For the last several years, a big part of my life has been the martial art of Ki-Aikido, more formally known a 心身統一合氣道会 (shinshin touitsu aikido), which roughly translates to “Aikido of Mind and Body Coordinated”. This style of Aikido has some differences from other styles out there, but to quickly summarize, Ki-Aikido focuses on things such as self-control, mindfulness, and posture to help each person perform at our best, whether it is doing a martial arts technique on the mat or some daily life activity off the mat. I’m not going to go into much about Ki-Aikido in this book review, but if you want to see a detailed writeup please check out this article to learn more about Ki-Aikido.
Ki-Aikido was created by Koichi Tohei (藤平光一) by making many modifications to the existing Aikido at the time (roughly 50 years ago). He passed away in 2011, leaving his son Shin’ichi Tohei (藤平信一) as the successor to the organization that teaches Ki-Aikido, comprised of over 40,000 members worldwide in over 20 countries. Koichi Tohei wrote several books about Ki-Aikido and related topics, although unfortunately some of them were not translated into English. You can see a review I did of one of his books here. His son Shin’ichi Tohei also has written several books, and as far as I know very few have been translated into English. You can see one of my reviews of one of his most recent books here.
A few months ago Shin’ichi Tohei published a book through Gentosha titled “活の入れ方” (katsu no irekata), which can be roughly translated as “Techniques for Motivation”. While Koichi’s books tend to focus more on detailed concepts and personal experiences (for example notable things that happened to him on the battlefield), Shin’ichi’s books are (in my opinion) generally written for a broader audience, and as a result use a simpler style that is pretty easy to follow and doesn’t assume you have any background knowledge. (Note: when speaking to other Ki-Aikido members I would typically use the term “Shin’ichi Sensei”, or in Japanese simply 会長 (kaichou = “president”), but in this article I will simply refer to him as “Shin’ichi” for simplicity.)
I mentioned above that Ki-Aikido teaches principles that help someone to perform their best both on and off the mat, and Koichi applied this beyond martial arts by working with pro athletes from sports teams, especially baseball and sumo which are two of the most popular sports in Japan. His son Shin’ichi has continued this tradition and still to this day spends much of his time training pro athletes and other people who have a focus on achieving their best (including CEOs and other high-level executives).
“Techniques for Motivation” is comprised of a series of talks between Shin’ichi and two notable professional athletes: Kimiyasu Kudo (工藤 公康), former professional pitcher and baseball manager, and Ryuji Kokonoe (九重 龍二), a former pro sumo wrestler. Shin’ichi has woven these discussions into 50+ short chapters, each with a theme, and he often gives his own commentary throughout. There are also some sections where Shin’ichi doesn’t focus on his discussions with these athletes, and instead goes into some of his own personal ideas.
The mini-chapters are broken into a few categories; here is the list of those to give you a taste of the content:
鍛錬とハラスメントのジレンマ [The dilemma of training and harassment]
自分を守る体づくり [Body building to protect the self]
素質の壁を超えていく [Going beyond the wall of ability]
個を伸ばし、集団を鍛える [Cultivate the individual, train the group]
美しい人は強く、強い人は美しい [The beautiful are strong, the strong beautiful]
The core theme running through the book is a debate on the merits of strict training, mostly from the perspective of training of pro baseball and sumo athletes, though it can be applied to wider scope. By ‘strict’ training I mean something generally considered as unpleasant and/or difficult like physical workouts that push their body to the limit, though it can extend to other things like how one lives their daily life.
Shin’ichi talks about how in recent times, such forms of strict training tend to be criticized as “harrassment”, with the implication that the coach is just trying to abuse his power and the expense of the athlete in question.
However, through the many anecdotes in the story told by these two notable athletes, Shin’ichi makes the point that it was some of this strict training that made these people into such high-performing athletes who ultimately rose to the top of their respective fields.
Throughout these dialogs, there is an emphasis on not employing traditional training programs (the ones the coaches themselves experienced), but instead trying to understand each athlete’s strengths and weaknesses, their individuality, and catering their training program to their needs. There is also talk about understanding athletes mental states, what drives them to desire success, and other related topics.
While I admit I am not a huge fan of baseball or sumo, I respect both sports as excellent showcases of some of the highest levels of human physical ability, and can appreciate all the training athletes go through to try and achieve their dreams.
At times I found some of the mini-chapters a little hard to follow since they went into details of sports that I was not very familiar with, for example the different levels of professional sumo wrestlers. But ultimately I managed to get the gist and connect that to the main theme of the book, which is summarized well in the final chapters. Having said that, at some points in the book the discussions seem to take little detours, though ultimately the stories are all related to sports training in some fashion.
