David Fultz began studying Judo in 1968 at the University of Chicago Judo Club, where he trained under Dr. Paul Harper and Barry Brunsden. In January 1975, Fultz began studying Aikido with John Eley at the University of Chicago Aikido Club. He remained with Eley for twenty-seven years, serving as his second in command and basically as uchi deshi for approximately ten years. During this time, Fultz also traveled to Hawaii and Japan to train and attended numerous National Instructors Conferences. Although he stopped teaching regularly in 2002, Fultz continued his personal practice through Ki Exercises, breathing, meditation, and Tai Chi. All images provided by David Fultz.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Hello Fultz Sensei! Thank you for joining us to talk about your time with John Eley and the development of Ki Society Aikido in Chicago!
DF: Thank you for having me.
MAYTT: You began studying judo in 1968. How did you eventually come to train in Aikido, and specifically with John Eley?
DF: Oh, this’ll be fun. I first started in judo in 1968 at the University of Chicago Judo Club, which was run by Dr. Paul Harper. That was about the time when I was going off to college, so I would just be practicing in the summers and on the holidays. One of my teachers in the club was Barry Brunsden, and Barry was good friends with John Eley. He had practiced with John at the Illinois Aikido Club. The Judo Club had regular parties, so I would meet John at those parties, but I was off at college. When I came back in January 1975, the Judo Club and the University of Chicago Aikido Club had mats right next to one another in the gym. Barry said, “Hey, you ought to go over there and try that ki stuff with John Eley. I think you might like it.” So, that’s what I did.
For about the next three years, I did both. That turned out to cause a case of schizophrenia because, if you’re not trained up enough, if you aren’t expert enough, you tend to mix the techniques in your head. John would show something, and the first thing I would instinctually do was judo because I had been doing it for seven years. After about three years, though, I decided I really did like this aikido stuff and moved over, training exclusively with John, though I still went to Judo Club parties. Right around that time, the University of Chicago Aikido Club was requested to leave the university because half of the students weren’t students. I was an alumnus, so I guess I could pass, but we moved across the street to the Blue Gargoyle community center, which was hosted by a church right across the street from the university gym. We practiced there for several years and then moved to another dojo outside of the Hyde Park area.
John told you that story in his interview about being in sub-zero temperatures and trying to put up a chimney. It was true. He was on the sidewalk, on the icy sidewalk, on a ladder, holding up the two-story high sheet metal vent while I was on the roof, half-deep in snow, nailing in the top of the chimney. Dojo stories. . . .
I continued with John for twenty-seven years. I was his second in command, and I was basically uchi deshi for ten years. Over the forty years John taught, he had twelve dojos, which I still can’t believe. We started off on the South Side, then moved to the Loop area at 13th and Wabash, then up to Lincoln Park, where I now live, and then further up to Belmont. John eventually ended up in Mount Prospect, in the northern suburbs of Chicago. That was actually a full-blown, pretty fancy, dojo that he himself contributed a lot of money to support, but it just didn’t work. The expenses got too high, and by that point, I had had enough. This was 2002. I had been teaching three to five times a week for twenty-plus years, and when you also have a full-time job, that gets to be a bit much. An inherited nerve disorder also started to rear its ugly head around then so it seemed the right time to discover other things in life other than aikido.
MAYTT: Speaking of your training, how would you describe the training that you received from John, and in what ways did that training change and evolve over time?
DF: John was very much in the line of Koichi Tohei Sensei, through the Hawaiians, including Francis Takahashi and Isao Takahashi. The reason why John stayed within that line is, as he said, “They teach me something.” They don’t just demonstrate; they teach it so that I can learn how to do it. I felt exactly the same way, and the longer I’ve practiced, the more I feel that ki training, the Ki Society way of doing it, is a really great way to learn.
John’s training would vary from day to day, but maybe you would look at one technique, such as shiho nage, and he would take it apart and show you how the principles apply. Yes, you’d learn about where your feet should go and all of that kind of thing, but the main thing was, are you relaxed completely? Where is your ki extending? He would break it apart and then put it back together. The next class might be three or four techniques, maybe three different kokyu nages. You would practice each, and so on. Each class started with ki exercises, and there was usually some Ki meditation at the end, unless everybody was already done-in for the day. As testing time came up, the pace quickened, and in later years, when Tohei Sensei started the taigi, the formal paired forms, there was also taigi practice. You would do the techniques in a row and be evaluated on your rhythm, largeness, and the form you were doing. But most of John’s teaching was how to take apart aikido and put it back together following the principles. That was true in every class. There was always something there. For advanced people, sometimes the class involved just beating the hell out of you.
