he used to come for ten years, every year for about a month when he came over – wanted to go to a shooting range – a firing range.
I was like, “Why do you want to do that?” He said, well, “It’s great for breath control, but also how could you call yourself a martial artist if you don’t understand weapons?” So, if you don’t understand them, what are you going to do if suddenly there’s something there or you have to take it away from someone? Ideally, you throw it away. But the point is you have to have some familiarity with it. That’s any kind of martial art. I’ve studied kyudo with Renjiro Shibata the twentieth. He used to say, “When you draw, you open your heart.” Okay. It’s that kind of practice. It’s an open-heart practice. If you’re soft, that means you’re vulnerable. If you’re armored, you can’t be touched. So, people talk about maybe toxic masculinity and being armored.
I don’t think that’s healthy. I think aikido teaches you how to take life seriously and face certain things so that now when you face other things, you can do it. Just an aside, I think aikido kept me alive when I had my first few heart attacks because I can remember being there and thinking to myself, if I start to get anxious and start to breathe fast, that is not the thing to do. It was my aikido training that slowed my breath and had me center myself under a really stressful situation. I think that’s the lesson to learn.
I think now more than ever, we need specifically aikido. Look, we’re here in late October in 2023, and the planet is just about to blow itself up. There is no sense that what you’re supposed to do is restore balance. You’re supposed to defeat. If you look at domestic politics, international politics, rising of strong men, it’s all hardline, no yielding whatsoever. We need to understand that it isn’t to win, it’s to restore balance. That is a good thing to practice. The second thing is we’re incredibly lazy and out of shape. There are some people who do things but think about it. If you train and you lift weights, that makes you stronger, that’s good. But the act of lifting a weight, what is the practical application of that? Actually, well, I suppose if you do physical labor, but in a sense, you’re building your strength with the physical labor – we don’t do any of that now.
We sit in chairs; we look at screens. Everything’s supposed to be comfortable to get on the mat. Do something that pushes your limits to have an understanding that you’re going to be sore and muscle aches and muscle pains are part of getting in shape and not letting that bother you. You move through it. I’m not talking about being sadistic or anything. I’m talking about realizing what real pain is. Muscle soreness is not real pain. Getting your chest cut open, that might be real pain. Breaking a long bone. That might be real pain, but still. Now more than ever, I think we have to build our character and we have to become peaceful. You’ll be peaceful if you feel strong and you’re not afraid and you’re willing to be vulnerable. That’s the point of aikido from my frame of reference. I haven’t got an answer to someone who’s going to say, “Yeah, but how does that work in the street?”
If you are trained like a professional athlete, it’ll work in the street. If you’re showing up at a dojo one, two, maybe three times a week in training for an hour, unlikely you will have something that’s going to work in the street, but you are doing something valuable. Just don’t believe you have something that you don’t have because that’s how you get in trouble. That’s pride. It’s silly pride. That’s where my hope is. The only reason why I keep doing this, I have sons and grandsons. My sons practice martial arts. Now, my grandsons are starting to practice martial arts. I don’t want them to be able to beat the crap out of somebody. I want them to know what it is to invest in training and feel good and feel strong. I have a daughter that’s starting in it now, and she was just commenting on that. She said, “Wow, I never realized this.” And I said, “Yeah, you better do it.” That’s what it is as far as I’m concerned. I’ll be looking forward to retiring, not from practice within the limits that I have, but I really want to see young men becoming middle-aged men who have a lot to offer and will transmit it to young men on the other side of it. That’s how it keeps going. So, I hope aikido keeps going.
MAYTT: Thank you again for taking the time to speak with us about Kanai and your time in aikido!
BW: It was my pleasure!
To learn more about aikido and its history in America, click here.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 