Combined with the recent move of Chicago Aikikai and a former student finding dojo boxes in his storage, Dwight Sora found a window into Chicago’s Aikido past. Some were archival footage of the school’s early days as Illinois Aikido Club with Koichi Tohei, others were newsletters and seminar posters of years and decades past. Today, Sora reflects upon the complexities of historical memory, the cultural tensions between Japanese instructors and Japanese American students, and the challenges of preserving martial traditions in a modern context. All images provided by Dwight Sora.
MAYTT: Trying to explain Aikido to someone who has no martial arts background is difficult. Unfortunately, those of us that are in the art are not training like the uchi deshi of old. I do agree that we need to find that balance between solely doing Aikido and providing ample explanations for observers.
DS: I don’t know what the best answer is. There are times in class at our dojo – and we’re a very American dojo at this point – when I catch myself thinking, “We’re talking too much.” Or maybe we’re laughing too much. And, honestly, sometimes we probably are. Now, I don’t think things have to go back to the really old-fashioned way where everyone is utterly silent and stoic all the time. But I do know that silence can be a barrier.
I had a high school friend whom I invited to the dojo back in the 1990s, when Choate Sensei was still alive. He (Choate Sensei) would sometimes flip-flop between teaching styles. Sometimes he tried to teach the way he had originally learned: very quiet, pay attention, very little coaching, sometimes no coaching at all. My friend didn’t last very long, and later he admitted to me, “Americans are really uncomfortable with silence.” He said it intimidated him. I thought that was interesting.
One of the difficulties is that, in Japan, that’s how many of those older teachers learned. They never really learned how to teach in an American sense. One of my theories about some of the difficulties Aikido and some seminars are experiencing today is that the early generations of teachers and students in America were very different from people today. The early Japanese Americans already knew the unwritten rules. They knew that when you came to the dojo, you paid attention, you bowed, you cleaned, and you followed etiquette. They didn’t need to be told any of that.
Likewise, many of the early non-Japanese practitioners of the 1960s and 1970s had backgrounds that prepared them for that environment. A higher percentage had military experience or family members who served in the military. There was a greater chance they had grown up attending church, belonged to civic organizations, or had parents involved in clubs and community groups. Even the hippies of that era were often already accustomed to environments that emphasized obligations, group participation, and rules that couldn’t simply be customized to personal preference. Today, it’s a completely different landscape. Most young people don’t have those same experiences. Far fewer have military backgrounds or regular involvement in religious or civic institutions. People who grew up in the online world are accustomed to customizing everything around them, and I think that fundamentally affects their attention spans and their ideas of what is reasonable.
I know older instructors from previous generations who very much had the attitude of, “If you can’t learn this way, then that’s your problem.” And I completely understand where that attitude comes from. But I also know that if I adopted that with many younger students today, they would simply leave. So, we can’t really do that anymore. Or, if you want to do that, you’d better be prepared to run a very small dojo. And if that’s what you want and you can make it work, that’s perfectly fine.
But one of the questions for the future is: how do we communicate those baseline elements of dojo culture to people who don’t already possess that cultural framework? I had two experiences recently that really drove home for me just how different the current generation is. A few years ago, I taught high school Japanese at my old high school, where I had originally studied Japanese in the 1980s. When I was a student, most people who wanted to learn Japanese fell into a few categories. They wanted to go into business because Japan was seen as an economic powerhouse. They were Japanese Americans trying to reconnect with their heritage. Or they were fascinated by things like samurai films, karate, The Karate Kid, or Shōgun. I remember my entire family gathering around to watch the Shōgun miniseries. My students, though, couldn’t have cared less about period dramas. For them, Japan meant J-pop, J-dramas, food, and anime. They were aware of samurai stories and martial arts, but they weren’t especially interested in them. I also showed them a video depicting a day in the life of a Japanese office worker. It included the morning meeting where everyone bows and recites company slogans. I asked them what they thought. They said, “That seems weird and cult-like.” I was honestly surprised because I grew up during a period when many Americans romanticized that kind of thing. People would say, “Look how organized and disciplined they are.” But these younger students looked at the same thing and thought, “That’s creepy.” And I remember thinking, “Really? Oh… okay.” That was a very eye-opening moment for me.
MAYTT: That is a side everyone forgets about Japan where it is more like what we are used to than the media – the anime, J-Pop, J-Dramas, etc. – is portraying.
