In 2023, I was in conversations with an intermediary to scheduling an interview with John Eley, one of the longest American students of Koichi Tohei and active member within the Ki Society. Unfortunately, the interview never materialized, however I was offered a previous interview Eley did in 2008. The quality is not the greatest, however, such aikido history must be retained for future generations. As an ongoing project, I have transcribed the first interview and edited Eley’s responses into one continuous narrative. Any mistakes are my own. Read the first part here.
Isao Takahashi stayed with us through spring, summer, fall, and winter, then went back home to his wife in California. Originally Hawaiian, his family sent him back to Japan to learn Japanese and the culture. In Japan, he studied judo and kendo. He told me he liked aikido because it helped everyone. He said in Japan, when he was doing kendo, he had 500 people at first dan, but by the time he made fifth dan, maybe two were left, because kendo is heavily competitive and eliminative. He trained in Japan in judo, kendo, and other arts, then came back to Hawaii, relearning English with me. He formed his own business and trained mostly in kendo and a little judo.
When Tohei Sensei came, Isao Takahashi and Yukiso Yamamoto Sensei were among the people who first uke’d with him and then converted. Isao started traveling locally and later moved to California, partly because his wife was a successful businesswoman. He moved too and started a small club in California, which later became a major dojo. He wasn’t happy, but we benefited from that because he said his wife didn’t jump at the offer to come to Chicago.
That’s why I tell people I like Hawaiian instructors; they understand American culture and Japanese tradition and know how to blend the two well. Hirata was from Japan and young, so we kind of “ruined” him early; he wasn’t as much of a problem. Akira Tohei was rigid to start with, and the cultural differences meant he probably never really understood us. He thought we were crazy, and a good percentage of us thought he was crazy. Most Japanese instructors from Japan who came to Chicago were young and didn’t stay long enough to worry about things.
Yoshimitsu Yamada Sensei came through. Chicago is between the West Coast and East Coast, so all instructors going east went through us. Yamada came to Chicago before New York and practiced with us for a while. I have a film of myself getting thrown around by Yamada. He threw you until you fell over. When he first came, he was so fast that two people would be looking at each other, not knowing what was happening. It took us a while to slow him down. We “Westernized” him.
Speaking of Westernizing Japanese instructors, I was drinking pop before class, which horrified Hirata. Hirata was just visiting and saw a pop machine in the back. He was horrified – no pop after or before class. It took a week or two before we got him used to drinking pop. Years later, I went back, and they had vending machines in the dojo – not just pop but beer too.
Isao Takahashi was really the last real instructor I looked up to and had a special relationship with. Francis was too young, but good. Hirata had awesome aikido technique. But Isao Takahashi was like a father figure who took a real interest in me.
I remember once, the last time Tohei was here before he formed the Ki Society, around 1966 or 1967, I was walking down the street with Tohei Sensei on one side and Takahashi Sensei on the other. Takahashi turned to me and said, “How would you like to be sandan?” I was surprised. He said, “Tohei and I talked, and we thought you should be promoted to sandan.” At that time, there was no test for it. That’s how I got sandan; every time Tohei came, I got promoted. I guess I was spoiled. After that, around 1968 or 1969, Takahashi decided to leave and go back to California.
We wrote to Tohei Sensei, who sent Akira Tohei. That was a big mistake. Akira was completely different – much more traditional – and couldn’t talk much about ki principles at first. He was extremely rigid and very set in his ways. He didn’t regard any of the senior instructors, including me, who was third degree, Saburo Tanaka, who was third or fourth degree, and Red Sakamoto, who was nidan. By the time Akira Tohei came [in 1972], the club was close to 200 members, the largest aikido club in the area.
