bwhite33
31st July 2008, 12:41
Below is a copy of the message posted at aikidojournal.com. It sounds like the author intended for it to be posted here as well:
http://www.aikidojournal.com/?id=5103
Mr. Tommaso Leonetti’s Public Letter of Apology to Katsuyuki Kondo Sensei
I have been asked by Mr. Tommaso Leonetti to publish this surprising letter that outlines his initial involvement in Daito-ryu aikijujutsu and his role in leading a discussion questioning the credentials and claims of Katsuyuki Kondo Sensei. Mr. Leonetti further explains how later he discovered incontrovertible evidence that Kondo Sensei’s claims were, after all, true and that Mr. Leonetti had unknowingly mislead many practitioners of the art with his writings and conclusions.
Since I was intimately involved in the events in question and have already commented on various points, I will refrain from expressing an opinion here. Mr. Leonetti is Italian but writes in English very well so only minor edits have been made for clarity. [Stan Pranin, Aikido Journal]
* *
Dear Mr. Pranin et al,
Some 15 or more years ago I committed for a period of a few years (perhaps 5 or 6) my thoughts and comments to various web sites and forums concerning legitimate Daito-ryu succession and technical covenants issues.
At the time I had been a full time student and uchideshi of Certa Sensei and subsequently of Kato and Sano Sensei too during which time I had gained their trust and confidence. I had slowly become the puritan organizational backbone of the School. I believed, in good faith, such line to be the hon-ryu.
Due to such privileged position I had been granted access to an incredible wealth of original documents, written and audio visual, some of which I still possess today. I was granted vast leeway which permitted me to gather in depth knowledge of the School’s matters. I meticulously recorded and noted everything, making timelines, reconstructions and organizational charts and graphs that often allowed me to comprehend the full panorama of Daito-ryu’s last 15 years at times even better than individuals could recall singularly. In fact I was putting together a complex puzzle made of tales, pictures, videos, letters, ledgers, and 90% of this I photocopied and recorded (plus some originals which I was given as personal gifts) from other students, teachers, friends and family members who were openly answering to all my questions: I was a totally trusted and reliable student.
At those times I had not yet acquired other items of evidence which induced me to start questioning what I had been told. Besides, I am Italian and honour plays a strong part in our culture. Questioning my Masters’ information was not even on the horizon of possibilities. Until slowly, some logical and chronological assumptions which I was surfacing during my studies made me pursue and steer in directions where I felt that the usual latitude of investigations was being compressed. And every time with different excuses, sometimes contradicting and… well, it felt strange.
I then went to live in Japan to better study. I was going to research my passion and love: hon Daito-ryu. I entered Takeda Masanobu’s school in the outskirts of Tokyo and I started again from Ippondori forfeiting all my ranks and positions as I was only seeking truth not ranks or technique. I was in Tokyo under what we had come to call “Mission Impossible” to re-unite Mrs. Oshima (now Mrs Takeda) with the Abashiri School and thus unifying once and for all the hon Daito-ryu against what I believed to be the usurper Kondo Sensei. I even suggested and helped in the registration of Trade Marks in all the world and finally managed to make these 2 parties meet and start discussing the re-unification. We were near accomplishing the unthinkable: uniting the legitimate descendant heirs to what I believed to be the true technical heritage.
One day I was offered Tea by an old lady, back in Abashiri, a personal friend of the late Soke who asked for my oath of secrecy before introducing me to some startling evidence. She was trusting my good faith and the record of my battles in favour of Abashiri. I gave such oath willingly as I was convinced in good faith of the genuine stand which we were holding.
Little did I know that my world was about to crumble under my feet. She revealed some startling information and handed me some shattering insight into the truth. I had in my hands the incontrovertible proof of my errors and the legitimacy of Kondo Sensei’s claims.
The video and other evidence that I was given left no doubt whatsoever. The shock which I felt in my heart left me silent for months, years in fact, until now. And not only because of my oath to secrecy, but more important for the love of those masters in whom I had believed and the love for friends whose world I would have destroyed overnight if I had made such information public.