DS: So, you know, I think something illustrative of that is that I quite liked the new version of Shōgun. And I actually like the old one too, despite the various problems it has. People sometimes ask me what I think about it (the old miniseries), and I think they expect me to be harsher because I study Japanese history and culture. But my attitude toward the original miniseries and the novel is that it did its job for its time. There was really nothing else like it bringing Japanese history and culture to the American public back then. What I find interesting is that the new version – largely because of Hiroyuki Sanada, both as producer and star – made a real effort to get things right. He went to great lengths to improve the costuming, the language, and even alter (plot) elements from the original book that he didn’t like. I’ve met a lot of older white Americans who loved the original book and absolutely cannot stand the new miniseries. They’ll say things like, “It’s less romantic,” or, “It doesn’t feel the same.” And I’m like, “Yeah, because a lot of that stuff was garbage.” I like the new version because it’s dirtier and messier. I think it’s a very human show. I don’t see it as some grim, dark reinterpretation of the original Shōgun. I actually think it’s simply more honest.
I’ve had similar arguments with people over Akira Kurosawa’s films. There are a lot of American works that claim to be inspired by Kurosawa, and I’ll often say that they miss the point. My friends will ask, “What do you mean they got it wrong?” And I tell them that Kurosawa’s films are fascinating because, yes, he absolutely sees the possibility for heroism among samurai and warriors, but that heroism exists on the individual level. The systems themselves are terrible. The institutions are flawed. The feudal order is not portrayed as noble or idealized. Lords are generally not good people in Kurosawa’s movies. Individual people may rise above the system and act honorably, but the system itself is often corrupt, cruel, or tragic. I think that’s one of the things the new Shōgun captures much better. It doesn’t romanticize the period in quite the same way. It allows the humanity, the messiness, and the imperfections of that world to come through.”
MAYTT: Kurosawa took a lot of inspiration from John Ford films, early Westerns that were the West’s version of the ronin.
DS: That kind of goes back to the whole issue of how modern audiences and their perspectives have changed. Another anecdote I had was when I was talking to someone about The Karate Kid, specifically the 1984 movie. The person’s response was, “Oh, so what martial art are they doing in that movie?” And I said, “Karate.” And they replied, “That’s a martial art?” I was like, “Yeah.” And that was kind of a realization for me. It was like, oh, karate is just a word to you. For those of us who do martial arts, or who have spent time around Japanese culture, or even just grew up in the 1970s and 1980s during the big martial arts boom, even if you never practiced karate, you still had a vague idea of what it was. If someone said “karate,” you’d probably picture somebody in a white uniform punching and kicking. You might not know the word gi, but you’d have some general image in your head, and you’d probably know that it was Japanese.
But I realized that, for a lot of younger Americans today, the word “karate” is just… a word. It’s something they’ve heard, but it doesn’t necessarily have any concrete meaning attached to it. And that’s interesting, but it also means that those of us who want to bring new people into budo have to be prepared to answer all of the annoying questions. We have to be willing to explain things that may seem obvious to us, and we can’t get offended when people ask those questions. Because, honestly, for many of them, this material is completely unfamiliar.
And here’s the thing: I don’t think this is a burden that belongs to the older teachers. They already did their job. They’ve spent decades building organizations, preserving traditions, and passing things on. I don’t think they necessarily need to change at this point in their lives, and I wouldn’t ask them to. For people my age and younger, though, this is our burden. We’re the ones who have to figure out how to communicate these traditions to people who may have little or no cultural context for them. We’re the ones who have to bridge that gap and explain why these arts matter, what all these customs mean, and why they’re worth preserving.
MAYTT: Speaking about Aikido’s future, what do you think the future of the art will look without many of O-Sensei’s direct disciples leading the way? What will the focus of the art be then?
DS: That’s a very interesting question. One thing that comes to mind is an anecdote from when Kevin Choate Sensei passed away in 2012. At the time, I actually wasn’t actively training; I had taken one of my breaks from the Aikikai, but when I heard the news, the very first thought that went through my head was, “Oh my God, who’s going to stay now that he’s gone?” I know that when things like that happen at a dojo, a question naturally arises among the students. Maybe they’re not consciously asking it, but I think what really gets revealed is whether people are there for the art or whether they’re there for the teacher. And I think that’s a very difficult thing, because some people don’t even realize that’s what’s happening.