By the time Akira came to Chicago, the formal Illinois club moved three times: the first time was from a small downstairs space to 3223 Clark Street near Belmont, a large area. That’s where Francis was before Chester left, so Chester got to see it. The dressing room was at the back, with a huge air conditioner that froze anyone who turned it on, while the rest of the place was roasting. There was a couch and meeting area for talking after class, and a partition separating the men’s and women’s changing areas. In front of the women’s area was a mirror with a circle design, which was always there. The original club had a mirror at the front, but because the club was small, bars were placed there to prevent people from running into it. The original dojo floor was made of two-by-fours, which would break and cause nails to pop up, so we often had to stop class to hammer them down.
When we moved, we got real mats and many old members were tradesmen – electricians, plumbers, and carpenters. It’s nice to have tradesmen when you move a dojo. You don’t have to buy fluorescent lights; an electrician can get them from a job site. Carpenters and other tradesmen helped out too. Nowadays, aikido students tend to be computer types, which isn’t the same clientele. I always preferred tradespeople – bricklayers, for example – because of the way they move.
We kept training with Takahashi until we made another big move to Bryn Mawr, an old bowling alley. The dojo was on the second and third floors of an old bowling alley. When we moved in, it had an inch-raised floor. I remember working there in the summer with no fans – it was easy to turn black from the heat. Essentially, they tore the gutters off the lanes and laid them flat, creating a flat, raised floor. This was great because when throwing people, if you don’t have a cushion, you’d hit plaster and the floor underneath. But since it was a bowling alley, the workout surface was built to absorb the force of a bowling ball, so it was very durable. The changing rooms were located on the second floor. This was huge. We ran two classes. That was what we had our top membership of 200. Takahashi was there briefly and then Akira Tohei came.
Even though the dojo had 200 people, the leadership never believed in advertising, interestingly. In fact, when we finally moved to the bigger location, there was a huge debate about whether to put a sign on the door. Some argued, “If you don’t put up a sign, how will people know you’re there?” But others didn’t want to advertise. We did give demonstrations, though.
There was this one guy – a lawyer and a weird character – who became the janitor. They paid him about sixty dollars a month as a cleaning fee. He took that money and hired a sign painter to paint the sign on the door. At the next board of directors meeting, people were yelling about the sign, but they didn’t want to pay to remove it. I kind of liked that lawyer type – if something needed doing, he’d take the money and get it done, but it always caused arguments and waves.
During that time, I learned a lot about politics. In a small club, there isn’t much politics, but with a large club, factions always develop. I had a faction that would come to my classes, not because we recruited, but because people liked the way I taught. They’d follow me. I never liked it that much because it’s dangerous – people start thinking you’re really great, and you can start believing it yourself. If people constantly tell you how great you are, it’s risky. I tried to discourage it, but these cliques formed anyway.
The Illinois club was run by a small group of people: Saburo Tanaka, Chester Sasaki, Red Sakamoto, and me for a while early on. Later, I took on more direct responsibilities. The same people ran the club year after year. In the 1970s, new people told me I was progressive (maybe because I had a beard) and that the club was run by cronies. I said, “Why don’t you run for the board of directors?” They did and were elected unanimously. A few of them joined the board along with Red Sakamoto and others. Then I came to nominate officers through the board. I named one of these new guys president, but he refused. So Saburo Tanaka remained president because nobody else wanted the job. Every position ended up being held by the same people because nobody wanted to do the work. I learned a deep political lesson: people run things because they’re willing to work. Democracy doesn’t mean much unless people are willing to do the work. At least they got on the board, but it opened my eyes.
The general feeling in the club was that everyone wanted to practice aikido. People believed the club would fall apart if you didn’t do things their way, but no matter how many people we had, it managed fine as long as there was no nut case. Political battles mostly just wasted energy. On the mat, you practiced under one instructor. The only time things got divisive was between Isao Takahashi and Akira Tohei. When there was no set chief instructor, factions formed, and people wanted me to teach or Isao to teach. Isao was senior by three months, but he started off training elsewhere, so I didn’t teach. That tension began to happen, but when a senior instructor was appointed again, the divisions disappeared. Akira Tohei once got mad at me because I misspelled his name (I can’t spell it anyway). I once had bronchitis, and no one told him. When I had to stop occasionally, he told the top instructor I never had anything wrong. What he really meant was: if you have to give an impression, it doesn’t matter what’s real.