There were numerous times when John and I were sitting around at the dojo, maybe nobody had come in yet, and we’d be chatting about one thing or another, the way you do. One time, sometime in the 2000s, John said, “How many times have we done ukemi in our training? How many falls have we taken over the years?” We figured it was well past 100,000 falls each. Certainly, in an advanced class, you could probably do 100 falls in a class, no problem at all. And they were fun!
One of the unique parts of the Ki Society training method was that it was continuously developing. Tohei Sensei was always looking at things and asking, “Am I really following the principles?” If he looked at a technique again and decided it could be done better, he would change it so that it aligned better with the principles. He wasn’t just showing some fancy new technique. He was going back and saying, “Well, this one, you really have to do that in order for it to work properly.” John was doing the same thing in his own way. Unlike anybody else I knew, he was thinking about aikido twenty-four hours a day. When he discovered YouTube, he would see somebody doing something and say, “Hey, let’s try that.” He would come back into class and try things. There was a wonderful judo practitioner named Wally Jay who practiced what Jay called Small-Circle Jujitsu. John just loved Wally Jay because, when you really looked at what Wally Jay was doing, it was based on ki principles all the way down. John wanted to try one of Jay’s one-finger techniques, so we tried it. Gosh, it worked! That’s what John did—perpetually thinking about the application of ki principles and correct technique.
I think anybody who has practiced for any amount of time and loves the art thinks about aikido and its applications in daily life – how to do something better, how to hold a hammer better, and so on. But I think John was really unique in that it was all the time. He was also a sumi-e painter. I suggested that he bring in his brushes and show people what he was doing. Lo and behold, what was he doing? He was thinking about using ki principles and a calm mind while he was painting. He also played and taught classical guitar. I played, too, and we would talk about it. He’d say, “You know that passage in De Falla’s The Three Cornered Hat? In that measure, the only way to do it is to keep weight underside on the third finger.” That’s what he was like. And, as I told you, the other part to him was the endless dojo stories. Endless. He had started in 1961 or 1962, so he had a lot of them.
MAYTT: Did you ever travel to Hawaii and Japan and train there? If you did, what were some of your experiences there?
DF: In 1980, fairly early on, I went to Hawaii and Japan. In Hawaii, I was profoundly lucky to train a little bit with Yukiso Yamamoto Sensei. Just a wonderful teacher! I also visited Tanoue Tenshin, who was a Zen master whom Toyoda invited to teach a seminar in Chicago not long before I left on my trip. Then I went on to Japan and spent several weeks at Headquarters, training multiple times a day and having a wonderful time. That is also where I met Dave Shaner, Sensei Shaner. He was training there at the time and was also working on his PhD dissertation, I think, on Nishida Kitaro, the Japanese philosopher.
Dave and I basically said hello to one another. We were both there for training, and that was about it. But it was simply wonderful. In 1980, I was only five years into training, and I was already becoming absolutely mad about it. There’s this point that starts around shodan and nidan where, if it catches you, it sinks the hooks in all the way. It’s all you want to do. Then you realize, “Oh, you mean I have to work full-time in order to continue to practice?”
MAYTT: How did those experiences outside of Chicago influence your understanding of what John was teaching?
DF: From 1975 to the early 1980s, John and I would often go up and visit Toyoda’s dojo. John also encouraged all of his students to go and visit anybody and everybody – not just Ki Society, not just traditional aikido. If there were some really good judo people somewhere, he would tell you to go over and see what they were doing. That was his standard stance throughout his career. I did that, although not as much as John did. He visited just about everybody. After Fumio Toyoda was removed from the Ki Society, we didn’t go up all that much anymore.
