Hello, Yamada-san,
I have a question. Do you do much one-on-one training with the youth?
I ask because I am the chief instructor in an aikido club which is part of a local culture center. All the members are Japanese, even a 3rd dan who is Eastern European, but who changed his nationality when he married his Japanese wife.
We have many families, who all train, and also a number of teenage boys. Some of these have just reached shodan and I use them regularly as ukes when I demonstrate waza. Another student looks the same age, but is quite a bit older, will take shodan soon. He has what one might call 'learning difficulties' and I am told that he his years of aikido training (he came as a small boy) have been very helpful in making him sociable. He can be difficult, but most dojo members know him and are not fazed by occasional bursts of odd behavior. He likes me to use him as uke, but is well aware that my waza 'work' and that he has to take ukemi.
Of course, I am regarded as the foreigner in the dojo, but I am also the shihan, or chief instructor. (I have a Japanese colleague, who trains with his family and whom I have known for many years, but I outrank him.) As Cady suggests, anyone who breaks what is actually a complex set of social rules and conventions is gently but firmly put in place--usually with a degree of humour. ("Oh, sorry! did that hurt?") As you know, aikido has joint locks and pins, but you need to be very careful in putting these on hard with youngsters.
Best wishes,
Peter Goldsbury,
Forum Administrator,
Hiroshima, Japan