Shihan Masatake Fujita 8th dan Aikikai grandmaster has been the secretary of
the Hombu Dojo, Tokyo since the 1950s and has been a determinant personality
of the Aikikai line.
Shihan Fujita who is 66 years old now, got in connection with aikido at the
age 19. He started to learn this martial art by the influence of his father
who had also practised it. As his family had an old relationship with the Ueshiba
family, he had been the student of O-Sensei for more than 18 years - and of course he has remembered O-Sensei with the most pleasure, he has meant the most
for him among his masters. O-Sensei was just like a grandfather for him –
not only because of the vast difference of age but because O-Sensei regarded
the youngsters as grandchildren. His eyes were always shining when he was dealing
with them. Late Kisshomaru Ueshiba Doshu was also his master and had a similar
loving attitude to his students, devoting a lot of time to them.
Shihan Fujita was not an uchi-dechi, that is, an indwelling student of the Hombu
Dojo (this name is used for students who live inside the building of the dojo
and do some work in turn). Yet O-Sensei and he had had a close relationship
in the last 2 years of the Founder’s life, all the more so as in the late
1950s Fujita became the secretary of Hombu. Despite practising constantly, he
devoted a huge part of his energies to his official duties. However, he did
it with pleasure, because he considered his tasks a kind of service, a service
for aikido. To fulfil the secretarial duties for Hombu is obviously not a small
matter today either but in those times, at the very beginning, when the first
steps were to be taken for the sake of popularizing aikido and spreading it
around the world, it demanded far more. Today the Hombu does not do any campaign.
There is no need for it anymore. The Tokyo centre is called on by a great many
people from every part of the world. Aikido became worldwide popular and acknowledged.
O-Sensei's sacrificial devotion played a major part in it. We can say he played
a historical role: thanks to his unique knowledge and magnetic personality aikido
expanded virtually to every part of the Earth as once Christianity did. Today
there is hardly any country in the world where aikido is not known and there
is not at least one major group of its followers.
However, this enormous popularity and expansion inevitably threatens with the
'dilution' of the aikido, the loss of the original mentality and the lowering
of the technical level. Therefore Shihan Fujita consideres it really important
for every major aikido organization to keep living contact with the Aikikai,
and for the instructors of those to learn directly from the Japanese masters
of Hombu. Aikido can only save its pure genuineness if the top-ranking persons
also practise ceaselessly and the way O-Sensei taught it. This is represented
by Aikikai and this is actually its task: to keep the core of aikido untouched
and pass it on from generation to generation. The written documents which hold
the Teachings of Morihei Ueshiba also have a significant role in preserving
the mentality of aikido.
The popularity of aikido cannot - and should not - be increased by competitions.
O-Sensei did not allow any competitions because of obvious reasons. As he advocated
peace and lack of violence, the rivalry and striving to surpass would have fundamentally
contradicted the philosophy of aikido. In Shihan Fujita's views it is also added
that competitions sooner or later start to be about advertisement, money and
power which are, in a way, forms of aggression.
He thinks the same way about the use of weapons, too, although O-Sensei practised
a lot with weapons and emphasized the use of bokken and jo (wooden sword and
stick). Shihan Fujita opines it was a long time ago. Since that time the situation
has changed and aikido has also developed. Today the use of weapons is quite
popular in the West but is taught just by a few instructors in the Hombu. Aikido
is gradually tending to be equal with barehanded practising.
Shihan Masatake Fujita has regularly ? twice a year ? visited Hungary since
a long time, to the invitation of Hungarian Aikikai Aikido Association and its
chief instructor Sensei Shihan Michel Gollo. He holds training camps, supervises and
directs the activity of the association functioning under the authority of Hombu.
He takes it with pleasure that there are more and more participants at his training
camps, and that in the higher number of people does not only the proportion
of new faces increase but that of the higher-graded aikidokas having 1st kyu
and 1st dan, too. Since the future of aikido is, in Hungary just like everywhere,
in the hands of the instructors, Shihan Fujita does his best to help them teach
on high standards and represent the right mentality.