Those videos and that information would have spelled only one thing: the death of the School as they knew it and as I believed in it.
I did the only thing that my honour permitted: I severed all ties with everyone and all in my school and retired to a life that had nothing in common with Daito-ryu. My absence was noted and I started receiving numerous requests for an explanation: why had I left the School? What insight had I gained that made me disappear? And, well, all those who read now will recall the pressing insistence with which you all questioned me.
Last year one student of the School came to visit me. One Giacomo Merello, whom I later learned had taken over my role in the School as factotum.
I will not enter into his private life and other personal matters but we became friends. So much so that his candid belief of truths and beliefs as I had meticulously laid them down made me feel ashamed at my silence. I realized that my silence was in fact now deception.
I decided to show him the video and I revealed to him the whole picture as I had put it together. I showed to him pictures, documents, ledgers, photocopies, recorded interviews, videos and a patrimony of other items which I had collected in over 10 years of unrestricted access to the personal records, homes and dojos affairs of so many.
Giacomo soon left the School. For the whole next one year, relentlessly, he asked me, insisting, to divulge such information. This spring we met again in Italy and I finally conceded. I gave him permission to copy the video and to diffuse it.
What Giacomo will do with it, it’s up to him. I shall have no more part in Daito-ryu as through my good faith and then my silence I have hurt too many.
I thus publicly wish to first of all apologise if my good faith has led so many astray, in primis Mr. Kondo, and I then also wish to say:
1. Kondo Sensei is the only legitimate technical and moral successor of Takeda Tokimune Soke.
2. I assume ALL and EVERY responsibility for misleading and dis-informing those who read and believed my words. The fact that I did so in good faith does not alleviate my responsibilities as I didn’t denounce, until now, my findings. My oath is my only excuse. I am breaching it now because I finally realized how many were, and still are, so deeply involved. I never realized this before I met Mr. Merello who was investing his heart, his life and capitals of his own, again in good faith, and was like me “living” Daito-ryu, not only studying it. He was unknowingly dragging others along.
3. Many high ranking teachers and long serving deshi in Abashiri too were themselves completely unaware and in good faith. It is easy to recognize who they are as they too severed all links with Abashiri a few months after my departure. These include Sano Sensei and the secretary Kobayashi Sempai. Please do not ask me why I claim (with due cause) that they are not responsible for any wrong doings, let it suffice to say that Daito-ryu would only be further hurt if they were to be held responsible. Shunting them off would equate to destroying a technical wealth which is truly unique and genuine.
4. I don’t know how much my Masters knew and avoided sharing. I cannot even say if it was bad faith or simple negligence. I only know that what I said and claimed was, in a very small BUT VITAL part, false, even if in good faith I believed it to be true. In fact probably at least 90% of what I wrote and held then still stands correctly today and I could even go further and prove it, beyond doubt, to be so. However, I have chosen to stand off. If I were to continue I would only dig deeper and irreparable trenches, de facto hurting Daito-ryu itself.
5. I might consider sharing my records and documents with students who wish to study them for private purposes only but I shall not publicly expose any more evidence. The one piece of evidence that I now have allowed to be publicly shown will suffice. All the rest would only sustain further quarrels and initiate new problems.
a. As previously mentioned, Kondo Sensei is the only legitimate Menkyo Kaiden and genuine mainline technical successor, of the late Soke Tokimune Sensei.
b. Kondo Sensei, in absence of a legitimate and formal investiture of Tokimune Takeda Soke’s nephew as Soke is also the Moral successor of the School’s heritage.
c. Tokimune Takeda Soke wished that his daughter, Mrs. Yokohama, hold the interim position of School Head (she had been living with him) and his first daughter Mrs. Oshima too, to be involved in the School’s governance, but both only until the Soke’s nephew came of age and until he had been appropriately groomed into such role.
d. He further indicated Kondo Sensei to be his technical mentor.
