John Brinsley, Aikido Daiwa
Sometime in 1998, Chiba Sensei came to Tokyo, and Didier Boyet arranged a dinner for him at Kitaichi izakaya with Miyamoto Sensei, Yokota Sensei, and Osawa Sensei, and asked Teru Murashige and myself to come along.
Kitaichi, which closed down a couple of years later, was a dark, somewhat dingy place long favored by Hombu teachers and students. The location had originally been closer to the dojo, but was still less than a ten-minute walk away. Nakamura-san had fed generations of aikido practitioners with some combination of yakitori, sashimi, and whatever else he felt like stirring up. There were a few tables with four seats each, and at the far side several tatami mats on a raised dais, with low tables across.
The dinner was on the tatami, the four shihan with their backs to the wall and Didier, Teru, and me on the other side. This allowed Teru and me to assist Nakamura-san, who worked alone, in bringing dishes, glasses, and ashtrays back and forth. We had spent enough time there that our using the kitchen sink to wash and dry the ashtrays was part of the routine.
The meal was yosenabe: chicken, tofu, cabbage, onion, and other vegetables cooked in a miso broth in a large pot. As I recall 25 years later, Osawa Sensei and I were facing each other, closest to the nabe pot, with Teru to my right, across from Chiba Sensei. Miyamoto Sensei was on Chiba Sensei’s left, and Yokota Sensei next to Miyamoto Sensei, both of them facing Didier.
Miyamoto, Yokota, and Osawa are the last three Hombu deshi of Kisshomaru Doshu; everyone younger than them are Moriteru Doshu’s students. They are also the last three deshi to have regularly taken Chiba Sensei’s classes at Hombu in the late 1970s and to have had a personal relationship with him. Though the youngest of the three, Osawa Sensei knew Chiba Sensei the longest, as the son of Osawa Kisaburo Sensei, who was for decades Hombu’s most senior shihan.
It was Osawa Sensei who served Chiba Sensei throughout the evening, and in so doing gave me a lesson in omotenashi that I will never forget. Omotenashi is a hard word to define in English. “Omote” is the same word used in aikido to describe doing a technique to the front of the partner, rather than going behind them (ura), and can mean the face, or surface of something. Nashi means without, or none. So while omotenashi is often translated as hospitality, what it really means is to serve wholeheartedly, without any artifice or expectation of gratitude.
I can still see Osawa Sensei filling Chiba Sensei’s bowl, selecting a certain amount of chicken, vegetables, and tofu, before adding the broth. His movements made no sound, and he never interrupted the course of whatever conversation was going on. Yet he didn’t separate himself, was always attuned to the topic, and at one point politely disagreed with an observation Chiba Sensei had made about someone or something.
Occasionally I would replace Chiba Sensei’s bowl or ashtray, and once was rewarded by Osawa Sensei with the slightest nod. Chiba Sensei, on the other hand, acknowledged Osawa Sensei’s efforts by not acknowledging them at all. Instead, he accepted the service as a matter of course. The three younger teachers were clearly comfortable with their sempai but not overly familiar—except once. Miyamoto Sensei, who as usual enjoyed the sake, kept lighting Chiba Sensei’s cigarettes, to the point that Chiba Sensei grabbed Miyamoto Sensei’s wrist with one hand, his lighter with another, and held the lighter under the wrist to make the point that he could light his own cigarettes, thank you very much.
Miyamoto Sensei once told me that there are two entities under the roof in Wakamatsu-cho, Shinjuku: the Aikikai and Hombu. The first is the bureaucracy, the meetings, the politics. The second is the dojo, the practice, and the relationships with Doshu, the teachers, and the students. “I am Hombu, not Aikikai,” Miyamoto Sensei insisted in English.
Chiba Sensei’s relationship with both over the years was fraught, and he frequently expressed his frustration with their priorities and politics. But none of the shihan who moved overseas sent as many of their students to Japan as he did, and none were more loyal to the tradition that Hombu represented. Those feelings of loyalty and tradition were evident that evening in the relationship between Chiba Sensei and his three younger colleagues.
Not long after that dinner, I moved to Los Angeles, and trained at Aikido Daiwa with Jack Arnold while traveling to San Diego Aikikai to practice on Fridays and Saturdays. Several months in, Arnold Sensei asked me if I could teach some classes, as he was to undergo knee surgery that would keep him off the mat for some time. I was nervous, as I had never taught before, and wasn’t certain that I’d meet Arnold Sensei’s standards. I wrote Chiba Sensei a letter asking to speak with him when I was in San Diego, and when I arrived he called me into his office. I stammered my way through my reservations, concluding in Japanese that “I’m not Arnold Sensei’s student. I’m a Hombu person.”
“We’re all Hombu people,” Sensei replied. And that was that.
John Brinsley
Editor’s note: this article originally appeared in Remembering Chiba Sensei, the chapbook given out at Summer Camp 2025.