Kawaraban No. 74

10/2008

by the head of Tendokan, Kenji Shimizu

I think that the young generation, who from now on will have to carry Japan on back, often seems to miss guidelines for the future. But the responsibility for this is with the adults, who did not show a firm attitude and conviction. When we were young we were warned by totally strange people who happened to be present, even if we deviated from the right way only a little, and there was stress. It is undeniable that this can be helpful, and such occasional incidents in daily life become quite useful for one’s own rules of life naturally.

Within the disorder in post-war period in Japan splendid spiritual values were ignored by the society, and the origin for this was the complete devotion only to advanced economical maturity; and didn’t we pursue only material substance, which was exaggeratedly oriented towards mammonism? We cannot blame the young generation for following also a material course, if they are confronted with such way of living. But we should not overlook that under such conditions the knowledge about values for the human way of living like manners, etiquette etc. will get lost. We should not forget that a major premise for the human living together first of all is the ability of exact greeting and manners. In Budo we say: “First install salutes”, and that means that with good manners we avoid openings; furthermore, we do not trouble extremely important people like family members or good friends.

Recently the Tendokan acquired the qualification of a legal person for a NPO (special legal person for non-profit oriented activities). The objective of this NPO is to continue in future to help building up a better society by spreading Aikido, and at the same time we respond to a demand from abroad; I think that it will take some more  time until the activities of the NPO become visible. We not only want to continue providing the training for the Tendokan students, but we will expand to spread Aikido to all those local people of all ages, who up to now had no contact to Aikido at all. By means of this continuous expansion with this art of Budo we want to call into being a new opportunity to help that those spiritual values, which Japan lost up to now, will not be misunderstood, and we hope to contribute to the positive development of the society although on a modest level. This should not become a time where the bad manners and the lethargy of young people in the cities are noticeable in such a way.

In addition, the Tendokan next year exists for about 40 years after the foundation in 1969. From foreign countries with already more than 30 years Tendoryu Aikido history voices of hopes for the expansion of Tendoryu entered, and recently this trend was quite obvious by the influence of the Internet. And for this reason I informed today about the NPO, which was established to comply with those local and abroad voices.

© translated by Ichiro Murata and Peter Nawrot 11/2008