One important thing I wanted to note about this book is that there is very little direct treatment of Ki-Aikido. The exception is a few pages at the beginning, the end, and a few tie-ins Shin’ichi makes to the discussions by the pair of athletes. There was one interesting story Shin’ichi mentions, relating to something his dad told him long ago: “A carrot cannot be a radish even if you paint it white”. This was mentioned in a section talking about the difference between 性質 (seishitsu, one’s inborn nature) and 性格 (seikaku, one’s changeable personality), with the idea that the former of these cannot be changed. Kimiyasu Kudo says that ultimately if an athlete is not able to be professionally competitive even after learning to use their abilities to the max, then they may just not be suited for that. Maybe they would be better as a coach, or something else.
I actually expected this deemphasis on Ki-Aikido, and since many readers (unlike me) are probably coming in with more context of baseball and/or sumo than Aikido, it is a wise choice instead of trying to focus more on details of a potentially less-familiar martial art. One of Shin’ichi priorities must surely be increasing the size of his organization, and books like this are a good way to get others interested that might otherwise have little exposure to Ki-Aikido.
On a side note, I think that some of the examples of Ki-Aikido teachings having a major impact on improving the performance of pro athletes really speak to the efficacy of said teachings, though really understanding and putting these things into practice––whether its for athletes or everyday folk training in Ki-Aikido––takes a lot of time and effort.
For those learning Japanese, even though the grammar is somewhat straightforward and the overall style is easy to read, this book is clearly written for an adult audience and you must have a pretty high level of kanji knowledge to get through it. Fortunately, even in cases where you don’t know how to read a kanji compound, you can often guess the meaning. For me, while I understood the majority of the words, the names of athletes and other sports-specific terms were challenging to follow in some places. But not knowing an athlete’s name doesn’t really prevent you from following the point trying to be made. Having said all that, if you consider yourself an intermediate Japanese learner and are into Ki-Aikido (or either of the sports mentioned), I think it wouldn’t hurt to try this book out.
For learning Ki-Aikido, I am fortunate to train with very experienced teachers, and training in a dojo is the fastest way to learn many of the Ki-Aikido principles. However, with such a large worldwide membership, Shin’ichi is an extremely busy man and I have never had the opportunity yet to train with him personally (though I do have plans to see him later this year in Japan). That’s why, even though the explicit Ki-Aikido portions of “Techniques for Motivation” are few and far between, I found much of the content of this book worthwhile, especially in the sense of seeing how Shin’ichi thinks.
In the end of the book, Shin’ichi talks about how leading an organization is not about trying to firmly follow some tradition; it is more about the people of that organization, their growth and the interactions among one another. This was a strong message, and I was impressed by Shin’ichi’s passion for refining his own teaching and management style.
Personally, the idea of strict training raised in this book resonated deeply within me. While I have physical and time limitations, I enjoy training hard and trying to push myself to the next level in my Aikido training. For example, lately I have gotten back to doing sets of rolls on the mat (I’m currently doing around 40-50 at once), which I find is a great way to help build my endurance and my form in rolling. Besides these things, this sort of practice allows ingraining the movements into a deep level of my mind and body, so that if I am thrown quickly I can respond safely and in a timely manner. Some of the training techniques mentioned in the book are in a similar vein, and are discussed in terms of building a strong foundation upon which you can do more serious and effective training.
You can find this book on Amazon Japan here.
To conclude I’d like to provide an unofficial translation of a portion of page 42, where Shin’ichi talks about Aikido at a high level. I think it’s a good quick summary of this martial art for those who are unfamiliar with it.
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I teach a martial art called “Shinshin Touitsu Aikido” both in and out of Japan.
While “Shinshin Touitsu Aikido” is a “martial art”, it is not a “combat sport”. What’s the difference? They have different objectives.
In a combat sport, one trains themselves mentally and physically by trying to defeat an opponent according to a set of rules.
On the other hand, the main objective of Shinshin Touitsu Aikido is to avoid fighting with the opponent as much as possible. The word for “martial arts” (武道) is written with the characters for “The way of stopping the pike (a weapon)”. Avoiding fighting does not mean one flees from a battle. Instead, it means to avoid having a fighting mindset within yourself. And to avoid creating a fighting mindset within your opponent.
As a result, things will be resolved without a fight. This requires a very strict control of oneself. And to control oneself, you must have a strong mind and a strong body. Strict training is required to achieve this.
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(Note: please check here for more articles I’ve written about Aikido.)