It is often said that what matters most is less the hardships that we face than how we react to them. I am convinced of the fact that it is when a number of doors start to close in front of our noses that we often dare to take the path that closest to our hearts.
Like everywhere else, life in Japan has been greatly affected by the health situation associated with the spread of COVID19. Although Japan does not have the legislative arsenal to impose confinement or limit sports activities, the population is, as everywhere else, encouraged to do its best to limit their movements. Personally, I stopped travelling the hour-long train journeys between my home in Yokohama and the Hombu Dojo in Tokyo as early as last February. Being a biologist, I suspected that we would likely be dealing with a slow burn crisis and I therefore quickly came to terms with the fact that from the start of the crisis, I would not be seeing the Hombu tatami again anytime soon. So it was with a heavy heart that I wrote Hombu to notify them that I was going kyukai (休会, on hold), until further notice.
Following this, I had to think about my practice. Strangely, these events coincided with the fact that I was celebrating my tenth year in Japan. Ten years spent attending classes, and taking ukemi for Osawa Sensei, Miyamoto Sensei, Kobayashi Sensei, and the other teachers whose classes I tend attend perhaps a little less regularly, but always with great pleasure. Oddly, registering to a dojo near my home did not seem particularly appealing and besides, my baggage and my personality would inevitably have disruptive effects wherever I went.
So I decided to take this opportunity to challenge myself as a budoka, and I enrolled in a full time karate dojo rather than in the familiar environment of an aikido dojo. I picked a full contact style, which was far from what I knew through the little Shotokan that I had learned during university. There I found both a technical and a physical challenge, which I must admit, had been lacking in my aikido training for some time. Becoming an anonymous white belt again, having to relearn to listen, and sometimes to suck up the hardships associated with the punitive aspects of the fighting provided me with unexpected excitement.
Obviously, I am far from giving up aikido, but this break from diligent practice allowed me to mull over something that Wilko Vriessman had told me when he came to my house to film a discussion around activities of the International Aikido Federation, shortly before the crisis. He asked me over lunch if I was going to open a dojo, and I answered him that it was the idea was really not on my radar since I was more interested in the practice itself. Ten years earlier I had in fact opened a dojo in Dublin and although it became pretty successful, and that the practice there continued even after I left, I hadn't missed it particularly. Wilko concluded that I should think about it all the same, because according to him, "having your own dojo grounds you as a practitioner". A few months later, his words came back to me more and more often and one day I made up my mind.
After ten years, thousands of ukemi taken in the service of the teachers of the Hombu Dojo, successive promotions to 4th and 5th dan, it was indeed time to build something else. So I looked around for a suitable location and pretty soon a place called the Yokohama Country and Athletic Club (YC&AC) appeared as an ideal choice. Yokohama is a city steeped in history and it was one of the first ports in the Japanese archipelago to open up to foreign trade following the arrival of Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853. YC&AC was established in 1868 as the very first sports club in Japan and it introduced the practice of many western sports in the archipelago. Being a foreigner myself, it seemed natural to me to offer to go the other way, i.e. to teach Japanese budo at the club. The club directors enthusiastically accepted my proposal and a month later, I started trilingual, English, Japanese, and French aikido classes. Luckily, I can also count on the help of my friend Mihaly Dobroka, himself a regular practitioner of the Hombu Dojo. Being both enthusiastic video makers, we have also started a series of instructional videos for our students.
Of course, with COVID as a backdrop, things are starting out slow and the practice needs to be adapted, with much more solo work, as well as weapons, in order to limit physical contact. Despite everything, the "Yokohama AikiDojo" is now established in the community and the student body is composed of half expatriates and half Japanese.
As Wilko had told me, this new responsibility changed a lot of things in my way of understanding the practice and the technique, as well as of thinking of my own identity as aikidoka. Also, it reignited a flame, which I can see today, had been waning a bit for some time.
It is highly likely that without COVID and without Wilko's wise advice, I would be in this new dynamic. It just goes to show that sometimes great exterior changes are needed to allow us to dare to make the necessary interior changes. It reminds me of how I settled in Japan ten years ago actually. The fact that my PhD almost went off rails put me in such a situation that carrying out my plan to move to Japan no longer seemed so unreasonable, given the alternative.
I wish you all the best in spite of the current situation, and I hope that the difficulties associated with it, and the doors that sometimes close, will perhaps enable you to take the less obvious path. It could well be the most rewarding in the end.
Good luck to all of you and take care of yourself and your loved ones.
