Chapter 1

In 1988 I was asked to join the board of the NCAF: Nederlandse Culturele Aikido Federatie. At that time I was a beginner in Aikido, with no knowledge of Aikido politics whatsoever. My teacher asked me to help him, and so I did.

Over time I found out that the history of the NCAF was based on conflict ridden events, that even today are embarrassing to discuss. Luckily they were before my time.

In essence, the early organizational history of Aikido started with members of an organization called BBN: Budo Bond Nederland. However, the Dutch government asked a committee of wise men (actually called so) and their advise was to abolish BBN and replace it with 4 organizations: Karate, Taekwondo, Judo and FOG (Federatie Oosterse Gevechtsporten / Federation for Eastern Martial Arts). Aikido was to become member of the FOG.

Unfortunately, Aikido was practised by two groups of instructors: Judo-instructors that also did Aikido and a new generation of people that only trained Aikido. The Judo-instructors did not want to leave their strong organization (over 200.000 members), Aikido-instructors did not want to be a splinter group in a huge organization.

Setting aside how it happened, the Aikidoka established an organization that first was called NCAB, and later when it joined the FOG was called NCAF. The NCAF applied for membership of the IAF and obtained that (I believe in 1984).

For a brief moment in time there was only one organization for Aikido (of course there was also Aikido within the Judo-federation JBN, but that wasn’t an independent organization).

This was the situation when I joined the NCAF. And the first political topic I ran into was the recognition of an instructors course. Both the NCAF and the JBN had applied for government recognition for their instructors course. The Ministry of Sport had asked both organizations to reach some form of agreement, which they counldn’t. The file was put in a drawer for at least a decade.

Somewhere around 1990 or 1991 I was asked to become chairman of the NCAF. I found out quickly that being chairman was not going to be easy. All the instructors were my senoirs by at least 10 years, and none felt the urge to listen to my advise. One after the other thought that they could establish their own organization. And within about 10 years at least 5 new organizations were established from within the NCAF (Itokan, AFN, CABN, DAF, Ryushinkan).
But also within the JBN there were groups splitting off. The ARN was established of three different sections, the future ASN was already working separately.
New groups came from outside of the Netherlands, other styles than Aikikai found a foothold: Tomiki Aikido, Yoshinkan Aikido, Yoseikan Aikido. New organizations were founded around European instructors.

All this splitting was put into a new perspective when a political coup was organized within the FOG. Out of the blue the FOG expelled the NCAF as a member because it wasn’t promoting the sport enough. Based on this feeble argument the FOG members however decided to expell Aikido and changed their statutes, such that Aikido could not become a member again.

(end of chapter one)