Stories of Chiba Sensei

Cecilia Ramos

June 5, 2025 will mark 10 years since Chiba Sensei passed away. Summer Camp 2025 will be held in his memory. Birankai North America wishes to solicit articles about your memories of Sensei for publication in Biran Online. We also hope to produce a  commemorative print publication of stories of people’s experience of Chiba Sensei. Please think about your time with Sensei and a story you can tell. As Biran Online’s editor, I will go first. Here is my story:

It was in the late 1990’s when I visited San Diego Aikikai for a week to train with Sensei. On my last night, upon arrival at the dojo, one of the kenshusei informed me that Sensei wished me to teach the class and then come to his house afterwards for dinner. Sensei was there, in the office, but he didn’t speak to me. As I was teaching I knew he was watching. Naturally I was a little nervous but things were moving along nicely until near the end of the class when I called up Steve Garber for uke. For those of you who don’t know him, Steve is a very tall man. His arms are very long. I don’t remember the attack but the technique was sankyo. I don’t recall that it was awful, yet it wasn’t going well. I don’t know if the students in the class knew I was struggling, but I knew that I was on the edge of losing control. It wasn’t smooth. I pulled it off, but felt I had to work for every inch of those long arms to do my bidding. Whew. I got through it and moved on. But I wasn’t proud of it and I knew that Sensei knew. 

When I got to the house Mrs. Chiba told me to sit in the living room and wait for Sensei to come speak to me. Probably I only waited for a few minutes but it seemed like an eternity and I was consumed by feelings of failure. When Sensei came through the doorway he had a sheaf of papers in his hand, covered in his distinctive handwriting. My heart sank. He had taken notes on my failure. I felt so ashamed. I blurted out, “Sensei, I’m so sorry about the sankyo.” He sat down beside me and said, in the most understanding way, “Oh yes, those tall guys can be really hard to handle.” Then he gave me the papers, which weren’t about me at all, but were notes for a medical article on head injuries, and we proceeded to talk about that. 

Somehow his comment slid from my memory and it wasn’t until many years later, after he was gone, that I thought of it. And it hit me. Sensei thought tall guys were hard to handle? Really? Many times I watched him demonstrate with tall ukes and I can’t recall ever seeing him struggle or be anything less than totally in control. We have many tall guys who took ukemi from Sensei. I wonder if any of them ever sensed that he found them hard to control? Somehow I doubt it. But still, he said it to me, and in the most understanding way, like he knew. I only wish he were still here so I could ask him about it. There are so many things I wish I could ask him.