I knew people who left Chicago Aikikai afterward, and when they were asked why, they said, “Well, it’s not the same anymore.” Personally, I strongly disagree with that attitude because, well, of course it’s going to be different. Every dojo is eventually going to become different, because nobody lives forever. Even teachers who are fortunate enough to live long lives still change. Their abilities diminish with age, whether they like it or not. Now, some people are remarkable. Saotome Sensei, frankly, is quite amazing. But at the same time, that’s not most of us. So, this is always going to be one of those hurdles. I think there probably will be people who quit because their energy comes primarily from their teacher. I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing, but I also think it’s a very easy trap to fall into. I hope I don’t do the same thing someday.
This reminds me of something Choate Sensei once said. He said that one way of looking at Aikido, or any martial art, is that these things are not really invented.
How do you invent something entirely new for the human body to do? The human body has a finite number of ways it can move, assuming a normal, healthy body. So, what someone like O-Sensei did was not invent Aikido; he discovered it. Choate Sensei would say that when you study under a teacher, it’s not that they’re teaching you so much as they are saving you time. They’re helping pull you farther along the path than you might get on your own. But what that also means is that if the teacher is no longer there, then you simply have more work to do. I really like that attitude. I think it’s a much healthier way of looking at things because if your response to a teacher’s passing is, “Well, the art is gone now,’” then, frankly, that’s a pretty weak art. It also goes against the reality that there are traditions in Japan that can claim hundreds, even a thousand years of lineage. Clearly, the original teachers are not what keeps those traditions alive.
And obviously, practices transform over time. They can’t help but change. I actually think that’s a good thing because it makes things more interesting. There are definitely schools and teachers who approach things like preservationists. Their attitude is, “This is how my teacher did it, and therefore this is how it must be done.” At the same time, I know other Aikido schools that take the opposite approach. They say, “No, this has to remain a living art. We have our base of kihon waza, but we also need to experiment because otherwise the art becomes dead.” Honestly, I hope that variety remains. I think it would be terrible if everyone tried to preserve or continue Aikido in exactly the same way. (On one hand) I would love to visit a dojo that has carefully preserved kihon waza in a way that closely resembles what O-Sensei might have practiced, because then I can experience that perspective. At the same time, if there are people going off on wild tangents and trying new things, that’s good too, because it opens our minds to new experiences.
Really, the only version of Aikido that I dislike is one where people are being unnecessarily hurt or bullied. I know some people get annoyed and say things like, “Oh, those people over there are too dance-like,” or, “They’re too spacey.” And my response is always, “Well, they’re not hurting anyone.” Maybe I wouldn’t personally practice that way. Maybe it doesn’t appeal to me. But who cares if they’re around? It’s just another flavor.
MAYTT: To that end, do you feel that when the last batch of O-Sensei’s uchi deshi passes away, there will be more intercommunication between schools and organizations?
DS: I mean, first of all, I want to make something very clear. I am a junior senior person. I’m not the head of any organization. I don’t even run a dojo. I don’t want to come across as if I have some outsized authority or opinion on all of this. So, I can’t really predict the future. That said, I have greatly enjoyed the Bridge seminars. We had one recently in March at the Midwest Bridge organized by Aikido Shimbokukai, and that was actually my first seminar teaching assignment, or whatever you want to call it.
I really like meeting instructors from different organizations who have different approaches. I hope that continues. More the merrier. I enjoyed what everyone else did, and hopefully they enjoyed what I brought to the table as well. At the same time, I am emotionally prepared for there to be some degree of die-off. I don’t consider that pessimistic; I just think it’s better to be prepared for the possibility because it might happen. Organizations and dojos may merge. Some people may jump ship to different organizations. That’s simply going to happen because we’re dealing with human beings. As long as there is some Aikido out there, though, I don’t think it will ever completely disappear.
I do spend time online, and I see some older senior instructors expressing concern that Aikido is going to fade away or exist in an increasingly diminished form over time. My response to that is shaped by something I experienced about a decade ago while visiting Hawaii. I attended a demonstration of Lua, the indigenous Hawaiian martial art. The group teaching it was selling books, so I bought one and read about its history. Lua had nearly gone extinct because of the colonization of Hawaii, the deliberate suppression of Hawaiian practices, and the loss of connections within the community. It took a conscious effort by several individuals to piece it back together. Literally, people saying things like, “Wait, my uncle’s uncle knew something,” and then trying to reconstruct the art from fragments. Now, is what they practice today exactly the same Lua that existed centuries ago? I don’t know. That’s a question for historians and anthropologists. But they brought back something. They’re studying it, preserving it, and rebuilding it. And that ties into that whole idea of discovery. If we lose something, perhaps we lose something, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it can never be reclaimed.
