Juxtapositions

by liberal japonicus

Perhaps some strange juxtapositions, but I just came across this substack piece, entitled Bad Aikido is Bad for Business right after I listened to this NYTimes interview with Min Jin Lee, author of Pachiko. There was a zoom meeting discussing this that I unfortunatley missed (though it seemed like an open event, so I wonder about zoom bombing), so I’m not sure if I’m being fair to the essay as I haven’t read the book connected to it, but let me explain the essay and what it made me think of.

The article centers around the book That Stupid Girl: And the Petition to Support Women in the United States Aikido Federation by Judith Teitle and to summarize the essay:

• Paragraph 1 suggests that something happened back in the day, and some progress was made
• The following contrasts that with a more recent event in 2019
• But in the takeaways section, the old event represents an issue that has been present all along

The essay makes the claim that Virginia Mayhew, an early pioneer in Aikido, was forced out of an organization that she founded, the New York Aikikai. Not only that, but her arm was broken by Yoshimitsu Yamada, the person who was dispatched to the US by founder of Aikido to teach the art. The article claims that “directly and clearly threatened to hurt women on the mat who signed the petition, and retaliated physically against a USAF female teacher after she refused to disavow the effort. A horrifying and well-documented story from the early years of New York Aikikai recounted in the book (see the photo above) suggests that this kind of bullying of women by Yamada is nothing new.”

The first mentioned retaliation seems to have been recent, but I’ve read a lot about the early history of Aikido and how it made its way to the West but I’m not sure about the documentation of the latter one. An interview with Yamada has this

At that time all aikido outside of Japan was controlled by Tohei Sensei. So when this woman called Virginia Mayhew came to Japan, my family and I took care of her personally and we became friends. Actually I wanted to go to Paris, because of my connection with Abe. But because I spoke a little English, I went to New York. I’m glad I made that choice. Also because I spoke English I taught at American bases everyday. That was a big thing for Headquarters.

Also, having read about the history of aikido, I know that the dojo atmosphere as well as the first experiences of foreigners with Aikido at the main dojo (called the Hombu) were pretty brutal. So while it is possible that Yamada broke Mayhew’s arm, attributing it to Yamada’s bad intention seems to be reading the present on to the past. I also understand that an absence in the record doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.

The piece also implies that Mayhew was forced out of the NY Aikikai by Yamada. This also deserves unpacking. Here is a biography of Mayhew, and it notes that she had just divorced the co-founder of NY Aikikai, Eddie Hagihara, and went to train in Japan. Yamada himself says he was dispatched to NY, as is common in Japanese martial arts, to set up a dojo in NY. I’m not naive enough to think that there was no possibility that Mayhew had her arm broken and was forced out by Yamada, and I know that bad behavior back in the day could be met with a shrug, but I really wonder if the way it is presented in the essay represents exactly what happened. Lots of stories and reminiscences about training at the Hombu during that period talked about various injuries. This memoir from Piotr Masztalerz, who trained in the San Diego Aikikai under Kazuo Chiba, who was an uchideshi (live in student) under the founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, gives a flavor.

During my first visit to San Diego, a few people were preparing for their dan (black belt) examinations. As a part of the preparation, every Friday for a couple of months the whole group underwent a mock exam which lasted for two and a half hours. It took place during kenshusei (teacher trainee) training, and of course as an uchideshi I took part in the practice. I remember one of those trainings in particular: two and a half hours in suwari waza,techniques performed on the knees. My first partner was called Ben and I can only remember that he had a massive, bald head. I opened dynamically with shomenuchi – a strike to the head from above – but he didn’t control my hand and entered with his head. Something cracked and a moment later I fell with my elbow to his eye socket. A brow bone fractured, blood spouted. Someone covered him with ice, and I was told off by one of Chiba’s assistants.

‘What happened?! Why are you sitting? Go and find yourself another partner!’