When I was in Hawaii, I trained with Yamamoto Sensei for a very brief time, and it was just like training with John. John’s attitude toward the fundamental ideas of aikido was exactly the same as Yamamoto Sensei’s. Then, of course, you go to Tokyo and look around at all of these wonderful teachers, and it wasn’t as though I was seeing anything new. John had already shown me that stuff. Yes, those things changed over time, and yes, I had endless amounts to learn when I was there, but it wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t, “Oh, this is completely different from what I learned from John.” No. So, I would say that was the answer: John’s steadfast search for the best kind of aikido, with mind and body coordinated, characterized everything that he did and everything that he taught, and it had an effect on anybody he worked with or taught at seminars.
He used to go down and teach seminars at Mark Rubbert’s dojo in St. Louis. I was so interested because, when I went down there one time and was chatting with some of the students, and one of them, I think it was Sue Shepard, said, “Oh, we just love when John comes.” I said, “Really?” She said, “Yeah, this stuff seems so clear when he talks about it.” I thought, “Really? Okay.” “Well, your teacher, Mark, is pretty good.” She said, “Yes, but John… John’s got something.”
MAYTT: Every two years, there were National Instructors Conferences. Who would you typically see at those events, and how interconnected was the Ki Society community?
DF: It’s a while ago now, so I can’t remember them all. You would have Tohei Sensei and then Koretoshi Maruyama after Tohei had sort of retired from traveling. Later, Tohei Sensei’s son, Shinichi, would normally teach as well.
What you had were the chief instructors. I would always see Koichi Kashiwaya from Seattle, later the Chief Instructor of the United States, Tetsuji Nonaka from the Big Island and Shinichi Suzuki Sensei from Maui. Chris Curtis would also come from Maui. Clarence Chinn from Southern California. Then, of course, we had Dave Shaner, and in John’s cohort there was John Eley, Kirk Fowler from the Arizona Ki Society, Terry Pierce from New Jersey, and George Simcox from Virginia. Sometimes Calvin Tabata from Portland would attend. In the early days, in the 1970s, I think I saw Shuji Maruyama there once. Then there were Shizuo Imaizumi and Toyoda, of course, until Toyoda was removed and Imaizumi voluntarily left in the mid-1980s. Those were the main instructors, and then there were a whole bunch of other people. Stan Haehl started showing up regularly, Pietro Maeda from Berkeley, and Brenda Tam from Portland was wonderful. There were also a whole bunch of the Maui Aikido people. There were several National Instructors Conferences in Maui. Hmm, gee, wonder why.
There were two reasons, of course. It’s a nice place to visit, and it’s also closest to Japan, so you weren’t paying the senior instructors to fly all the way from Japan to New York, or wherever. That’s another component of those national instructor seminars: they’re expensive to put on. You really want to have one, two, or three hundred people attending because you have to pay the instructors, rent the venue, get the mats, and handle all of that kind of thing. So, it was really only the larger dojos that could support them. One time, they asked John if he would have a conference, and John said, “Yeah, sure, but we’re so small. We can’t do a big one.” So, there was a smaller cohort that came to Chicago, with nobody from Japan. That was it. Otherwise, it was the folks who had dojos large enough to support the event. The later conferences also included Kagan Arik from the University of Chicago and Vic Montgomery. Mark Rubbert at the St. Louis Ki Society was almost always there. It was a very collegial atmosphere. There were no conflicts between East Coast and West Coast, or whatever. We were all just really happy to be there with our peers, trade stories, go out to dinner afterward, find out how your dojo was doing, and hear what so-and-so had said.
I always had a quizzical feeling about setting up chief instructors for the different areas. I know that Tohei and the board in Tokyo were trying to start a new organization, so you have to give it some structure and all that kind of thing. But John was appointed Chief Instructor, and John’s total student population was maybe fifty people for the entire Midwest. That just didn’t make all that much sense.
Calvin Tabata in Portland had a really wonderful big dojo, so that made more sense. Out on the East Coast, Dave Shaner was going all up and down the coast after George Simcox passed away, so Dave was doing much more in the northern part there. It still struck you as being kind of weird to have a chief instructor when the number of actual dojos and practitioners was really relatively tiny. There are probably more aikido practitioners in metropolitan Tokyo than there are in all of the United States in the Ki Society. But you can see why they were doing it, and it worked out. As I said, it was very collegial. There were no real commotions or splits apart, aside from the Japanese instructors that Tohei Sensei had sent over, some who eventually decided to move away from the Ki Society for their individual reasons.