You can’t discount the possibility that, somewhere down the line, younger people may go, “Hey, there was this really interesting thing called Aikido.” One advantage we have that Lua didn’t is that we have video. Maybe the process will be clumsy. Maybe people will be watching old footage and trying to recreate things. But perhaps, through that process, they’ll rediscover aspects of the art. Maybe some of the people doing remarkable things today will still be around and able to pass on pieces of that knowledge. So, I don’t think the situation is as dire as some people believe.
I think there is room for concern, certainly. But at the same time, things come and go. If you look at Chinese kung fu, there are countless styles that have nearly gone extinct, or perhaps already have. Yet interest rises and falls over time, and sometimes things return. So, that’s kind of my attitude right now. I’m concerned, certainly. But I’m also hopeful. I don’t think Aikido is necessarily heading toward oblivion. I think it may change. It may shrink. It may transform. But transformation is something martial traditions have always gone through. And perhaps, someday, people will discover it all over again.
MAYTT: Thank you. This is a fun conversation. Let me look over my questions really quick…
DS: Honestly, these are things I don’t have a lot of people to talk to about, because I’m in kind of a weird intersection. I started Aikido in Japan, I’m Japanese American, I can speak the language, and I’ve spent most of my adult life studying Aikido with very established American aikidoka. That puts me in a position where I’m exposed to a couple of different worlds, but I don’t know many other people I can talk to who occupy that same space. Because of that, I know the reactions to some of the things I’ve been doing can be mixed. For example, with me uploading and sharing all of this dojo history, some people have been very appreciative, but I think some members of my own dojo are kind of like, “Why now?” And my response is, “Why not?” It’s interesting, and we’re in the middle of moving right now (June 2026). If I don’t do it now, it all just goes back into boxes and gathers dust for another decade. Seeing the huge outpouring of warm feelings from people rediscovering old memories and photographs (from my online posts) has really reinforced that for me. It made me think, “No, this is something we should be doing.” And I mean, yeah, it’s not the same thing as getting on the mat and training. Obviously, that’s the most important. But I do think these kinds of historical projects help remind us why we train in the first place.
MAYTT: I wholeheartedly agree! Speaking of Chicago Aikikai history, what would be the top three surprise moments of instances that stood out to you in the school’s history?
DS: Things that stood out to me? I have a long list, so it’s actually hard to pick them out when you ask me.
One of the big things has been seeing just how connected the Illinois Aikido Club was to the larger Aikido world. In my head, I had always kind of imagined that when the Illinois Aikido Club started, it was very isolated until Akira Tohei came along. I don’t know why I thought that, but I guess I always heard the story as, “Oh, these nisei started it.” So, it was fascinating to learn more about those connections. I knew Francis Takahashi was their second instructor, but then I started realizing the lengthy history behind Francis Takahashi Sensei and his father, Isao Takahashi Sensei. Then there was Marie Takahashi, Francis’s wife, who guest-instructed there in the early 1960s, before they were married. She had been a direct student of O-Sensei. Then I discovered that Koichi Tohei Sensei visited the Illinois Aikido Club twice between 1964 and 1965, and that the Illinois Aikido Club apparently even gave a loan to Yoshimitsu Yamada Sensei as he was getting the New York Aikikai started. Apparently, Yamada Sensei also made regular visits to Illinois Aikido Club in those early years. To me, all of that is a little wild.
I think it’s especially wild because of the later split, when Akira Tohei Sensei and several students went off and formed Midwest Aikido Center. I think one reason some of this history got suppressed is that the remaining Illinois Aikido Club members probably decided, consciously or unconsciously, that they weren’t going to talk about anything tied to that period. I get the impression that the Midwest people may have done something similar.
Recently, as I’ve been posting photos from seminars held during Akira Tohei Sensei’s time, I’ve seen comments from Midwest people that make me think, “Wait, have you never seen these photos?” And then I realize that maybe they really haven’t. I’m sure Tohei Sensei was unhappy with how things turned out, and perhaps he simply wanted to put those memories behind him. But in doing so, all of these amazing guest instructor events also got pushed aside. The seminars are mentioned in articles, but finding photographs has been difficult. So learning just how extensive those connections were has been kind of crazy.
