Aikido - the organizational context

(Chapter 5)

I’ll start my analysis of the world of sport with looking at the IOC. Not that I’m an expert, so there my be discrepancies or mistakes in my analysis. But for the general idea, I think the following is valid.

Over time the Olympic Games have become successful. Both in terms of the event itself as well as in terms of impact. Once governments realized the importance of the Olympic Games, they became involved. A structure of IOC and NOC’s was established. Participation of countries in the Olympic Games became a must for any country.
And in return, being in the Olympic Games established a sport as a sport. Governments started to use that as a defining attribute.

But its not that simple. There are more sports than there is space in the Olympic Games. This gave rise to different developments: there is an organization for recognized Olympic sports. These do not all participate in the Games, but they all fulfill the criteria.

For those sports that were not expected to be in the Olympics anyway, they devised the World Games. To become a member, the sport had to join IWGA.

IOC and IWGA formed an umbrella organization called GAISF. They organized their meetings at an annual event called SportAccord. This became such a success that they renamed GAISF to SportAccord.

But what remained was: if you are member of SportAccord you are recognized as a sport by national governments.

Now,within SportAccord there were sports that didn’t really fit in anywhere in the Olympic spectrum. I’m still not quite clear what the defining characteristics are, but they were brought together in AIMS: the Affiliated Independent Members of SportAccord. In 2016 this organization AIMS got recognized by IOC. As a consequence Aikido is now recognized as a sport by the IOC. And in fact that has consequences: if your country has an NOC, it must recognize your sport because it is recognized by IOC. Aikido is by this chain a IOC-recognized sport. That does not give Aikido the right to participate in the Olympic Games, it does not give access to subsidies related to the Olympic Games, but it does for instance give access to the NOC in your country.

Let’s look at the following issues in the next chapter.

(Chapter 4)

The world of sport is complicated. Few people appear to understand the reasons why. And it makes sense, because very few people will ever need to consider what is going on at this level op sport. In this blog I will try to explain my take on the complexity.

The easiest way to start thinking about sport, is that it is something people often do together. This makes it something in the public domain, and the public domain is something governments take in interest in.

For instance, soccer is a simple game children play if they have a ball and a field of grass, or even if the have a tennisball and a garage door. So governments regulate that you can’t play soccer in parks, can’t play of the public street, etc.
But soccer is also big business. It drives national pride. It creates revenue. It demands stadiums. It involves hooligans. Which creates a safety issue. Etc.

So, governments have interest in sports on each level.

Now, soccer is clearly a sport. But how do we know that. There are variations of soccer that certainly do not count as sport. Rugby certainly isn’t football. But American football is quite like rugby. But American football is certainly not soccer. So, is soccer football or not?
And that’s just soccer to start off with.

Why is Aikido a sport? Is it a sport? If it is not a sport, what is it? Who determines what it is? All these questions have turned out to be impossible to answer over the last 40 years for the people deeply involved. How should a government answer such questions?

They have a simple solution. If you are Olympic, you are a sport.

But what does that mean, if you are Olympic. To understand that, you need to understand the international world of sport. Which organizations are there, where did they come from? What do they do now, and why are we related to them.

And finally, how does that impact you.

Chapter 3

In Dutch society there was a concept called ‘verzuiling’, which roughly should be translated to ‘creating columns’. This categorization was everywhere in society: in politics and religion, in schools, in television, and in sport.
However, as this traditional segmentation disappeared, the need for segregated schools, television and in its wake sport disappeared.
Cateegorized organizations for sport led to there being catholic socces, protestant soccer, liberal soccer, etc. Each of these sports were organized under categorized umbrella organizations NSF, NKS, NCS.
Around 1992 the NCAF joined the NCS. As described, the Aikido-department grew and large numbers of Aikidoka were organized there. However, around 2000 problems arise (*). One of the new organizations is unhappy with its position and leaves the NCS.
Despite this going against the statutes of the FOG and the government advise for the structure of Martial Arts, this organization is allowed as member of the FOG.

Between 2000 and 2005 the Dutch government addresses the categorization of sport and indicates it will no longer accept different organizations for sport. There should be one organization for each sport, and it is left to the umbrella organizations to resolve the solution for this policy. The NCS, NSF and JBN sit down at the table to discuss how this should be resolved for Judo and Aikido. However, the discussions about Judo are so complex that these negotiations never come around to discussing Aikido. In fact this drags on for several years, and around 2004 the NCS informed Aikido that they may well be dismantled altogether. This information tips the balance for a large number of Aikido organizations. They quickly abandon ship and cross over to the FOG, who accepts them as members, despite the policy and statutes that should have prohibited that.

By that time it also becomes apparent that within the FOG discussions with the NSF have started to form a new organization for Aikido in the Netherlands, directly under NSF. Placed before the dilemma – wait for the problems to be sorted out between the NSF, NCS and JBN and participate in a new umbrella organization for Aikido – a pragmatic choice is made for the latter option. As a consequence in 2009 Aikido terminates its membership of the NCS.

This is the milestone that demarks the end of the early history of Aikido in the Netherlands.

In the next blog I will look at the organization of Aikido at the border of national and international organization of sport.

(*) unfortunately the problems at this time already involve the DAF.

Chapter 2

It’s difficult to understand the developments in Dutch Aikido without understanding the structure of Dutch sport. Around 1990 I had a simple image in mind: Dutch government had two top-structures:
– NSF (Dutch Sport Federation) which was the NGO to promote sport in the Netherlands
– NOC which was the national Olympic Committee

The organization was in fact called NOC/NSF at the time, expressing the strong link between the two bodies.

The goal of any government would be to have one organization per sport: for soccer, judo, swimming, karate, etc. So, to be recognized by the government you would need to be somehow recognized by NSF. And since the FOG was affiliated to the NSF, Aikido was recognized as a sport through that membership.

When the FOG evicted Aikido as member, but there was a government report stating that Aikido should be within the FOG, we were briefly lost for direction. However, it turned out that my understanding of the structure was flawed.

A remnant from Dutch post-war politics was something called ‘columns’. The religious parts of society were in a catholic and a protestant column. The socialist and communist political parts of society were in columns of their own. And sport appeared to be structured in the same way. So, beside the NOC/NSF there appeared to exist a catholic sportorganization, a protestant sportorganization and a socialist sportorganization. These columns had lost their meaning in society, but the organizations were still there. And next to NOC/NSF there was an organization called the NCS (Dutch Cultural Sportorganization). They were aimed at the working class and to express that, they had chosed the word Cultural in their name.

The NCAF, that had just been expelled from the FOG was interested in becoming a member of any other organization. The NCS was all too pleased with a new member sport. So, we got off on a good footing. The NCS turned out to be a very pleasant organization, with friendly and supporting staff.
In fact, the formula turned out to be so succesful that an increasing number of Aikido organizations joined it. From being a section by itself, the NCAF was joined by virtually all Aikido organizations except the Aikido-department of the JBN.
And in fact the first recognized instructors course for Aikido was establised within the NCS, in harmonious cooperation between the main participating organizations.

Unfortunately the happy years within the NCS were not to last. The government had other ideas for the world of sport, which we will discuss in the next chapter.

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)