e. Subsequently Mrs. Yokoyama abdicated her position publicly in favour of her sister Oshima, during a meeting in Abashiri; records show that Mr. Kondo was present at this meeting.
f. Immediately after, Mr. Oshima (Mrs Oshima’s husband) changed his name to Takeda Masanobu but did so WITHOUT Takeda Tokimune’s adoption or approval. He had already passed away.
g. Mr. Oshima (now Takeda Masanobu) then unilaterally claimed to be the next Soke. This was illegitimate as Takeda Tokimune Soke never thus vouched.
h. Most senior uchideshi of Takeda Tokimune resigned from the Honbu once the 2 sisters began an internal quarrel. There are other reasons that I will not comment.
i. There is a written will of Tokimune Takeda. However I shall not enter into this matter because such will was, in the best of cases extracted with deceit, or plainly fabricated with the illegitimate use of his seal. More detail is irrelevant: The very Soke Takeda Tokimune declared him Hamon while the Soke was still completely mentally fit, and did so publicly.
j. Takeda Tokimune Soke did teach slightly different techniques to different students. However, the basic principles are unique and I can only vouch for Kondo Sensei’s teachings.
k. In an amateur video document the Soke explains to Kato Sensei how slightly different teachings for him and Kondo Sensei were because of their different bodily structures.
l. In another video (on a bridge, in Tokyo, perhaps) again the Soke performs slightly differently; in a subsequent request for explanation concerning that video the Soke replies that the different flow of a response —he uses the term “just like in water flow”is necessary to keep the energy flowing against the opponent. I have no date for these videos. Here I am making assumptions from inscription on the VHS covers, circumstances not dates.
m. My previous Masters Certa Sensei, Kato Sensei, Sano Sensei and other students are legitimate uchideshi of the Soke and some possess a truly very proficient technical wealth and do represent mainline technical heritage.
n. Some of these students (senior ones only) did study considerably more than Kondo Sensei according to the school records. By considerably I signify ten folds and more under a mere time measure.
o. The Densho, the School’s ledgers, the seal and a wealth of other documents 9 years ago—when I abandoned—were in the possession of Mrs. Oshima.
I hope that this note can shed some light. I also hope that my findings may help, not prevent, Daito-ryu from re-unifying. Intelligence in victory should call for the party remaining standing to sway and unite his opponent rather than to suppress him. I feel it is today possible to unite Daito-ryu, finally under one single leadership and by doing so the Art itself, before the man, would benefit.
Please farewell to all,
Tommaso Leonetti di Santojanni
* *
This is an additional email from Mr. Leonetti that adds further clarifications:
Dear Mr. Pranin,
Certainly, please do make such note public.
This was, in fact, my initial intention as I could not access your bulletin board. I tried to insert this note also in other bulletins (in which I was engaged: Skoss, Nathan Scott, e-Budo etc) but I gave up when I was asked to register. Please forward my note to them too, for their evaluation of my request to publicize it.
This note contains only MY opinion. A copy of the factual proof is now in Giacomo Merello’s hands. The proof is incontrovertible. The Soke, Takeda Tokimune, talks of Katsuyuki Kondo as his successor and calls him Menkyo Kaiden, in front of everyone. Abashiri students included.
This should foster Daito-ryu’s unity around the only legitimate individual that has legitimacy to do so: Katsuyuki Kondo Sensei. All other ryu-ha are illegitimate once the evidence surfaces as Daito-ryu is NOT as Karate, Aikido, etc i.e. a public art but a family transmitted art.
I would have no impediment in communicating directly with Kondo Sensei as you suggest. Or even to visit him personally as I now live in Tokyo and have been doing so for the past 8 years. I simply considered a public expression far more telling than a private apology - a sincere one is not verbal, but factual.
I feel that nothing can be more sincere than the act writing such a public note. My determined defense of Abashiri was in good faith and so are my apologies today. I don’t think that any embellishment would change these facts, but you are more than welcome to let Kondo Sensei have a copy of all my notes.
