Sakanashi sensei at Florida Aikikai
February 3 & 4, 2001

Contributed by Josh Drachman*

Last February, Florida Aikikai sponsored a seminar with Masafumi Sakanashi Sensei. All I knew about Sakanashi Sensei before the seminar was that he was a 6th Dan from Buenos Aires and a former student of Yamaguchi Sensei. Having studied with Yamaguchi Sensei myself when I lived in Japan, I was hoping Sakanashi Sensei would in some way reflect the effortless power that embodied Yamaguchi Sensei's unique approach to aikido.

After watching Sakanashi sensei work with his first uke, I knew my hopes of seeing a representation of Yamaguchi-ryuu would be realized. He did a katate-tori tenkan leading into a gedan cut right through the center of his uke. Next a katate-tori tenkan into a jodan cut and kokyu nage using the same center cut, same straight line, same extension directly through his uke. All beautful, tightly connected and enormously powerful.

Sensei's very first words to me came in a very fluent, native-sounding Spanish: los hombres mas relajados (make your shoulders more relaxed). This is a typical Yamaguchi Sensei exhortation that anyone who has ever taken class with him has heard him say over and over.

I had the good fortune of taking lots of ukemi for Sakanashi sensei that weekend and the subsequent two days that he taught classes. His morotetori kokyu nage, of which he performed a rich and interesting variety, lifted me right off the mat and launched me several tatamis from the epicenter of his hara. The same for his mune-tsuki kotagaeshi. The power in the vertical up-down vortex of his katate-tori iriminage cut through me so sharply that my head almost went through the mat. To say he threw me like a rag doll was probably understatement and it felt wonderfully powerful even though it left me breathless from exhaustion several times.

Sakanashi sensei is a big man who carries his weight and size with grace and precision. There is a wonderful softness in the quality of his kokyu that is equally balanced with a weightiness and liquid-lead feel in his arms. His ability to connect with his uke - verbally and physically - is magnetic and there was not a moment in my contact with Sensei that I did not feel the tremendous force of his power through my center or the extension of his hara capable of moving me at will.

Sensei's classes required a lot of physical work. He held to the common theme of transmitting the power of nage's center through the center of uke. He demonstrated this quite literally through an exercise in which he invited a strong mune-tsuki attack directly into his stomach, absorbing and redirecting the attack back through the uke whom he moved back half way across the mat by seemingly walking directly through uke's fist and arm which looked helplessly impaled on his belly. I then practiced a variant of this concept with one of Sensei's senior students. For a solid 40 minutes we worked on unbalancing each other through an irimi move into mune-tsuke aikido with an emphasis on entering in and down. I found my partner virtually immovable and a very interesting challenge for me. He, like all of Sakanashi Sensei's students, was humble, open, friendly and without any inclination to stop and teach me what I needed to do. He and I were totally absorbed in experiencing the connection with each other and the process of feeling and working out the concept for ourselves. We worked very hard with each other without any sense of competition even though we were whaling away in a fashion that my partner later described as trabajoso - requiring great work. Afterward, we gave each other a big hug and while there was a language barrier between his non-existent English and my very rusty Spanish we had established a bond of friendship in a way only fellow aikidoka I think can truly understand. It was that kind of seminar and that kind of practice.

The time with Sakanashi sensei and his students was special for me. It provided the opportunity to encounter a fine teacher, a wonderful reintroduction to Yamaguchi sensei's approach to aikido, and a confirmation that excellent aikido teachers can be found almost anywhere.

More information on Sakanashi Sensei and his dojo in Buenos Aires can be found at http://www.go.to/aikido. Please visit Florida Aikikaišs website at http://www.floridaaikikai.com.