Masatake Fujita taking ukemi for Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba
Aikikai Hombu Dojo, 1969
Masatake Fujita (藤田昌武) was born in Japanese occupied Manchuria in 1937. Returning to Japan after the war, he enrolled as a student at Aikikai Hombu Dojo – some of that story is told in the first section of the interview below.
Fujita sensei is famous for his powerful techniques. Here is what he said about the secret of those techniques when asked in Kuala Lumpur:
Of course there is a secret, but everyone is different. Even if I tell you what it is you may not be like me. It’s hard to talk about it. You have to experience it yourself. To watch someone do it and to do it yourself are 2 separate things. For eg., what you see through the lens of a camera may not be the same as what you see with the naked eye. You can’t learn just by copying someone else. You may be able to copy a technique but you may not grasp the essence of the technique.
An important member of the staff at Aikikai Hombu dojo for many years, as well as the technical director of the National Cultural Aikido Bond of the Netherlands, Fujita sensei was struck down by a brain stroke several years ago and spent a number of years in hospitals and rehabilitation until he passed away on May 28th 2014, at the age of 77.
The following interview originally appeared in the March 2005 issue of Gekkan Hiden (月刊秘伝 / “Secret Teachings Monthly”), a well known martial arts magazine in Japan.
It was also published in a collection of interviews with students of the Founder published in Japanese as 開祖の横顔 (“Profiles of the Founder”) in 2009. There was a short introduction to this work in the article “Morihei Ueshiba – Profiles of the Founder“.
A number of English translations of interviews from that collection appeared have appeared previously – Nobuyoshi Tamura sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Hiroshi Isoyama sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Shigenobu Okumura sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), and Nobuyuki Watanabe (Part 1 | Part 2).