One time, Bob Breiner – nicknamed “The Assassin” because of his job firing people – was always at odds with Akira Tohei. After class one day, Bob looked exhausted. I asked what was wrong. He said he noticed Akira was out of breath after class. Bob suggested doing private classes to train together, but Akira tore him apart, saying chief instructors never get out of breath and you don’t tell them that. Another time, I invited Akira to give a demonstration at the University of Chicago. Bob came along. A few days later, Bob was depressed again. When I asked why, he said, “Akira claimed he fell better for John Healy than for him.” But Bob didn’t fall better for anyone. His ukemi skills were solid.
In 1974, when Akira Tohei came [Akira Tohei first arrived in Chicago two years earlier], I started teaching at the University of Chicago along with Nakamoto, who was a researcher and one of the main sponsors. That’s how the UC club began. My chief assistant at the time was a man named Carl Frog, who was later replaced by David Falsewood. Carl was my right-hand guy.
The University of Chicago club continued until I eventually started my own club, probably in the late 1970s or early 1980s. That marked a new chapter. When I first started my own club, Akira Tohei was the chief instructor. However, in 1974, Koichi Tohei broke away from Aikikai to form the Ki Society. Akira Tohei saw that as a betrayal. He felt Tohei Sensei had committed a heinous act. Akira supported the Hombu-style traditional aikido, and many senior members followed him. I kept trying to argue with Akira because he’d tell all these stories about how horrible and crazy Koichi Tohei was. He’d say he was crazy for breaking away, but I didn’t buy into that entirely. Meanwhile, a number of senior members, possibly out of their dislike for Akira, secretly formed what became the Chicago Ki Society. I wasn’t involved at first because I was still trying to keep things together with the main dojo.
Maybe they formed the group because Akira was so disliked by the senior members. They hated him because he would mark attendance cards, and he’d mark ours on the back of the card. So, when people were working toward promotion and Akira Tohei went off to help in Milwaukee or somewhere, we senior instructors would mark the hours. Then he’d come back and erase all the marks, just because he’d been out of town. Apparently, the senior instructors weren’t good enough to him.
Koichi Tohei came to Chicago in the summer of 1974 with Fumio Toyoda Sensei. I wanted to speak to Tohei Sensei and get his side of the story. Red thought I was doing it because I hated Akira Tohei, but he told me to wait. Still, I went to talk with Tohei. Ultimately, I stayed with the Ki Society because Tohei and his students were the only ones who had ever really taught me anything. Tohei Sensei taught how to do aikido. Others just demonstrated, and you had to copy it. It was a night-and-day difference. The original plan was that Toyoda Sensei would stay for two years and then rotate out – chief instructors were supposed to rotate – but that idea wasn’t practical, especially with instructors coming from New York.
Tanaka and others had also had bad experiences with Akira Tohei. They didn’t want the instructor to be in complete control; they wanted the board of directors to run things and to be able to fire the instructor if necessary. Shortly after I joined the Ki Society, I found out why Red had advised waiting. The senior instructors had fired Akira Tohei, but they did it secretly. They coordinated by phone to avoid a general meeting. When Akira found out, he called a general meeting anyway, and the vote split fifty-fifty. All the newer members sided with Akira. The result was a split of money and members; at the time, there were nearly 200 members. Akira went off and formed his own Midwest Federation [Midwest Aikido Center]. The Illinois club drifted for a while. It was left under Red Sakamoto and Lester Kasura. After about a year, the club affiliated with Mitsugi Saotome Sensei and grew stronger over time.