Please farewell,
Tommaso Leonetti
Posted on July 30th, 2008
http://www.aikidojournal.com/?id=5103
Mr. Tommaso Leonetti’s Public Letter of Apology to Katsuyuki Kondo Sensei
I have been asked by Mr. Tommaso Leonetti to publish this surprising letter that outlines his initial involvement in Daito-ryu aikijujutsu and his role in leading a discussion questioning the credentials and claims of Katsuyuki Kondo Sensei. Mr. Leonetti further explains how later he discovered incontrovertible evidence that Kondo Sensei’s claims were, after all, true and that Mr. Leonetti had unknowingly mislead many practitioners of the art with his writings and conclusions.
Since I was intimately involved in the events in question and have already commented on various points, I will refrain from expressing an opinion here. Mr. Leonetti is Italian but writes in English very well so only minor edits have been made for clarity. [Stan Pranin, Aikido Journal]
* *
Dear Mr. Pranin et al,
Some 15 or more years ago I committed for a period of a few years (perhaps 5 or 6) my thoughts and comments to various web sites and forums concerning legitimate Daito-ryu succession and technical covenants issues.
At the time I had been a full time student and uchideshi of Certa Sensei and subsequently of Kato and Sano Sensei too during which time I had gained their trust and confidence. I had slowly become the puritan organizational backbone of the School. I believed, in good faith, such line to be the hon-ryu.
Due to such privileged position I had been granted access to an incredible wealth of original documents, written and audio visual, some of which I still possess today. I was granted vast leeway which permitted me to gather in depth knowledge of the School’s matters. I meticulously recorded and noted everything, making timelines, reconstructions and organizational charts and graphs that often allowed me to comprehend the full panorama of Daito-ryu’s last 15 years at times even better than individuals could recall singularly. In fact I was putting together a complex puzzle made of tales, pictures, videos, letters, ledgers, and 90% of this I photocopied and recorded (plus some originals which I was given as personal gifts) from other students, teachers, friends and family members who were openly answering to all my questions: I was a totally trusted and reliable student.
At those times I had not yet acquired other items of evidence which induced me to start questioning what I had been told. Besides, I am Italian and honour plays a strong part in our culture. Questioning my Masters’ information was not even on the horizon of possibilities. Until slowly, some logical and chronological assumptions which I was surfacing during my studies made me pursue and steer in directions where I felt that the usual latitude of investigations was being compressed. And every time with different excuses, sometimes contradicting and… well, it felt strange.
I then went to live in Japan to better study. I was going to research my passion and love: hon Daito-ryu. I entered Takeda Masanobu’s school in the outskirts of Tokyo and I started again from Ippondori forfeiting all my ranks and positions as I was only seeking truth not ranks or technique. I was in Tokyo under what we had come to call “Mission Impossible” to re-unite Mrs. Oshima (now Mrs Takeda) with the Abashiri School and thus unifying once and for all the hon Daito-ryu against what I believed to be the usurper Kondo Sensei. I even suggested and helped in the registration of Trade Marks in all the world and finally managed to make these 2 parties meet and start discussing the re-unification. We were near accomplishing the unthinkable: uniting the legitimate descendant heirs to what I believed to be the true technical heritage.
One day I was offered Tea by an old lady, back in Abashiri, a personal friend of the late Soke who asked for my oath of secrecy before introducing me to some startling evidence. She was trusting my good faith and the record of my battles in favour of Abashiri. I gave such oath willingly as I was convinced in good faith of the genuine stand which we were holding.
Little did I know that my world was about to crumble under my feet. She revealed some startling information and handed me some shattering insight into the truth. I had in my hands the incontrovertible proof of my errors and the legitimacy of Kondo Sensei’s claims.
The video and other evidence that I was given left no doubt whatsoever. The shock which I felt in my heart left me silent for months, years in fact, until now. And not only because of my oath to secrecy, but more important for the love of those masters in whom I had believed and the love for friends whose world I would have destroyed overnight if I had made such information public.
