Yoshio Kuroiwa (黒岩洋志雄) at the Edogawa Aikido Renmei in 2005
Yoshio Kuroiwa was born in Tokyo Japan in Showa year 7 (1932). In Showa year 21 (1946) he joined the Nippon Kento Club (日本拳闘倶楽部) founded by the father of boxing in Japan, Yujiro Watanabe (渡辺勇次郎), with the intention of becoming a professional boxer. Forced to give up his dreams of a boxing career due to eye injuries, he entered Aikikai Hombu Dojo in Showa year 28 (1953), where he established a research group that would become known as the “Kuroiwa Gakko” (“Kuroiwa School”). Kuroiwa Sensei passed away on January 19th 2010.
Yasuo Kobayashi, Yoshio Kuroiwa, Kanshu Sunadomari,
Morihiro Saito, Shoji Nishio, Mitsugi Saotome
First Aikido Journal Friendship Demonstration, Tokyo – 1985
Kuroiwa Sensei published two articles in the Aikido Journal magazine: Training and Cognition and A Common Sense Look At Aikido. If you are interested in more about Kuroiwa Sensei you may also with to read Ellis Amdur’s tribute to his passing from AikiWeb – In Memory of Kuroiwa Yoshio.
This section of the interview introduces a little bit about the “Kuroiwa Theory” of Aikido. Here’s a little bit more on this theory, from a separate conversation with Kuroiwa Sensei:
People think of Ikkyo or Shiho-nage as single techniques and train them that way – later on that really screws them up!
The meaning of Ikkyo is to de-stabilize the opponent “vertically” from one’s own perspective. That moves from Ikkyo to Nikyo, Sankyo and Yonkyo – put another way, Ikkyo is an upper de-stabilization, Nikyo is a middle de-stabilization, Sankyo is a lower de-stabilization and Yonkyo is right on the ground.
Then Shiho-nage is to de-stabilize the opponent “horizontally” from one’s own perspective. Here things get deeper when one’s own movement gets added on and one moves in a spiral.
The meaning of Ikkyo is to de-stabilize the center of gravity of one’s opponent vertically, and Shiho-nage means to de-stabilize the posture of the opponent horizontally. Here one has the vertical and the horizontal and Yin-Yang (In-Yo) appears. From the beginning this In-Yo isn’t two separate things, it is just one thing that changes according to the way that one looks at it. For example, I place a stick horizontally and say “this is horizontal”, but when I look at it while lying down it appears to be vertical. So from the beginning they are one thing! It just appears to be vertical or horizontal, there is actually only one thing. To that point, if one just continues to practice without understanding the meaning of Ikkyo or the meaning of Shiho-nage then in the end it becomes simply external training.
In the case of Aiki, words such as Ikkyo or Shiho-nage are usually used to describe the basic techniques, but one must understand that what is important is the vertical movement from Ikkyo to Yonkyo, and the horizontal movement from Shiho-nage.
However, at its heart it’s impossible for one to think of de-stabilizing an opponent vertically or horizontally from the very beginning. After all, in this world one thinks of things realistically, since one doesn’t exist in this world by themselves – for example, that things are seen through their contact with others. So, if one conceives of vertical movement as this or horizontal movement as that – as the result of attempting to match oneself to the opponent’s movement in relation to oneself, then one won’t be able to escape being captured by kata.
This is the second part of a two part interview with Yoshio Kuroiwa that originally appeared in the January 2006 issue of Gekkan Hiden (月刊秘伝 / “Secret Teachings Monthly”), a well known martial arts magazine in Japan. You may wish to read Part 1 of this interview before reading this section.
This interview was also published in a collection of interviews with students of the Founder published in Japanese as 開祖の横顔 (“Profiles of the Founder”) in 2009. There was a short introduction to this work in the article “Morihei Ueshiba – Profiles of the Founder“. A number of English translations of interviews from that collection appeared have appeared previously – Nobuyoshi Tamura Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Hiroshi Isoyama Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Shigenobu Okumura Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Nobuyuki Watanabe Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Masatake Fujita Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2) , Yoshimitsu Yamada Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Kanshu Sunadomari Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2) and Hiroshi Kato Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2). (more…)
