Chapter 17
The other day a friend replied to my post. It reminded me that I want to share some of the old politics that actually weren’t so nice. But at the same time, he was part of the reconciliation that took place afterwards.
In the early days Dutch Martial Arts were all in the BBN, the Budo Federation. However, when this organization was dissolved the Judo Federation did not want to let Aikido leave. Which had some good reason: many Aikido dojos at the time were Judo dojos where the instructor had started Aikido as well. This had often been described as a consequence of how Aikido was introduced in Europe: the Japanese teachers were looking for places where there was some interest in Martial Arts and a basic condition: tatami available. This was the case in the Judo dojos.
In any case, as Aikido developed there were seniors that did Judo as well as Aikido, but there were also seniors doing only Aikido. So, when the BBN was dissolved the only-Aikido instructors strived for a national organization of their own, and established it.
Over time it became clear that some of the people involved at the time ‘rigged the game’. An Aikido-instructor misrepresented the situation during a pivotal election, which was said to have tilted the scale in favour of Aikido. A decade later stories went around that Judo representatives had played a role in expulsion of the Aikido-organization from the Eastern Martial Arts Association (FOG).
Luckily most of those politics took place before my time. But what is relevant to me, is that around 2000 the chairman of the Aikido department of the JBN called me and said the following: ‘It is clear that there are conflicts between the organizations that you and I represent. But since we do not know each other, and we have never done anything to justify there is a conflict, shouldn’t we meet and see if we can improve the situation?’. I could only agree with his view, and was pleasantly surprized by the contact we established. Over the course of a couple of years we managed to establish a working relationship between both organizations, friendly relationships between instructors, admission of members to each others seminars. At a certain point I went to a meeting of the JBN to apologize for any misdoings by the organization I was chairman of in the past. We have been friends ever since.
When the shift in the political landscape took place*, we even arranged in a very cordially manner that we would let the Judo people take care of their situation first, and then arrange for Aikido to follow suit. There was a strong intention to come to a solution where we would form one organization, hopefully directly under the Dutch Sport Council.
Unfortunately, as described before, this process was derailed by a similar initiative**. This initiative over time led to the formation of Aikido Netherlands. However, the close cooperation between the Aikidoka of the Judo Federation and the NAF suffered as a consequence. We are still waiting for the time when that cooperation can be established again.
* government intervention to reorganize the umbrella organizations such as NSF and NCS
** formation of AN under the FOG
! out of respect for people involved no names have been mentioned.
