Honbu Dojo Keiko: Seki Shihan
Early March, 2001

Contributed by Daniel Nishina*

Seiji Seki shihan (7th dan) is one of the main instructors at Aikido World Headquarters Honbu Dojo in Tokyo. He has teaching responsibilities in the morning, evening, and women's classes at Honbu and at university clubs. Visit the following web sites:
http://www.aikikai.org/about/index_e.html and
http://www.aikikai.org/dojo/schedule_e.html.

The buzzing from a drill or some other machine gently filters into the room from the apartment construction site across the street. Some people's main worry about the new building is the amount of sunlight that it will block. On the other hand, the new residents who move in will hopefully be warned that they'll probably be woken up every morning by the sounds of asa-geiko.

Seki sensei very efficiently bows into the room and strides over to the center of the mat, backing/side-stepping into place before he kneels. As usual we start with katate-dori kokyo-ho. Seki sensei's classes are very business-like. Even with his trademark lightning fast speed, it is highly doubtful that anyone gets any funny ideas about doing techniques roughly or harshly, as is often associated with such speed. It is also notable that he almost never actually throws anyone hard when he is demonstrating in front of everybody. He will usually do the first, or kuzushi, part of the technique fast, but slow down the uke so that he doesn't have any speed heading down to the mat. Of course it is not always the case that the techniques are lightning fast, nor blandly uniform as they may first come across.

Paying attention, even though the techniques practiced in this class are all very basic, it is possible to see slight variations. For example, in irimi-nage, instead of breaking uke's balance by taking him all the way to the ground, sensei may barely take him in a downward direction at all. As Seki sensei makes his rounds throwing everyone, you'll quickly notice that he seems to never speak. This isn't to say he doesn't teach. Just the opposite, without uttering a word he can make you feel quite humbled. Or, for regular students who receive the same corrections time and time again, quite embarrassed. One of the mistakes he most often corrects is the way people strike. He notices right away if someone is leaning in or away too much as they strike, or if their strike is not on target. He often communicates by demonstrating an exaggerated version of the mistake, then the proper way.

Today I had the rare occasion to actually practice a little with Seki sensei. For some reason, he decided to come over to practice zagi kokyu-ho at the end of class. It is not like I have never heard his voice before, but it could seem that way since no one ever hears him say more than a couple of words at a time. It doesn't really cross my mind to experiment with something unusual as we practice, but later, it strikes me that he is grabbing with just the right amount of power - not so much that I feel like I'm dealing with a big power, but not so little that I would say he's just falling over for me on his own.

Seki sensei could be called the representative "straight man" of the dojo. His classes are very orderly and proper - no funny business here. All of the corrections he makes are about the uke, but the fact that he maintains such a sure connection in the midst of his blinding speed say something about the integrity of his classes and his aikido.

*Dan Nishina is a student at Aikikai Honbu Dojo in Shinjuku, Tokyo, where he has trained for the past two years following graduation from UC Berkeley. An eight year aikido student, he lives about five minutes from Honbu and devotes most of his time to training, while also teaching and doing translation projects. Other articles by Dan may be found in the Back Issues page of this newsletter.