Chapter 25

Dutch Aikikai has a complicated history, as described earlier. When the BBN was split up into Karate, Taekwondo, Judo and a Federation for Eastern Martial Arts (FOG), the NCAF was founded. This federation became member of the FOG (national level) and the IAF (international level).

But as time passed and political interventions changed the landscape, the NCAF changed its name and became the NAF. A new umbrella organization was formed and this is called AN.

The question now is: what is the relationship between the NAF, AN and the IAF.

To start off with, my hypothesis is that the remaining construction has lost its validity, and is exposed by recent incidents.

When the concept of an umbrella organization was being developed, there was a need to resolve two issues:

– the government would only accept an umbrella organization if it would be host to all forms of Aikido.

– Hombu would only accept an organization that does Aikikai Aikido.

– the IAF has a condition for new members that they must have Hombu recognition.

To resolve this conflict of interest, the following construction was established:

– AN is open to all Aikido in the Netherlands.

– the NAF continues as the organization for all Aikikai Aikido in the Netherlands.

– the NAF becomes institutional member of AN, which implies that Aikikai members of AN are also members of the NAF or vice versa.

However, over the course of time several developments took place:

– as AN became more successful the activities the NAF used to do, where transferred to AN. As a consequence the NAF does very little, other than represent the Aikikai groups in the IAF.

– AN established statutes which describe obligations for the Aikikai members: these statutes clearly state that the Aikikai member of AN must adhere to the regulations of the IAF.

– the NAF reduced its online presence to a single page that predates the formation of AN. It is clear that the NAF web-site is non-existant (www.n-a-f.nl)

– as a consequence there is no information on the NAF available on-line: no contact information, no activities, no statutes.

– on the web-site of the IAF the information on the NAF links to AN, not the NAF, and it links to the gmail account of its chairman, not an NAF account. This further demonstrates that the NAF is in fact no longer a truely functioning organization (http://www.aikido-international.org/membership-advice/hotspot#52.2114235/17.1144519/4/hotspot/2)

– the NAF has no direct income from members. Funding of activities goes through AN. To my knowledge there is no separate approved budget or financial report presented to the members of the NAF.

There is however a strong concentration of power surrounding the chairman of the NAF. For he is also the technical director of the DAF, the general secretary of AN and now the general secretary of the IAF.

So, for all practical purposes the NAF does nothing else than represent the Aikikai members of AN in the IAF. It has no other activities and exists only to circumvent the fact that the actual functioning organization is AN, which is not only Aikikai, does not have Hombu recognition and therefore could not become member of the IAF.