Those videos and that information would have spelled only one thing: the death of the School as they knew it and as I believed in it.
I did the only thing that my honour permitted: I severed all ties with everyone and all in my school and retired to a life that had nothing in common with Daito-ryu. My absence was noted and I started receiving numerous requests for an explanation: why had I left the School? What insight had I gained that made me disappear? And, well, all those who read now will recall the pressing insistence with which you all questioned me.
Last year one student of the School came to visit me. One Giacomo Merello, whom I later learned had taken over my role in the School as factotum.
I will not enter into his private life and other personal matters but we became friends. So much so that his candid belief of truths and beliefs as I had meticulously laid them down made me feel ashamed at my silence. I realized that my silence was in fact now deception.
I decided to show him the video and I revealed to him the whole picture as I had put it together. I showed to him pictures, documents, ledgers, photocopies, recorded interviews, videos and a patrimony of other items which I had collected in over 10 years of unrestricted access to the personal records, homes and dojos affairs of so many.
Giacomo soon left the School. For the whole next one year, relentlessly, he asked me, insisting, to divulge such information. This spring we met again in Italy and I finally conceded. I gave him permission to copy the video and to diffuse it.
What Giacomo will do with it, it’s up to him. I shall have no more part in Daito-ryu as through my good faith and then my silence I have hurt too many.
I thus publicly wish to first of all apologise if my good faith has led so many astray, in primis Mr. Kondo, and I then also wish to say:
1. Kondo Sensei is the only legitimate technical and moral successor of Takeda Tokimune Soke.
2. I assume ALL and EVERY responsibility for misleading and dis-informing those who read and believed my words. The fact that I did so in good faith does not alleviate my responsibilities as I didn’t denounce, until now, my findings. My oath is my only excuse. I am breaching it now because I finally realized how many were, and still are, so deeply involved. I never realized this before I met Mr. Merello who was investing his heart, his life and capitals of his own, again in good faith, and was like me “living” Daito-ryu, not only studying it. He was unknowingly dragging others along.
3. Many high ranking teachers and long serving deshi in Abashiri too were themselves completely unaware and in good faith. It is easy to recognize who they are as they too severed all links with Abashiri a few months after my departure. These include Sano Sensei and the secretary Kobayashi Sempai. Please do not ask me why I claim (with due cause) that they are not responsible for any wrong doings, let it suffice to say that Daito-ryu would only be further hurt if they were to be held responsible. Shunting them off would equate to destroying a technical wealth which is truly unique and genuine.
4. I don’t know how much my Masters knew and avoided sharing. I cannot even say if it was bad faith or simple negligence. I only know that what I said and claimed was, in a very small BUT VITAL part, false, even if in good faith I believed it to be true. In fact probably at least 90% of what I wrote and held then still stands correctly today and I could even go further and prove it, beyond doubt, to be so. However, I have chosen to stand off. If I were to continue I would only dig deeper and irreparable trenches, de facto hurting Daito-ryu itself.
5. I might consider sharing my records and documents with students who wish to study them for private purposes only but I shall not publicly expose any more evidence. The one piece of evidence that I now have allowed to be publicly shown will suffice. All the rest would only sustain further quarrels and initiate new problems.
a. As previously mentioned, Kondo Sensei is the only legitimate Menkyo Kaiden and genuine mainline technical successor, of the late Soke Tokimune Sensei.
b. Kondo Sensei, in absence of a legitimate and formal investiture of Tokimune Takeda Soke’s nephew as Soke is also the Moral successor of the School’s heritage.
c. Tokimune Takeda Soke wished that his daughter, Mrs. Yokohama, hold the interim position of School Head (she had been living with him) and his first daughter Mrs. Oshima too, to be involved in the School’s governance, but both only until the Soke’s nephew came of age and until he had been appropriately groomed into such role.
d. He further indicated Kondo Sensei to be his technical mentor.
e. Subsequently Mrs. Yokoyama abdicated her position publicly in favour of her sister Oshima, during a meeting in Abashiri; records show that Mr. Kondo was present at this meeting.