What’s very interesting to me now is that when I look at all of the dojos flowing by on my Facebook feed—Facebook has decided I’m really interested in aikido. There’s definitely a whole new crop – fourth dans, fifth dans, and so on – many of whom I don’t know. I knew their teachers, but many of them are new. And in traditional aikido there are now over one hundred sixth dan and above on the New York Aikikai yudansha list! That Yoshimitsu Yamada guy was pretty busy! He produced an awful lot of good people. So, I think that’s what I would say. The instructor conferences were much appreciated by all of us, and we all enjoyed them immensely. I don’t know when the next one is, but I want them to keep going with that because that’s how you inspire people, too. When you train with really top instructors, whether they’re American or Japanese, and we have plenty of top instructors here now, it’s inspiring. That’s what gets people energized.
MAYTT: You also brought up membership within the Ki Society and John’s relatively small following in Chicago. From your perspective, what were some of the factors that hindered the growth of Ki Society and aikido in Chicago and on the national scene?
DF: In Chicago, John was a terrible promoter and I wasn’t much better. I would try, “Let’s go out and do some demonstrations, John.” “Oh… okay…”
It’s also a chicken-and-egg problem. You need to have enough people who have enough experience to start spreading out. When you have a small dojo, let’s say under thirty people attending regularly, it’s going to take four or five years before you get a couple of shodans. They may actually just want to stay. John always encouraged us to go out and teach. His teacher, Isao Takahashi, told John, “You go out and teach. Get out there.” That’s how John started the Northwestern Club, the University Club, and another one. So, I think it is literally the chicken-and-egg problem. It’s having enough senior people. You don’t have to be a fifth dan. You can go out and teach at shodan or nidan or even brown belt. You’ll still know more than your students. But building that up is hard because it literally costs money to open an independent dojo. That’s why I keep ringing the bell about the European model. It’s so much easier if there’s a gym or something like that.
Quite often here in the States, a major part of martial arts – whether judo, karate, aikido, or whatever – is the universities. You can go to any of the big state universities and find somebody practicing martial arts. In the older days, one of the reasons why judo spread as much as it did is because pretty much every YMCA you walked into had a judo club. From the 1950s onward, service people were coming back from Japan after World War II and Korea, and they wanted to start clubs. The YMCAs were one of the places to do it. John always said that he felt the best schools were ones where the teacher didn’t have to make the business go. That sounds strange at first, but think about how martial arts works. On the mat, the teacher is everything. What the teacher says goes. Yet the teacher is also expected to be the one to promote the dojo. Unless you have a model like the Illinois Aikido Club, where they had a full board, were a corporation, and employed the teachers, the teacher has to do the promotion and all of that kind of thing. For a small club in general, it’s the teacher. And, as in so many disciplines, you may be a really, really good computer programmer, but you may be a terrible marketing person. The two don’t necessarily go together. It’s not just aikido, but martial arts in general.
COVID was horrible. You couldn’t teach. Teaching aikido on Zoom? Well, we managed, sort of, but it’s not the same as reaching out and grabbing somebody’s wrist.
My impression is that judo clubs, karate clubs, and all that kind of thing have also noticed a reduction in the number of new students coming through the door. The one exception seems to be France. When I look at pictures of dojos, what’s interesting is how old the US people in the pictures are compared to the people in French dojos. There are a lot more young people over there in France and England. I don’t have an answer for why that is, but I have my suspicions. For one thing, the French government explicitly supports dojos at community centers. With a bit of handwaving, there are 1,200 aikido dojos in France, almost the same number as there are in all of the US and that’s in a country one fifth the size. If there’s a club nearby and it doesn’t cost you much of anything to go there, then you’ll try it. What are most dojos charging now, whether aikido or judo or whatever? One hundred? One hundred twenty a month? Something like that? That’s a chunk of change. Even with inflation and all that kind of thing, if I were starting a dojo again, I’d probably peg it around $100 a month if you’re coming a couple of times a week. But there’s that resistance. Here in the States, I think what people know of martial arts is not necessarily what we want them to know about martial arts. I don’t have an answer about that, but I suspect there’s insufficient infrastructure here to allow small clubs to begin to grow the people who will eventually spread it out. You need more and more of them.
Part two coming soon!
