Aikido Buikukai Performance

written on
by Lukas
in point-of-interest

tagged aikido, culture, art, event-day, Osaka

with photos in the gallery

※ This article discusses the morning of 23rd of December 2016.

With Jo, we wanted to visit the Osaka Aquarium. If you remember, we missed to be there in time last time with Martina and when chatting, Jo pointed out, he wants to go there too.

We initially scheduled the visit for Sunday. On Thursday, my Aikido colleagues pointed out that their performance will be tomorrow and instead of a typical practice session, they practiced their Enbu. They told me, they will have their performance in Osakajo Shudokan. So we spontaneously planned to go to Osaka with Jo. Martina has Volleyball in the morning and will come to Osaka in the afternoon. So the first event of the day was watching an Aikido performance in Osaka with Jo without Martina.

Certainly it would be more interesting to have some videos here, but I will try to make a text summary:

  1. Students from various dojos gathered together. I think they all belong to Osaka Buikukai Dojo. Hence their style is defined by Egami Kenzo, whose sensei was Hirokazu Kobayashi.

  2. They warmed up together.

  3. From every dojo, pairs of students showed their skills in a 1 minute 30 seconds Enbu which roughly corresponds to 15 applied techniques.

  4. First, the young students started. Students of the age of 3 up to the age of 25 performed. Finally, a sensei showed his skills (hopefully I don’t get this wrong, but I think it was Egami Kenzo himself).

  5. I also saw my Aikido friends. They were performing on three tatami simultaneously. So I could not watch all of them.

I don’t really like the choreographed aspect of such performances, but you can clearly see how the style develops over years (between the students of different age). In the end, it was nice to see some good-quality Aikido and this event gave me a perfect opportunity to film Aikidokas during their techniques. This allows me to analyze their movements and also discuss their style with my Austrian club.

I enjoyed it. Jo (without any martial arts experience) seemed bored 😉

Next stop: Shudokan is located at the Site of the Osaka Castle. So I visited Osaka Castle with Jo.