The Jo Kata That Never Became A Kata

“The Kata That Never Became A Kata” Technical points: at the end of the “kata“ - after what we would call Hidari Nagare Gaeshi Uchi and then Migi Nagare Gaeshi Tsuki, Sensei in the original film does Jodan Gaeshi Uchi (Hayagaeshi) to return to the frontal direction. At this point, Saito Sensei doesn’t return fully to the front (180 degrees) but rather goes to an angle before finishing in tsuki no kamae to the front. I have chosen to make this final turn a 180 degree turn. In film footage recorded by Robert Nadeau Sensei in Iwama in 1964, at the end of this footage you see Morihiro Saito Sensei performing two jo kata. The first one is clearly the 31 Kata – which is one of the two standard kata we have in our Iwama aikido tradition, along with the 13 Kata. The last kata you see Saito Sensei doing is one that seems to never have been introduced into our curriculum. It is a beautiful, flowing form, and we can recognize quite many movements that later became jo suburi. But this sequence itself never became a standard form that Saito Sensei taught. Some people consider this to possibly be a proto-13 Kata. I see some of the same movements as in the 13 Kata, but not in the same sequences. So, I personally don’t think this is the beginning of the 13 Kata. It has also been said that this is just Saito Sensei doing free form jo techniques. I don’t agree with this theory either. Knowing Saito Sensei personally, having been a direct student of his for 18 years, I know that when someone was documenting him doing aikido techniques – he wouldn’t just improvise. He knew that these films would be shown around the world and he would only want to have present techniques that would be properly representative of the aikido that he was doing at that time. I have asked Inagaki Sensei, Bill Witt Sensei, Paolo Corallini Sensei and Ulf Evenås Sensei, all of whom have trained extensively under Saito Sensei, and none of them had ever seen Sensei teaching this form. In 1964 Saito Sensei was busy codifying the weapons forms that he had learned directly from O-Sensei. In the aforementioned film footage, you can see that the ken suburi are slightly different in comparison to the forms that we now know. The 31 Kata was already pretty much solidified, but there is a hasso gaeshi uchi at the end in the old form that no longer is a part of the standard for that we use now. Saito Sensei always told us that the 31 Kata was a form that he saw O-Sensei performing often enough so that he could replicate the form in its entirety. He told that the 13 Kata was a part of a longer form that O-Sensei did, but that he couldn’t replicate the form in its entirety, so he chose to keep the form to the 13 movements that we have today – these were the ones that he was sure of. My take on this “Kata That Never Became A Kata” is that Saito Sensei was working on the more fluid forms that O-Sensei was primarily using and making them into shorter and more comprehensible versions. These forms became the 20 aiki jo suburi that we now have as our standard forms. It is also important to emphasize that it was Saito Sensei himself that made the 20 aiki jo suburi . based on what he saw O-Sensei doing. It is also important to emphasize that O-Sensei approved of these forms personally, when Saito Sensei showed them to him. The story goes, that in the beginning, O-Sensei wasn’t all too happy about the weapons techniques being broken down into components. But Saito Sensei was adamant about this, and explained to O-Sensei the importance of making the weapons forms more accessible to those who wanted to learn aiki jo and aiki ken. O-Sensei could see the reasoning behind this and gave his permission for this to be done. Note that O-Sensei was a witness to everything that Saito Sensei was doing in his training and teaching (you can see old film footage of Saito Sensei teaching class while O-Sensei is observing the training). In this “kata” you can see: tsuki jodan gaeshi uchi (hayagaeshi), hachi no ji gaeshi, hasso gaeshi tsuki, hasso gaeshi ushiro uchi, hidari nagare gaeshi uchi and migi nagare gaeshi tsuki. Those are six suburi that are now part of our standard 20 aiki jo suburi. So, I believe that what we can see are the first steps taken by Saito Sensei in creating the 20 aiki jo suburi; instead of making them in kata form, he put them into components, that then became the 20 suburi. If you enjoy this type of content please visit our Copenhagen Aiki Shuren Dojo YouTube channel. Ethan Weisgard, Dojo cho Copenhagen Aiki Shuren Dojo