In spite of the pandemic which greatly undermined the scale of any public event, the hosting by Tokyo of the 2020 Olympic Games saw the organization of a relatively large number of non-competitive events as part of its official program. One of those events was the “武道祭2020 – UNIVERSAL BUDO FESTIVAL in YOKOHAMA” and as its name suggests, it focused specifically on promoting and disseminating Japanese martial arts.
The event was held on September 4th, 2021 at the recently built Yokohama Budokan. Due to the restrictions in place at that time in the Kanagawa prefecture, the public was not allowed but the event was streamed online.
Our dojo had the honor of being asked by the Kanagawa Aikido Federation to help represent Aikido. Ueshiba Mitsuteru, the Dojo-cho of the Aikikai Hombu Dojo was put in charge of the demonstration and our head instructor was interviewed by Ms Nagata Marina, a TV presenter and Kanagawa Prefectural Assembly Member to go over his martial arts background and experience training in Japan.
Nagata Marina interviewing Guillaume Erard before the start of the demonstrations.
Other guests included Yamashita Yasuhiro, the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee and 1984 Judo Olympic gold medalist, as well as 2020 Olympics Karate medalist Araga Ryutaro. The demonstrations kicked off with a Taiko Drums performance. Dojo-cho then stepped in to perform Aikido, followed by representatives for Jukendo, Kendo, Naginata, Shorinji Kempo, Judo, Nihon Kempo, Kyudo, and Karate. In keeping with the overall Olympics, the event was placed under the theme of inclusiveness and a moving video presenting Kanazawa Shoko, a young Shodo practitioner with Down syndrome was also shown.
As part of the event, a number of seminars and masterclasses were given. A 1-hour Aikido class was instructed in the morning by Takeda Daiyu, the Dojo-cho of the Aikido Kenkyu-kai International and a member of the directing committee of the Kanagawa Aikido Federation. It is actually Daiyu who invited us to participate in the event and we would like to take this opportunity to thank him. We were also fortunate to get acquainted with his father, Takeda Yoshinobu, an 8th dan Aikido instructor who was a direct student of O Sensei.
Yokohama AikiDojo instructors Guillaume Erard and Mihaly Dobroka with Takeda Yoshinobu Shihan