There is another aspect about Yamada ‘taking over’ NY Aikikai. Aikido, like other Japanese martial arts, drew (and continues to draw) on the prestige of the Japanese organization. In the same period, there were the so-called “Judo Wars” where judo was predominantly by regional black belt associations known as Yudanshakai. These regional groups formed the Judo Black Belt Federation (JBBF), which later became the United States Judo Federation (USJF). These groups were traditional West Coast Japanese-American instructors centered in California and Hawaii. However, there was an influx of non-Japanese judoka who were military personnel who had trained Japan. They often got their rank certificates from the Kodokan, which is the world headquarters for judo, but when they returned to the US, their ranks were not recognized and they were kept from competing. The situation was only resolved when the USOC stepped in and the US Congress (!) passed Amateur Sports Act of 1978.

Reading about this, I wondered if some of the Japanese-Americans who were gate-keeping had been interned and how that played into this. For Aikido, there were very few Japanese-Americans doing the art. so the situation was different, but there is still the conflict between having someone dispatched to teach the foreigners how and that kind of knowledge arising from the foreigners studying it sets the stage for conflict. Furthermore, the founder of aikido, was still alive (he passed away in 1969), so there is a much stronger cachet of ‘training with the founder’ than for judo, in that Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, passed away in 1938.

A lot of the essay (and the writer’s other writings) are complaints about USAF (United States Aikido Federation) and its management and I’ll pass over those, but in the essay, there is this:

In terms of the fundamental principles of proportional attack and defense — and the baseline managerial principles of a modern North American enterprise — the USAF failed miserably. Forget about the purportedly “Aiki” ideals of blending, harmony and reconciliation.

There’s a notion here that someone who masters the physical aspects of aikido will necessary master the mental aspects. There are a shit-ton of books with titles like Verbal Aikido® for Beginners and The Hidden Power of Aikido: Transcending Conflict and Cultivating Inner Peace and such, and I do believe the principles of Aikido serve people well in situations beyond the mere physical, but this belief that mastering something physical automatically grants a person mental abilities seems off. We don’t believe it for hitting a fast ball, or standing in the pocket during a blitz. In fact, with certain sports, like basketball, we assume that a high level of ability automatically suggests reduced mental ability, which certainly seems tinged by racism, the old joke ‘he can do anything with a basketball but sign it’. But it is something that often comes with Japanese martial arts, that physical mastery means mental mastery. Steven Seagal is considered an aikido master, but is, by all accounts, a pretty execrable human being.

It does strike me that a lot of this is a form of Orientalism. The ‘mystic East’, where these mundane tasks and physical movements are transformed and carry the person to some higher plane. And because folks often have a unitary view of identity, being able to perform some physical task entails being some sort of moral paragon. It’s almost like we can’t help making sure people have clay feet

I know it has taken a while to get here, but the juxtaposition that I see is that in the Lee interview, she talks about process for the novels and discusses the one she is writing now, based on the Korean diaspora. The interviewer brings up faith and Christianity and Lee makes this interesting observation.

In immigrant communities, places of worship are really important institutions and where people have their own separate world, a parallel track. Like you could work as a janitor at a school and be seen as janitor Tom, let’s say, but at a church you might be a deeply respected person as an elder. And your status could literally be exactly the opposite.

My classics teacher once suggested that this passage from Book 3 of the Iliad , describing Odysseus and Menalaeus came to Troy to demand Helen’s return is the first time we have a disconnection between a person’s physical attributes and presence and their mental ability.

“But when resourceful Odysseus rose to speak,
he would stand and stare down, eyes fixed on the ground,
moving his staff neither backward nor forward,
but holding it stiffly, like a man who knows nothing—
you would have taken him for some sullen fellow, or a mindless fool.
But when he let his great voice ring out from his chest,
and his words came drifting down like winter snowflakes,
then no other mortal could match Odysseus—
and we no longer marvelled at how he looked.”

3000 years and we still can’t separate them.