Toyoda was very dynamic. In his first year, he gave over a hundred demonstrations. Membership jumped from about twenty-five to over a hundred in just one year. I continued teaching at the University of Chicago and also taught at Northwestern for a while. When Carl Frogner left UC, Dave Fultric joined me. Eventually, I decided to form an independent dojo, no longer affiliated with the university, though we continued the UC club for a time. We moved across the street to the Blue Gargoyle, mostly because we had too many non-student members. UC got paranoid and kicked us out. We moved, still had UC students, and this was likely in the late 1970s. I decided to go full-time, one of my many attempts (and failures) to run a sustainable dojo. I rented a storefront in South Shore, but Hyde Park folks wouldn’t come down there. We gained some local members, but weren’t fully part of the community.
That location had a gas-heated system that needed a vent. We didn’t install it until winter, and I remember standing on a ladder in -3°F weather, on the roof, trying to screw in the exhaust vent, freezing and dropping things on my head. Eventually, we had to move. From there, we relocated to 1300 South Wabash, near the South Loop. It seemed promising. We offered free classes and a box of rubble to members willing to help tear down partitions. We ran it for a while, but I was still traveling to Toyoda’s dojo on weekends. Every year, Toyoda would promise to promote me to fourth dan, but he never followed through. I had been promoted to third dan in 1966 when Tohei was still with Aikikai.
Our most successful dojo was in the Clybourn Corridor, thanks to a student with connections at the Museum of Natural History. We held a six-week cultural course on aikido and used the museum’s mailing list. Thirty or forty people would show up, and many joined the dojo. We had between twenty and thirty consistent members. The dojo was near Ashland on Clybourn, which is an angled street, making it hard for new people to find us. We’d get calls from people saying, “Where are you?” It was a nice dojo with a raised mat. This was just before the area gentrified, so rent was still cheap.
Then, one of our members offered a donation, and we moved to Belmont Avenue, near California Avenue. That was a mistake. The place had high visibility and lots of traffic, but no one ever came in. We didn’t have a proper sign – just something in the window that looked more like a restaurant than a dojo. That lasted through the 1980s.
In 1980, I attended a seminar in New York where Tohei Sensei was present. I asked him about my rank since Toyoda had kept promising promotion. Tohei told me not to worry, he’d handle it. A couple of months later, Toyoda informed me I had been promoted to fourth dan. I knew where that came from.
Toyoda himself was doing well. His first dojo was near Broadway and Grace. Most dojos were in borderline neighborhoods – too expensive to be in the wealthy areas, and too risky to be in bad ones. He later moved to Ashland Avenue to a second-story former bowling alley, which we converted. By then, I was already a fourth dan. Around 1976, I had struggled with alcoholism and entered rehab. I’d often drink alone or go out after class and end up not remembering what I’d said. After rehab, I quit drinking. Once sober, I was more dependable and remembered what I said. By the time I got my fourth dan, I had already stopped drinking.
Toyoda asked me once where my loyalties were. I told him: “Tohei Sensei, then you.” After that, Toyoda became cautious with me, afraid I might report back to Tohei. I never did, though. Still, Tohei made me head of the Midwest Ki Federation, essentially his man in Toyoda’s camp. When Toyoda committed an outrage, Tohei would write to me, and I’d relay his concerns. Often it was a misunderstanding, but still, it was a balancing act.
Back in 1976, Toyoda had tried to buy out the board members and take ownership of the club. Tohei supported him and even offered him money for the buyout. I stayed with Toyoda, but others, like Sab, Bentley, and others, left. They didn’t want one instructor to have all the power. When Tohei expelled Toyoda from the Ki Society in 1981/2, he asked me to visit and apologize to John Omori and Sab Tanaka. John Omori had quit aikido in 1964 due to a bad back and other reasons. Though not physically active in the club, he remained engaged. Tohei had a lot of respect for him because Omori opposed Toyoda’s takeover. So Tohei sent me to apologize to him personally. It was an eye-opening experience.
Read the first part here.
To learn more about aikido and its history in America, click here.
