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7/30/2019 Aikido Journal - Interview With Akuzawa Minoru
/3/12 An interv iew with Minoru Akuzawa, Founder and I nstruc tor of the Aunkai.
7ww.aikidojournal.com/article?articleID=701
Today in class I had you move with frame to understand inside. If you only have to move with the inside it is
dangerous to others. It’s not about whether the opponent is strong or not, but whether you are strong inside.
Mold is equal to frame. But mine is incomplete at this point. As soon as you are strong the mold is unnecessary.
When you come right down to it, you make a frame. Look at it this way, If you mix sand, gravel and water
together, that mixture is very, very solid and hard. But yet it’s soft at the same time. Individually, the ingredients
are soft, but can become hard when you combine them.
What is the role of hardness?
You have to put hard into your body. So by putting hard into your body, it creates pathways to make hard and
soft. It becomes sand, gravel and water mixed together in you. What the Chen style guys do, against what I do, it
doesn’t work. Not against someone with a weird body like mine, not against seasoned fighters. It’s not about
who’s stronger, but how you learn to use your body. Bruce Lee died at 33 but if he were alive, he wouldn’t be
thinking about who is stronger.
Bruce Lee was probably at the lowest rank. He was still depending on plyometric force. Bujutsu is different, it
relies on torquing force that isn’t plyometric at all. Even as you get older, it doesn’t get worse. For example,Sagawa Yukiyoshi, a shihan of Daito Ryu was at his peak in his 70s. It’s how you train your spirit.
What about training the spirit?
Look, there are a lot of people with pride out there. Why don’t they go and fight Mirko? Then, even if you’re
beaten like a red-headed step child and get out of the hospital, think nothing of it and go out with a girl. If your
ego is that flexible….if you’re that stupid, maybe you are okay.
[Someone asks about qigong ]
No, I don’t do it. No specialized internal training. In your every day life, do you stand around? No. Your martial
art has to become like this. It can’t just be a shape. Everything I do is bujutsu.
Who or what were your most significant influences?
When I was 23 there was this small, small guy, a koryu guy, about 160 cm. He was about 50 years old. I was
sparring one day with my buddies at the Neijia Institute and I saw this small old guy just standing there. I asked a
couple of questions about him, but all anyone would tell me was that he was some Koryu guy and that he was
“dangerous” and that I shouldn’t talk to him.
I was sparring, when the old man walked up to me. The old man then told me quietly “You have good potential,
but your posture is horrible. You should stand up straighter.”
So I thought to myself, “Who is this old fart?!”
7/30/2019 Aikido Journal - Interview With Akuzawa Minoru
/3/12 An interv iew with Minoru Akuzawa, Founder and I nstruc tor of the Aunkai.
9ww.aikidojournal.com/article?articleID=701
applications. I would go home, and sometimes practice for five hours. I’d review everything he taught me and
then suddenly it would be morning.
Why did you decide to teach?
It’s not how you do it. It’s how you come to that realization. I’m teaching that thought process. There’s a limit to
how much I can teach. In school , I can give you the answer. But in bujutsu, I can only teach process. If I taught
Aunkai like my teacher did, there would be no one left training. This teacher, he never explained anything. Myteacher told me things like this: “Listen, your feet should be like this. There should be a clear connection between
top and bottom.” And then I’d go home, think, then ask questions. So then I would go back and show my
teacher. And I would show the shape. He’d say that is half right but you’re not getting the core.
Even Adam, one of the Aunkai students, is completely changed. Adam is getting a lot of return from what I
taught. But the rest is up to him and how he thinks.
Back in the day during the Meiji era, if a teacher said do it, you did it to death. Their attitude was if you can’t do
that, then don’t talk to me. Sagawa was a Meiji guy, he was severe. I can tell immediately who has been doing
the basics and who has not. I know it’s not about strong or weak. If you’ve been studying, you should have
questions.
If you look at Shioda Gozo, founder of Yoshinkan Aikido for example, his students are not the same because
they aren’t following what he had to say.
7/30/2019 Aikido Journal - Interview With Akuzawa Minoru
An interv iew with Minoru Akuzawa, Founder and I nstruc tor of the Aunkai.
10/1
So why aren’t you hiding things?
Well, what I’m doing is unique to Japanese culture. As soon as you get to a different stage, maybe you hide
things. But I don’t feel like I am at a level where I have to hide things.
When I figure something out the first thing that I want to do is to show it to students. Because revealing what I’m
doing helps me. My own training is incomplete. If I don’t teach myself, then I won’t improve and become, in my
eyes, complete.
I’ve already progressed further than you guys on the same road. Where before there was nothing, I had to create
the network. Because I have that within my body I can establish more powerful networks. it’s like the difference
between having DSL digital subscriber line, i.e. broadband and a fiber optic based network, faster than DSL in
your body.
The first thing to do is learn your body. Doing what they other people do isn’t getting you to where you want to
be. If you find someone along the path with the same body type as you have, then the other half is on your own.
A lot of people think by watching that they can understand. But it’s different what I do even if it looks the same.
