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the Khazar Kid
14th May 2001, 19:12
I saw a book on something called "Shintaido" once, it looked a lot like Aikido. What is the relation between Aikido and Shintaido?

Jesse Peters

Meik Skoss
14th May 2001, 21:40
Nope. shintaido is derived from Shotokai karatedo, one of the Shotokan karatedo variants. Aoki Dare-dare, the founder of shintaido, was a student of Egami Shigeru, one of Funakoshi Gichin's senior students and combined what he'd learned from those two teachers with a lot of other stuff to create his own new discipline. It's got about the same resemblance to traditional karatedo as aikido has to koryu jujutsu, i.e., a gross similarity, but very little of the application or "flavor" of the older art remains.

Hope this helps.

dainippon99
16th May 2001, 02:03
im not sure if you made a mistake, but there is and art called --shin'ei-- taido founded by the nephew of o-sensei, noriaki inoue. it is very similiar to aikido because that is who inoue studied with.

Ron Tisdale
16th May 2001, 14:18
I have heard about that too, I think it is mentioned in Stanley Pranin's "Aikido Masters".

Ron Tisdale

Yamantaka
16th May 2001, 16:11
Originally posted by Ron Tisdale
I have heard about that too, I think it is mentioned in Stanley Pranin's "Aikido Masters".
Ron Tisdale

YAMANTAKA : To Bobby and Ron,
they're two different arts : shintaido and shin'ei taido (previously shinwa taido), the later one created by Inoue Noriaki, nephew of Ueshiba Kaiso.
And also to Meik Skoss :
I read in a Shotokai website, that Egami Sensei really created Shintaido but due to political reasons, he prefered to place his student Aoki as a "front". Have you a better information on that?
Ubaldo

Meik Skoss
16th May 2001, 21:40
Shintaido, founded by Aoki Hiroyuki, a karatedo student of Egami Shigeru, himself a student of Funakoshi Gichin of the Shotokan. The art is kind of New Age-y karatedo, with lots of strange-looking exercises and techniques of rather dubious efficacy (though fighting/self-defense are not high priorities of Aoki, from what I've read/heard). It bears little resemblance to the original Okinawan art.

Shin-ei taido, founded by Inoue Noriaki, is an aikido-like art in its own right. Inoue studied with both Takeda and Ueshiba and went on to found his own system. It has a very unique flavor, but is not all that different from some of the different types of aikido that have come to be in the years since WWII.

Other'n a vague similarity in the names, I can't see how people could mistake one for the other; they look not at all similar and have very different "flavors" to their keiko.

Ellis Amdur
17th May 2001, 02:36
To add a connection between the two. Egami Shigeru's son was the head instructor of Shin Taido (he later split, I believe - the usual politics). He told me that Inoue Noriaki was a close friend of Egami senior, and had a significant influence on him, in his making his karate a 'softer' (not weaker! - relaxed, integrated body movements - Egami was incredibly strong with his "softness"), and later also influenced Aoki. The younger Egami told me that Egami and Inoue were friends rather than student and teacher, and that Aoki learned from/was influenced by Inoue without formally being his student. Therefore, Shin'ei (at that time, called Shinwa) Taido is not mentioned in the lineage.

I visited a class in 1977, and a rather bizarre thing it was. They did these lunge punches, moving half-way to front splits, and got in a circle and did repetitive Rockette kicks. They wore karate tops, white hakama and white jigatabi. They would run the length of the floor in a low crouch with long strides, palms out extended in a yearning posture. Then they did something similar to kokyu-ho (for you aiki folks) except, instead of simply grabbing the other's wrists and going from there, they would slither their bodies against one another. A couple of the guys, working with rather nubile young women, were certainly enjoying practice more than I ever did - at least in public. .

In my conversation with Egami, I asked him about this directly. In short, I said, "Sensei, I watch your students and then you and you look so different. Your students seem to be functioning in a kind of semi-controlled hysteria, and there's almost no martial energy, but a lot of sexual energy flying around. You, on the other hand, are calm - no hysteria, no gaping mouth, no heavy breathing it's like you are doing something entirely different." His reply was "that's a stage you have to go through. You work through chaos to get to calm, and we set up the opportunity to do so." I left my question there - it looked much like a lot of cult activity I've seen, although I didn't get the sense that Egami was a bad guy at all. As for the martial question, he said something quite interesting. I'd told him I did koryu, and he said, "Koryu was focused on killing, and given the weapons of the time, they had the best way to do that. Now we live in an era of guns and bombs - the twentieth century. As far as I'm concerned, there's no real use in learning how to use a sword, or even fight hand-to-hand. The only way to fight bombs is to change the world so we won't need them - that's what Shin taido is for - to create that kind of individual. Aikido, on the other hand, is sort of stuck. It claims to be an art of peace, but they still worry about being a martial art, on whether they can fight or not. To me, it's not nearly as effective as a koryu for fighting, but as long as they worry about fighting, they can't be effective in really creating peace. I think that's why you still have famous aikido teachers who hurt people so much. On some level, they know that they aren't good at either peace or war.

Aoki sensei took my father's work to the next level. Instead of using martial skill to create peace, he actually figured out an art that is peaceful rather than martial. My father fully supported that."

I never joined. At least as far as I was concerned, I didn't even agree with him. I didn't see myself doing heavy breathing in the cause of peace anytime soon. But Egami was a man worthy of respect, I think. Seemed to have nothing to prove to others, and right or wrong, was quite comfortable standing on his own ground.