f. Immediately after, Mr. Oshima (Mrs Oshima’s husband) changed his name to Takeda Masanobu but did so WITHOUT Takeda Tokimune’s adoption or approval. He had already passed away.
g. Mr. Oshima (now Takeda Masanobu) then unilaterally claimed to be the next Soke. This was illegitimate as Takeda Tokimune Soke never thus vouched.
h. Most senior uchideshi of Takeda Tokimune resigned from the Honbu once the 2 sisters began an internal quarrel. There are other reasons that I will not comment.
i. There is a written will of Tokimune Takeda. However I shall not enter into this matter because such will was, in the best of cases extracted with deceit, or plainly fabricated with the illegitimate use of his seal. More detail is irrelevant: The very Soke Takeda Tokimune declared him Hamon while the Soke was still completely mentally fit, and did so publicly.
j. Takeda Tokimune Soke did teach slightly different techniques to different students. However, the basic principles are unique and I can only vouch for Kondo Sensei’s teachings.
k. In an amateur video document the Soke explains to Kato Sensei how slightly different teachings for him and Kondo Sensei were because of their different bodily structures.
l. In another video (on a bridge, in Tokyo, perhaps) again the Soke performs slightly differently; in a subsequent request for explanation concerning that video the Soke replies that the different flow of a response —he uses the term “just like in water flow”is necessary to keep the energy flowing against the opponent. I have no date for these videos. Here I am making assumptions from inscription on the VHS covers, circumstances not dates.
m. My previous Masters Certa Sensei, Kato Sensei, Sano Sensei and other students are legitimate uchideshi of the Soke and some possess a truly very proficient technical wealth and do represent mainline technical heritage.
n. Some of these students (senior ones only) did study considerably more than Kondo Sensei according to the school records. By considerably I signify ten folds and more under a mere time measure.
o. The Densho, the School’s ledgers, the seal and a wealth of other documents 9 years ago—when I abandoned—were in the possession of Mrs. Oshima.
I hope that this note can shed some light. I also hope that my findings may help, not prevent, Daito-ryu from re-unifying. Intelligence in victory should call for the party remaining standing to sway and unite his opponent rather than to suppress him. I feel it is today possible to unite Daito-ryu, finally under one single leadership and by doing so the Art itself, before the man, would benefit.
Please farewell to all,
Tommaso Leonetti di Santojanni
* *
This is an additional email from Mr. Leonetti that adds further clarifications:
Dear Mr. Pranin,
Certainly, please do make such note public.
This was, in fact, my initial intention as I could not access your bulletin board. I tried to insert this note also in other bulletins (in which I was engaged: Skoss, Nathan Scott, e-Budo etc) but I gave up when I was asked to register. Please forward my note to them too, for their evaluation of my request to publicize it.
This note contains only MY opinion. A copy of the factual proof is now in Giacomo Merello’s hands. The proof is incontrovertible. The Soke, Takeda Tokimune, talks of Katsuyuki Kondo as his successor and calls him Menkyo Kaiden, in front of everyone. Abashiri students included.
This should foster Daito-ryu’s unity around the only legitimate individual that has legitimacy to do so: Katsuyuki Kondo Sensei. All other ryu-ha are illegitimate once the evidence surfaces as Daito-ryu is NOT as Karate, Aikido, etc i.e. a public art but a family transmitted art.
I would have no impediment in communicating directly with Kondo Sensei as you suggest. Or even to visit him personally as I now live in Tokyo and have been doing so for the past 8 years. I simply considered a public expression far more telling than a private apology - a sincere one is not verbal, but factual.
I feel that nothing can be more sincere than the act writing such a public note. My determined defense of Abashiri was in good faith and so are my apologies today. I don’t think that any embellishment would change these facts, but you are more than welcome to let Kondo Sensei have a copy of all my notes.
Please farewell,
Tommaso Leonetti
Posted on July 30th, 2008