My experience is that most people who say “we do that too” are wrong.
What about other styles?
Kyokushin. As hard as they train, among all types of karate, they are probably the best. If you do it, you’ll
probably get something out of it. You’ll get something. But the problem is that it’s techniques and kata. In the
end, it’s a question of who is stronger, and who is younger. Real bujutsu doesn’t consist of “he does this, and I
do that.” That’s like stage 1. Stage 10 is an efficient body , moving in the most efficient way possible.
There was this Dutch guy that I met. Huge guy. When he first touched hands with me, he said, ”You’re not thatstrong.” But then later in push hands, he said, ”You’re strong.” Because I have gone so far in my training, by not
going against other people.
Don’t walk around thinking you are going to kick ass.
What about weapons?
I only use the bo staff. I use it to build and discipline the body.
I understand that you have fought people in the Shooto (Japanese MMA style)
community?
7/30/2019 Aikido Journal - Interview With Akuzawa Minoru
/3/12 An interv iew with Minoru Akuzawa, Founder and I nstruc tor of the Aunkai.
13/1ww.aikidojournal.com/article?articleID=701
in order to develop body unity. Akuzawa often refers to this as making the body into “ippon” or one line.
This connection is then held in a series of moving postures, slowly increasing the range of motion throughout
which these connections can be held.
Stillness/Frame Training
Ten Chi Jin, Shiko, Mabu, Twisting and other relatively static posture training are known as Stillness trainingwithin the Aunkai. These exercises place the body in a frame that allows it to identify those parts necessary for
utilizing force. By making the body utilize opposing physical systems to keep the body unmoving and manifesting
the six directions when it is in motion, it allows the practitioner to further understand how his body settles
naturally into place and what role natural posture plays in the efficient transfer of power.
The requirements for all exercises are simple but deep:
-Keep the 6 directions
-The overall direction of tension should be directed into yourself and not outwards. (Jibun ni modosu)
-Yurumu (Relax anything that is not needed to adhere to the six directions)
-Chuou wo tamotsu (Maintain a middle amount of tension, neither too tense nor too relaxed. Understanding wha
this means is perhaps one of the hardest things about the exercise)
-Shizentai (Natural Posture)
Shiko:
1.The arms and body are held open with the spine erect, manifesting up to down contradictory tension.
2.The body’s connections are held in place as one arm is gathered and brought to the middle
3.The other arm is slowly raised upwards, pulling the body up and to the side, causing the center axis to fall over
the heel of one foot
4.It continues to pull, pulling the entire body like a string of pearls, causing the opposite foot to slowly be pulled
up. The leg is not lifted, but rather pulled by the opposite arm along the x-line.
5.The leg is brought down slowly into its original position, still maintaining an arch of support along the inside of the knees.
6.The body is slowly dropped to a low position, the arms still outspread
7.The arms are brought to the center in a clap.
8.The body is slowly raised by “picking” itself up at the spine. As this happens the body opens up as a whole
unit.
7/30/2019 Aikido Journal - Interview With Akuzawa Minoru
/3/12 An interv iew with Minoru Akuzawa, Founder and I nstruc tor of the Aunkai.
body without disturbing its frame. As you proceed to correct yourself you will learn correct physical principles
and absorb them.
Body Axis Training
This exercise, the Body Axis Walking training method serves to connect the upper and lower portions of the
body together. This training places heavy emphasis on the correct placement of the feet, the mechanics of
walking, and allows you to understand what “walking” truly is. Maai (distance between yourself and theopponent) and other concepts involving an opponent are also studied in this exercise.
Contact Training and Sparring
This next stage allows the body, now instilled with principles learned through proper training of the frame, to
learn how to send and receive force against a gradually resisting opponent.
This stage also allows us to understand the difference between the commonly accepted notion of “power” or
“muscular” power vs “martially usable power.” No progress can be made to further stages unless a student can
identify this crucial difference.
Simply adjusting the shapes found within the “frame” training, or tanren, will not yield any substantial results. A
martially viable body is useless unless you can bring the principles found in the frame training and apply them in
motion. It is important to learn how to use your body effectively, in a connected matter, each joint, muscle, sinew
working in concert to affect the opponent.
By studying the shape of our normal standing posture, we learn to feel how gravity works on our balance and
work to eliminate any excess from the body. This refers to unconnected muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints, as
well as harmonizing internal physical movement so that one movement does not overpower another. (This also
applies to the koshi and tanden as well.) By understanding our skeletal structure, we learn the optimal placement
of our joints, and how they interact against an incoming force. This is a direct way to recognize your axis as you
adjust and harmonize your balance against a resisting force.
We could also say that this is a means to understand how the parts inside you move, and how to
compartmentalize them in a harmonized way. By training according to the method of hard and soft, we seek the
maximum effect from the minimum effort.
Wrapping Up
The Aunkai Bujutsu Method does not place any emphasis on repetition of empty movements or techniques.
Instead, we aim to give our students the physical tools to forge a Bujutsu body able to bring its own
imperfections to light, address them, and come to its own answers—all of this eventually leads the practitioner