Another surprise was seeing just how large the dojo once was. Looking at those old photos definitely makes me think, “Oh my God, we have so few students now. We’ve got our work cut out for us.” But this also ties into my thoughts about the future. When I see teachers lamenting that Aikido has lost popularity and that it’s difficult to attract students, those old photographs remind me that Aikido dojos – and really, all dojos – were never entirely self-supporting. They were deeply tied into their communities. The early dojos, especially, were connected to the Japanese American community. Recruitment was easy because you had a ready-made audience and a ready-made network of referrals. You were invited to demonstrate at picnics, festivals, and community events. You were part of a larger continuum. One thing that has happened over time is that as the demographics of some Japanese American-founded dojos changed, they became disconnected from those communities. In many cases, that support structure disappeared, and nothing came in to replace it. So, I think a smart dojo has to ask itself, “Okay, maybe we can’t plug into the Japanese American community anymore, but can we plug into our neighborhood?” That’s something I don’t think always occurs to people right away. Learning how important community support is, and realizing that you can’t rely on training alone, is probably one of the biggest lessons from studying this history. Exactly how those connections are going to be made in the future, I don’t know, but looking at the past certainly gives us food for thought.
Finally, my favorite discovery of all wasn’t really a surprise, but it was incredibly exciting. You saw the material we uncovered with those old film reels? At first, we thought all of the films had come from Japan. Then we discovered that one of them was actually local NBC News footage. That completely blew my mind because, two years ago, we got Chicago Aikikai featured in a small profile segment on local CBS news. Then to discover that, back in 1969, they had done something similar – it was like, “Wow, that’s crazy.” And actually, seeing Isao Takahashi Sensei alive and moving in those films, and being able to identify people whom I had only ever known in their older years, was incredible. Seeing them when they were younger, dynamic, and moving powerfully – it was surreal. Mentally, of course, you know that these people were once young and energetic. But I had never actually seen them that way before.
MAYTT: That is amazing. With Isao Takahashi, I found him in some photos through my old university library. I was disheartened that I could not change the descriptions to include Takahashi’s name.
DS: One of the funny things about all of this is that, with a lot of the older Japanese Americans, there’s this cultural tendency not to linger on the past. There’s also this sense that you’re not supposed to make too big a deal out of yourself or your accomplishments. You’re supposed to keep things low-key. So, I showed that film footage to Takahara Sensei, and I thought he would be really excited about it. Instead, he was very blasé. I literally showed it to him, and his observations were basically, “Oh yeah, that guy. And that guy. Oh, that guy was full of shit.” I didn’t say anything, but internally I was thinking, “None of this is actually helpful!” But it was interesting to see his attitude. Because for me, discovering that footage felt like finding the Ark of the Covenant.
To me, that’s fascinating, because when I post these things on Facebook, I can see the Midwest Aikido Center folks getting really excited seeing all these old faces again. At the same time, I know someone like Takahara Sensei isn’t on Facebook; he’s in his nineties, and I honestly don’t know if he would like any of this. In fact, I have the strangest feeling that if he had social media and saw what I was posting, the first thing he would say is, “Take it down.” I have a similar feeling that if Akira Tohei Sensei were still alive – and I knew him and his wife because they attended Midwest Buddhist Temple – if they could confront me about it, they might also say, “Take it down.” Because I think that older generation had a very strong sense of propriety. And part of that propriety also manifested as a certain sense of privacy. It was very much, “We don’t show off our past.” There was almost this attitude of, “Who would be interested in that?” And my reaction is, “Lots of people.”
MAYTT: That is what I have been seeing in my current research of American Kendo. There is a slight hesitation in discussing the past and as a historian, I want to know what happened in the past!
DS: I completely know where you’re coming from. I think it’s a very difficult thing. Being an American-born, university-educated person, I’m very used to the idea of asking probing, and sometimes difficult or uncomfortable, questions. But at the same time, as a Japanese American and as an Aikidoka, I also know there are certain things I’m simply not going to ask a shihan (for example). I remember witnessing a University of Chicago student talking to Saotome Sensei and basically asking, “Weren’t samurai just jerks with swords?” Man, was he offended.
Seeing that when I was younger was kind of a realization for me. Historical truth is important. I think for some of us, it’s very important. And I understand the idea of being probing and even somewhat unforgiving in our historical analysis. But at the same time, when you’re speaking to people who are, for lack of a better word, players in history, maybe it is worth approaching certain topics with a delicate hand. Their perspective and their role are different because they were actually there. They lived it.
I had a Chinese American aikidoka message me out of the blue once and ask, “How do you feel about the fact that O-Sensei was supported by right-wing Japanese government officials during World War II?” And my response was, “Listen, it was history. Who wasn’t (among Japanese wartime martial artists)?”
Part three coming soon!
