Aikido - the organizational context

Chapter 21

As
described in chapter … the IAF was established as a cooperation between Doshu
Kisshomaru Ueshiba, the Aikikai Foundation and active Aikidoka from different
countries in the world. While we are decades away from what happened at that
time exactly, I feel it is reasonable to presume that they were all entering
new territory, in the sense that they could not foresee the consequences of
their actions. I think it is also a fair assumption that the people involved
would have looked at the consequences in terms of their own cultural background*.

While these
actions took place in the late seventies and early eighties of the previous
century, finding information, communicating, meeting, organizing, etc. were not
nearly as easy as they are today. If you want to know about the law in a
foreign country today, you google. If you had to do that at that time, you
would struggle to get into the university library to find a translated book of
law. If you wanted to consult a knowledgeable lawyer, you would have to search
with great pain, you could not google. If you wanted to meet, you had to go
through lengthy processed of organizing, you couldn’t hold an on-line meeting
or mail the optional dates. If you wanted to organize the meeting you had to
prepare over long periods of time, because every step in the preparation would
go by mail. Even fax was a new thing at the time.

Why is that
relevant, because it challenges our frame of reference what could be expected
from volunteers at the time. But at the same time, it justifies assumptions
about what was actually agreed on and how that worked out.

It seems reasonable
to state three decisions were taken:
– Join
the International World Games Association
– Establish
an International Aikido Federation
– Establish
Continental Aikido Federations

One of the
consequences that nobody could foretell was that joining IWGA did not just mean
giving Aikido in international platform, but also would imply meeting the
standards of the international world of sport. Over time I was led to believe
that joining the IWGA was not initially intended to allow Aikido to participate
in the World Games, but simply to give Aikido international recognition. It
wasn’t anticipated that this would imply participation in the World Games,
which would make Aikido a demonstration sport. It certainly wasn’t anticipated that
this in turn would lead to Aikido being expelled from the World Games for not
having competition. It simply wasn’t foreseen that this simple step of joining
IWGA would open ‘a can of wurms’.

An other
thing that certainly was not foreseen was the dynamics of national federations
that was triggered. Until that point in time national organizations existed,
but Aikido was in its infancy. In very few countries did Aikido exist as an
independent sport with an independent organization with national recognition.
When I got involved the big Aikido countries were:
– France:
FFAAA – French Federation for Aikido, Aikibudo and Affiliated Associations
– Italy:
Association of Traditional Japanese Culture
– Germany:
Professional Association for Aikido
– Sweden:
Swedish Budo Association
– Netherlands:
Budo Bond Netherlands

With no
disrespect to the other countries that were there, the plate was very diffuse:
in several countries different martial arts were in an association together, in
other countries the organization was cultural, in other countries the
organization was professional. There was no clear picture what a national
Aikido organization was supposed to be.

There were
however two things that were clear:
– They
were all connected to Hombu
– They
were all in a democratic organization called the IAF

All across
Europe (as I am describing the experience I have personally) the volunteers
organizing Aikido were trying to work out how to run their organizations and
cooperate, amongst themselves and with Hombu. And it soon became clear that
this discussion could be summarized as a struggle to match the vertical and the
horizontal.

The
vertical implied the teaching relationship in the dojo, the relationship
between instructors and their Japanese teacher, the relationship of the
Japanese teachers and Doshu. The horizontal represented the cooperation between
dojo’s, the cooperation with other countries, the cooperation within the EAF
and IAF.

But as is
predictable when trying to reconcile the horizontal and the vertical, there
were many domains where there were irreconcilable tensions. For instance:

–
In
many dojo’s the legal form was that of an association, but by example the
instructor would lead as the man in charge;

–
In
many national organizations the legal form as association, but out of respect
for or force exerted by the Japanese instructor, decision making would be democratic
only as long as the Japanese instructor allowed it;

–
In
the IAF decision making would be democratic until senior instructors in Hombu would
raise concern, after which the democratic process would slowly grind to a halt
and need to be restarted.

In many
countries people worked hard to find ways to reconcile both worlds. Some
examples worked better, some did worse. But in all fairness, this struggle wasn’t
foreseen by the people who started the process.

Today I can
describe it more easily. At the time there was no such frame of reference to
understand what was going on. When I was asked to join the board of Dutch
Aikido my instructor was general secretary of an association for Aikido and
when I got to work I bought a book on the law on association. This seemed
justified, even in the realm of cooperation with Hombu and its vertical
structure, because the International Regulations from Hombu stated that the
organization was responsible for running its business according to the laws of
its country.

Luckily the
laws on association appeared to be both quite common sense, and they are quite
similar all around Europe. So, when talking about problems, people organizing
could share experiences and benefit from each other**. So, we developed solutions and work-arounds for
the clash between horizontal and vertical.

For
instance: proposals would first be discussed with the Japanese instructors
before being presented to the general assembly: if you couldn’t get their approval, you just didn’t
bring it to the general assembly. However, over time this appeared to be rather
undemocratic. It implied self-censorship.

At the level
of the European Federation this however did not apply: there was no European
Japanese instructor to censor the process. So, this level of organization
became the crack in the structure. Here representatives would make highly
democratic decisions, and representatives would go back to their national
organizations, and deal with the tension within their own boundaries***.

For the IAF
this was different. The IAF was organized very close to Hombu. From our
European perspective this had practical reasons:
– There
was a language barrier: we didn’t speak Japanese, Hombu didn’t speak good
English.
– There
was no IAF infrastructure: the IAF was small, had nowhere near sufficient budget.
Hombu volunteered to do the office work, and very diligently at that.
– The
IAF didn’t need to be big: activities were limited and the main effort was IAF
meetings and the World Games. The former was organized by Hombu, the latter by
the hosting country.

So for
those few things that needed to be done, it was always in close cooperation
with Hombu. However, here the first cracks in the democratic functioning of the
IAF became clear. For one thing, any new challenge to the IAF was taken up with
Hombu and Doshu for advice (and rightfully so). But through this it soon became
apparent that Doshu would generally refrain from taking a standpoint, and that any
such standpoint would usually come from representatives of Hombu (and in
particular the senior instructors). Since the topics we were involved in weren’t
that consequential, this was noticed rather than addressed as an issue.

However, as
time moved forward and all the organizations involved became more mature,
things started to change. And that will be the topic of the next chapter.

* I will
address that cultural background in a later post

** Over
time I have come to the conclusion that for instance in the USA there is little
understanding for European laws on association. On the other hand, reading a
translation of Japanese Law on association indicates that there are great
similarities.

*** I
believe this is the main reason why there was such a strong call from within
countries for the IAF not to interfere in any way in their countries.