![\"Shobukan](\"http:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/shobukan-dojo2.jpg\" "\\"Shobukan")
<\/a>I thank the members of the JAC for accepting me into the dojo and into their practice. \u00a0I feel as if I have been around Aikido forever.\u00a0 Age has one advantage as it has allowed me time to observe and consider. For decades I have had a love affair with Aikido.\u00a0 I see it not as a martial art but as an aspect of life. There are endless ways to demonstrate this.<\/p>\nThe spirit of Aikido is built into the architecture and art of Saetome Sensei\u2019s main dojo, The Aikido Shobukan Dojo of Washington D.C. which is my home dojo and the Headquarters for the Aikido Schools of Ueshiba.\u00a0It is the physical expression of Aikido.<\/p>\n
I do not know how it came into existence, how it was found, refurbished, financed.\u00a0 It is in a dark, damp part of the city.\u00a0 It is a residential neighborhood mixed with some commercial use.\u00a0 All the houses are bungalows.\u00a0 Bungalows are wide, squat, low and almost mean looking buildings.\u00a0 They all occupy their lot from one side to the other with just a narrow foot path down one side of each.\u00a0 There is always a porch that goes all the way across the front and almost seems to be part of a fortress wall.\u00a0 The stairs are in the center and lead straight to the front door. The second floor is merged with the roof with its gables and pitches of various angles.\u00a0 Nothing seems to invite anyone to enter much less live there.<\/p>\n
The entrance to the dojo is down its side footpath. There is only a small sign and light to show the way to the back.\u00a0 The back is a marvel.\u00a0 Some say it was originally a four-bay garage for repair of 18-wheelers.\u00a0 It is a grand space.\u00a0 The ceiling is somewhat over two stories high.\u00a0 The ally side is fully taken by the four floor-to-ceiling mechanical doors.\u00a0 They are made of narrow plates of hinged steel that are pulled up into great rolls by electric motors when the doors are opened. The walls were originally cinder block but are now almost all covered in various kinds of wood.<\/p>\n
The entrance door is heavy wood, possibly handmade, probably, as part of Saetome\u2019s art.\u00a0 Immediately inside is a large square room of wood.\u00a0 The floors are wood.\u00a0 All the walls are wood of an incredibly labor-intense design. There is the entrance doorway and the exit space.\u00a0 The rest is built-in benches. The benches have backs and so in all are about 40 inches high.\u00a0 Under the bench seats are pigeon holes and racks for \u2013 what \u2013 maybe a fifty to hundred pair of shoes. Two of the walls are solid walls.\u00a0 The other two sides open to the main room.\u00a0\u00a0 I am not sure of the openings, but in my mind\u2019s eye they are arched in wood and each arch is barred by vertical rounds of wood.\u00a0 It seems like all of it belongs in an English manor house or castle.\u00a0 From this shoe room there is a wooden path along the edge of the mat.\u00a0 This path leads to a small office tucked in the far corner and up against the house.\u00a0 There are stairs leading up to the house.\u00a0 I never saw anyone but the chosen few touch these stairs even to clean them.\u00a0\u00a0 They are the inside start to Sensei\u2019s private quarters – the whole house.\u00a0 There are stairs leading to the basement where there are changing rooms, racks, showers, toilets and more.\u00a0 The men\u2019s part is three times the size of the women\u2019s.<\/p>\n
What I am calling the wooden path along the side of the mat-area is filled with sculptures made by Sensei.\u00a0 One I remember (maybe accurately and maybe not) is a very large piece of very polished drift wood.\u00a0 It is a natural hook.\u00a0 Its top was chained to the ceiling, a long chain.\u00a0 In the hook there hangs a large, covered iron pot.\u00a0 At various and somewhat random spots around walls are calligraphies by Sensei, some on wood, some on canvas.\u00a0 Some are huge and some small.\u00a0\u00a0 Also, all around the walls of the mat-area are weapons.\u00a0 One wall is covered with hand-built racks about six feet from floor to ceiling for jos and bokkens.\u00a0 Every student was expected (at least nudged) to have his or her own set of weapons by mid rank.\u00a0\u00a0 The non-personally owned weapons are spot marked and available from the school to all.\u00a0 The outside of the shoe room was for school-owned racks of vertical bos (ten-foot staffs).\u00a0\u00a0 I saw these used only once in the years I was there.\u00a0 The main wall, the shoman wall, is again art in architecture and calligraphy by Sensei.\u00a0\u00a0 Over the years various and few weapons were added to this wall.\u00a0\u00a0 They are never touched, even to be cleaned.\u00a0 I would describe them as long pikes for footman to use against horsemen. \u00a0I presumed they are gifts and are antiques.\u00a0 Their business-ends have hooks, short swords, scythes, spikes and the like.<\/p>\n
The mat is canvas on cushioning on plywood on a floating wood floor.\u00a0 To make this, there are 2×4\u2019s attached to the cement running north to south.\u00a0 Then there are west-east 2×4\u2019s not attached to the lower 2×4\u2019s (so floating). Next is the plywood and the rest. \u00a0I was there long enough to rebuild the floor twice.\u00a0\u00a0 The plywood would get splintered as would the top 2 x 4\u2019s.\u00a0 Ukemi was not of the soft sort.<\/p>\n
In his old age, Ueshiba taught that Aikido was budo but was also the spirit of spirit.\u00a0 It was to unit people with nature and people with each other to create a world of one nation.\u00a0\u00a0 I have seen copies of films of him talking about this (subtext translations).<\/p>\n
In everything he does, Saetome displays art that reflects the Aikido of his teacher.\u00a0 The humble shoe room is a simple example.\u00a0 It is immaculate, it is full of straight lines and right angles and screams of discipline and correct behavior, but it seems to flow with arches and curves and warm-wood tones.\u00a0 It is comfortable and inviting.\u00a0 It is a transition from one world into another.\u00a0\u00a0 It is part of the early design when the school was almost unknown.\u00a0 Yet, it is large with the expectation of the use by many people.<\/p>\n
Aikido is a blend of discipline whether in the straight lines of architecture or in the application of beginners\u2019 techniques, a blend of art in a flowing and unitive way, and it is a blend of history as in the antiques and strict, old traditions mixed with a positive, simple and open sense of the future.<\/p>\n
Sensei is famous for saying that in Aikido there is no need to attack or to retreat.\u00a0 It is formidable but it is calm.\u00a0 When hostile people confront the spirit of Aikido, they become confused and simply wind down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Paul Hibschman I thank the members of the JAC for accepting me into the dojo and into their practice. \u00a0I feel as if I have been around Aikido forever.\u00a0 Age has one advantage as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,12,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paul","category-philosophy","category-shihan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5104"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5360,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions\/5360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}