Ellis Amdur

Yamantaka
17th May 2001, 11:38
Originally posted by Ellis Amdur

Aoki sensei took my father's(Egami Sensei) work to the next level. Instead of using martial skill to create peace, he actually figured out an art that is peaceful rather than martial. My father fully supported that."
Ellis Amdur

YAMANTAKA : So it is as I thought : Shintaido was created by Egami Shigeru and developed further by Aoki Sensei. Thank you, Ellis Sama!
Ubaldo.

Tom Douglas
17th May 2001, 16:44
Two books are available on Shintaido: "The Body is a Message of the Universe" (1982) and "Total Stickfighting: Shintaido Bojutsu" (2001). Both list Hiroyuki Aoki as the founder of Shintaido.

For a photo of the body rubbing that proved so fascinating to Mr. Amdur, go to http://www.shintaido.org/docs/intro_02.htm

This site and a number of others list Mr. Aoki as founder.

It's very interesting to hear about the interaction between the senior Egami and Inoue. In his book, "The Heart of Karate-do," Egami Shigeru notes in passing the influence of aikido on his interpretation of karate, but doesn't specifically mention Mr. Inoue as the source of that influence. Indeed, in his book Mr. Egami seems to view his stomach surgery and the consequent weakening of his abdominal wall as a primary influence in the "softening" of his karate (kinesiology determines destiny?). In any event, in that book, Mr. Egami's students demonstrate some of the incredibly long, low stances in oi-tsuki that are similar to the long stretching stances Mr. Amdur describes.

One wonders how "martial" such stances are. Yet, according to a karate teacher I used to train with, Mr. Egami was the "real thing". His own teacher accompanied Tsutomu Ohshima to Japan when Mr. Egami was still alive. He witnessed Mr. Egami throwing students around with barely a touch--something like the demonstrations of Ueshiba Morihei. He queried Mr. Ohshima about what Mr. Egami was doing. Mr. Ohshima said it was authentic, but "could not be explained."

Good photographs of how Shintaido members play with sticks are available in the "Total Stickfighting" book. The drills are taken from Okinawan bo kata.

Tom Douglas

Yamantaka
17th May 2001, 16:59
Originally posted by Tom Douglas
Two books are available on Shintaido: "The Body is a Message of the Universe" (1982) and "Total Stickfighting: Shintaido Bojutsu" (2001). Both list Hiroyuki Aoki as the founder of Shintaido.
Tom Douglas

YAMANTAKA : Further information about Shintaido's "paternity" may be found here :
http://www.shotokai.com/ingles/index.html
Very interesting stuff...
Best

Ellis Amdur
17th May 2001, 17:14
Mr. Alacantra -

You wrote:
__________
"So it is as I thought : Shintaido was created by Egami Shigeru and developed further by Aoki Sensei. Thank you, Ellis Sama!".
_______________

That's absolutely not what I said. In the late 60's, early 70's, several capoerista were stranded in N.Y. when their folklore dance troupe went bust. They had no visa, and no money, and they started doing capoeira on the street in Harlem. They made a real impression on kids - black martial artists doing a dance/martial form, definitely not asian. Kids started imitating and developing and changing the rules, and soon you had break-dancing. No longer capoeira, there is no jinga, there is no martial intent, they do a lot on their back (anathema in capoeira, the only parts allowed to touch the ground being the hands, feet and head). They did retain the competition of the roda in "break wars." There is no more justification in saying Egami created Shintaido than there is in saying Mestre Bimba created hip-hop.

Egami was an innovative karateka. He had a student, Aoki, who was diligent in karate, further influence to some degree by observation, informal instruction in Shin'ei taido, and he made up a whole lot based on imagination, a variety of other studies, etc. Egami remained a karate instructor to his death. Shintaido is further from Shotokai than aikido is from Daito Ryu - maybe the major difference there is that the shintaido people never found it necessary to break from or even slander their predecessor in the way that the aikido ideologues did with Takeda for so long.

Egami's son's statement, (which may or may not be true), merely asserts that Egami was pleased with and respected what Aoki had created from his roots. Shintaido looks as far from Shotokai as the leg trapping in tango does from sweeping in judo.

Best

Ellis Amdur

Yamantaka
18th May 2001, 13:40
Originally posted by Ellis Amdur
Mr. Alacantra - :eek:
You wrote:__________
"So it is as I thought : Shintaido was created by Egami Shigeru and developed further by Aoki Sensei. Thank you, Ellis Sama!".
_______________
That's absolutely not what I said.
Egami's son's statement, (which may or may not be true), merely asserts that Egami was pleased with and respected what Aoki had created from his roots.
Best
Ellis Amdur

YAMANTAKA : Dear Ellis San,
Neither did I say that you said it (humm, a bit confused I guess...). What I intended to say was that egami's son statement (quoted by you) and the things stated in the shotokai site : http://www.shotokai.com/ingles/index.html
clearly imply, at least for me, that Egami's work was bigger than generally believed and that Aoki just developed what already existed. The shotokai site also explains the reasons Egami continued with Shotokai till his death. Also, in your post you quoted Egami Sensei as saying : "The only way to fight bombs is to change the world so we won't need them - that's what Shin taido is for - to create that kind of individual. " That implied, for me, a familiarity and participation in Shintaido, far beyond a simple support of a student.
Nothing seems to be fully proved but allows for the thought that Egami's contribution might be greater than previously thought.
Thank you again for your explanations.
Best regards
Ubaldo.