10th Gen Shihan Tatsuo Kimura and Hiroshi Sagawa,
Yukiyoshi Sagawa Sohan’s younger brother
“There are those who say that Morihei Ueshiba operated on a different dimension, but since I came to Japan two months after he died, I couldn’t experience Ueshiba Sensei’s technique personally. But I am glad to know that Aiki truly exists.”
– Aikido Journal editor Stanley Pranin, on visiting Yukiyoshi Sagawa,
from Discovering Aiki My 20 Years with Yukiyoshi Sagawa Sensei
Yukiyoshi Sagawa often accompanied his teacher, Daito-ryu Chuku-no-so Sokaku Takeda, on his travels and was a contemporary of Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba, who was also one of Sokaku Takeda’s long time students.
Yukiyoshi Sagawa’s younger brother, Hiroshi Sagawa (佐川廣) was born in Shimo-yubetsu Hokkaido in 1909 (Meiji Year 42). He did not himself train in Daito-ryu, but he was raised in an environment in which both his father and his elder brother trained extensively with Sokaku Takeda.
Tatsuo Kimura (木村達雄) is one of three of Yukiyoshi Sagawa Sohan’s students to have completed the 10th Gen level of techniques (the techniques in Sagawa Dojo that Sagawa Sensei learned from Sokaku Takeda were organized into ten levels, or “Gen” / 元).
Born in Tokyo Japan in 1947, Kimura Sensei is a well known mathematician and professor at Tsukuba University. He published two books about Sagawa Sohan (宗範) that have been translated into English (the latter one only partially) – “Transparent Power (透明な力)” and “Discovering Aiki My 20 Years with Yukiyoshi Sagawa Sensei (合気修得への道―佐川幸義先生に就いた二十年)”. He also holds a third-dan in kendo and a fifth-dan in Aikido, which he studied under Seigo Yamaguchi (山口清吾).
This is part 1 of the English translation of an interview conducted in Japanese by Kuni Azumi (安積 邦) with Hiroshi Sagawa and Tatsuo Kimura that previously appeared in the popular martial arts magazine Gekkan Hiden (月刊秘伝 / “Secret Teachings Monthly”) in 2001.
You may also be interested in another interview with Kimura Sensei that appeared on the Aikido Sangenkai blog previously – “Yukiyoshi Sagawa’s Aiki, a true portrait of Transparent Power – Interview with Tatsuo Kimura, Part 1 and Part 2. (more…)